This morning for breakfast I had a sausage sandwich. I had saved a couple of sausages from dinner in the week earlier thinking it would be a treat. I did enjoy it but what I really wanted was a bowl of cereal full of milk, and a piece of toast with margarine.
Here's what I'll be putting in the food bank collection based on this year's live below the line challenge.
1. Obviously the basics. Rice, pasta, porridge, tinned veg and fruit. And milk, powdered or UHT. I've been donating that since last year's challenge.
2.Things to add taste. Salt, pepper, stock, anything you fancy from the herbs and spices aisle. These are not affordable if you're on the breadline. This week, food that tasted of something was such a novelty.
3. Things to spread on bread. I've looked at my value bread several times this week and thought I could eat that but I've got nothing to put on it. Also, if you're struggling to buy food you're probably also struggling to pay energy costs so some days bread might be it. So, jam, peanut butter, Marmite, heck why not a jar of nutella? And on that note...
4. A sweet treat or a "luxury". I don't mean champagne. As I walked around the supermarket with my £5 for five days I realised that 90% of the shop had become a luxury item that I couldn't have. So, teabags and coffee, biscuits, instant hot chocolate etc. I loved the idea that went around at Christmas to donate advent calendars. Alice and I went back and put in Easter eggs too although I wish I'd put in more. I can't help thinking that when life is being cruel a little kindness goes a long way.
Saturday 2 May 2015
Friday 1 May 2015
Why I'm living below the line (and where I get a bit political)
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his
point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it"
To Kill a Mockingbird
Going hungry for a week increases my capacity for compassion. Last year while doing this challenge I was reading stories on the Tearfund website. I read about a mum in an African community that had recently received a supply of clean water. She said that her children were no longer ill with diarrhea every day.
I've found it hard to get through the day on the food available to me. But I have a ready supply of water. I don't have to grow my own food in hard soil with the sun beating down on my back. I don't have to walk to get dirty water, or send one of my children. I cannot imagine having to do all that and then having sick children every day- because of that water that I worked so hard to collect. And to not have clean clothes readily available, or any water to clean the children up with. Do you know, the people in that community didn't even know it was the water making them ill? No one had bothered to tell them.
1.2 billion people in extreme poverty is 1.2 billion tragedies. If we can change a few, lets do it.
On a different note altogether, there's something I need to get off my chest. The character of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird stood out for his belief that a human being is a human being no matter what the colour of his skin. In today's political climate, where refugees are left to drown in the med and we talk of the poor as 'scroungers' and wonder whether immigrants deserve to eat, I feel like we are heading back to a time where a belief that some humans are worth less than others is rife. I am sure I am preaching to the converted here but it is a chilling thought.
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