$2/day - Some food, many thoughts

I met up with Paul (ultra-cool guy) this morning, and broke into a light sweat while sitting with him under the sun outside of Big City Small World Bakery. I told him about this week long project I started on, and he recommended making a trip out to By The Pound, another bulk food store in Ann Arbor. We went there, and I bought some groceries that should keep me going for the next few days...roti flour, cranberry beans, black turtle beans, and rolled oats for $3.63. I then made my way to the People's Food Co-op to get some vegetables, and I ended up getting some cabbage, carrots, onions, a lemon, and some rooibos tea for $4.42. Let's see how far these eight dollars go. (Now that I think about it, I didn't even realise that the carrots and lemon need to be kept in the fridge!)

As you may have thought to yourself already, the number of two dollars is largely symbolic and doesn't mean much to us here in the US. Really living on two dollars a day in the US is impossible, I would think. The poverty line in the US is about fifteen dollars per day per person (however that line is determined). What this means is that what fifteen dollars means to us here is not what fifteen dollars means to people elsewhere. This is obvious. What I feel though is that maybe the issues people face, regardless of whether they are poor here or poor elsewhere, are similar, the inability to stand up against the causes of their poverty, and the consequent feeling of powerlessness. Yet there are some differences, particularly when it comes to food.

Having grown up in India, I observed that the food poor people eat, if available, is actually nutritious. They eat hardy grains, rice and fresh vegetables; they just don't get enough of this healthful food. Many of the poor in India are not obese, but they suffer from being underweight or from malnutrition diseases like beriberi, pellagra, scurvy, and rickets. This is in stark contrast to what many of the poor in the US face - a lack of access to healthful foods at all, and an increased availability to processed, highly salty foods leading to obesity and other health risks. And so even though the social manifestations of what it means to be poor may be similar, the outward, bodily manifestations influenced by food, a basic necessity of life, change from West to East.

On that note, let's see what the rest of this day presents to me.

$2/day - Expectations

I have realised that empathy is a difficult emotion, particularly when it comes to expressing it verbally to other people. While working with Professor Larsen on our class in Detroit, it was extremely important that we heard what the people of Delray felt about their situation, and the recommendations that they had for what Delray should look like. But even though we were from thirty miles away, we were outsiders. Of course, I do know we were sincerely trying to empower the residents of Delray. Yet it is easy to talk down to these people, to tell them that we know what is good for them, to tell them that they are not doing enough to ameliorate their situation. We may not feel as if we are being condescending or intentional in that way, but just like sexual harassment, many times it is not what you intend that is important, it is what they feel that matters.

From tomorrow, I shall try to live on two dollars per day, for a week. I am doing so out of my own volition, on the invitation of my friends Lisa and Ingrid, who maintain a blog called Half Of The World, which I wrote about previously. Now I know that I won't even come close to living on fourteen dollars for the week, because one day's rent is more than that. Yet, I will do what I can, with food, electricity, energy and such. I will write about the logistics over the next few days, and I am sure Lisa and Ingrid would love if you wanted to try doing it for a week and write about it.

I expect it will be easy for me to live on two dollars a day. I have a solid home to come sleep in, and have a nice work environment to go to. I will not be straining myself manually, and even if I have to in the laboratory, which is sometimes the case, I know all well that I am being paid, that I am not living in the fear of crop failing, that I will be able to come back to living on more than fourteen dollars per week. Some of you may feel that it is arrogant for me, or for us, to undertake a project like so, because we have the support and the knowledge that we can just decide not to live the project. We are therefore still outsiders, and we do not know what it is like to actually live in poverty. Outsiders yes, arrogant I hope not. Yet I do expect to learn a lot through the experience, and I am positive that this will add more layers of thoughts that I have not thought yet, and draw evermore parallels between the problems that face the environment and the humanity that inhabits it. As is my intention, Lisa and Ingrid hope for us to be more mindful of our choices, to see how our choices impact the environment, and consequently human relationships. I hope to be more empathetic to the struggles of living in poverty, and see things from the side of those we depend on to live the way we do.