Today's saving grace - reusing my lunch salad limes in my water. It's the little things. Even in the Peace Corps, I didn't have to be THIS resourceful... but it does conjure up images of the women i've met who not only have to be this resourceful, but do so effortlessly...
Like Dionis, a Honduran woman I met on one of my first CARE trips in 2006. Dionis took a photographer and me to meet some of the recyclers who live on the Tegucigalpa land fill... yes, LIVE on the land fill. Like many poor countries, there are communities that reside in large city dumps. They meet the garbage trucks in an elbow-jockeying frenzy to pick through the "fresh" trash to recover recyclable plastic items that they can sell to recycling intermediaries. Individually, it's tough to bargain for higher prices, giving intermediaries a lot of power. Dionis herself lived in the dump with her husband and children. They made a "home" out of scrap material they recovered from the discards of "outsiders" living a very different life.
When Dionis and the CARE staff picked us up at the hotel, she was wearing crisp white pants and white high-heeled shoes. I remember thinking, "Does she know we're going to the dump?" Yes, Dionis knew quite well where we were going. Before we got out of the car she warned us to stay close and be careful; her husband was murdered in that very dump five months prior. Thieves came to rob him and given that he had nothing, they shot him. Dionis didn't quit living, despite a life full of tragedy. To the contrary, she channeled her strength and joined a CARE-organized recycling cooperative that mobilized individual recyclers to band together and collectively bargain for better pricing. When I met her, Dionis was just elected president of the cooperative. She no longer lives in the dump - a message portrayed loud and clear by her crisp white pants and pumps.
So my $1.50 a day is a symbolic gesture to the women and families who not only live on this small amount each day, but also have to decide whether to spend it all on food, purchase the medicine or medical treatment their children might need, or pay for their children's school fees. Choices, hardly. Decisions, absolutely... and tough ones at that.
The choices I made today were whether to "treat" myself to yogurt or save money for a Coke Zero. To have coffee or deal with the headache that would come from doing without. To my friends and family who have made the choice to donate to our team's Live Below the Line Challenge (especially my supportive and kind-hearted boyfriend Tom), I gratefully acknowledge your kindness. For those of you who haven't and can, any small donation - even just covering the costs of my weekly food supply ($7.50) - will go a long way to help women like Dionis access resources to lift themselves out of poverty.
I'm still on track and humbled by the planning and organizing I've had to do these past few days. And with reminders like Dionis, I can certainly channel my own forces to get through Friday with an even greater appreciation!
I'll leave you with my tally for the day...
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| Photo: CARE/Jim Loring |
When Dionis and the CARE staff picked us up at the hotel, she was wearing crisp white pants and white high-heeled shoes. I remember thinking, "Does she know we're going to the dump?" Yes, Dionis knew quite well where we were going. Before we got out of the car she warned us to stay close and be careful; her husband was murdered in that very dump five months prior. Thieves came to rob him and given that he had nothing, they shot him. Dionis didn't quit living, despite a life full of tragedy. To the contrary, she channeled her strength and joined a CARE-organized recycling cooperative that mobilized individual recyclers to band together and collectively bargain for better pricing. When I met her, Dionis was just elected president of the cooperative. She no longer lives in the dump - a message portrayed loud and clear by her crisp white pants and pumps.
So my $1.50 a day is a symbolic gesture to the women and families who not only live on this small amount each day, but also have to decide whether to spend it all on food, purchase the medicine or medical treatment their children might need, or pay for their children's school fees. Choices, hardly. Decisions, absolutely... and tough ones at that.
The choices I made today were whether to "treat" myself to yogurt or save money for a Coke Zero. To have coffee or deal with the headache that would come from doing without. To my friends and family who have made the choice to donate to our team's Live Below the Line Challenge (especially my supportive and kind-hearted boyfriend Tom), I gratefully acknowledge your kindness. For those of you who haven't and can, any small donation - even just covering the costs of my weekly food supply ($7.50) - will go a long way to help women like Dionis access resources to lift themselves out of poverty.
I'm still on track and humbled by the planning and organizing I've had to do these past few days. And with reminders like Dionis, I can certainly channel my own forces to get through Friday with an even greater appreciation!
I'll leave you with my tally for the day...
| Breakfast | Cost |
| coffee | $0.22 |
| 1.5 tb peanut butter | $0.08 |
| banana | $0.15 |
| total breakfast | $0.45 |
| Lunch lettuce | $0.17 |
| carrots | $0.06 |
| black beans | $0.11 |
| lime | $0.04 |
| saltines (5) | $0.03 |
| snack - yogurt | $0.35 |
| total lunch and snack | $0.76 |
| Dinner pintos & cornbread (1/3) | $0.23 |
| ginger snaps (3) | $0.05 |
| Total Tuesday | $1.49 |
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