Sleeping on a bed

The three days went by quite fast.

Wednesday:

I had stayed up until 2am Tuesday night buying food, creating last minute handouts, and finishing up as much homework for the week as I could. I woke up at 6:45am Wednesday morning to finish up packing and getting ready for the Challenge. My nephew, Noe, arrived at my house around 7:45am to accompany me to Costco where I would meet a Supervisor and pick up cardboard boxes for the event. The cardboard was then delivered by my dad and brother-in-law to PLNU while my nephew and I attended biotechnology class at 8:30am. My six year old nephew was shadowing me for the day (teaching him about poverty and living on $2 a day or less). Noe was such a good sport he helped with the food preparations and building my cardboard home. Noe had lunch with Anthony while the other Challenge participants enjoyed bean tostadas with lettuce and sour cream. Later I found out that Noe had a hamburger, pasta, grilled cheese, pudding, and 2 ice cream cones! I don’t know how he ate that much, so unhealthy… After lunch Noe flew kites Rufio, a PLNU alumni that was joining us for the Challenge. He absolutely loved Rufio. Noe stayed until about 4:30pm, which was good timing since I started to feel quite sick after that. Dinner was beans and rice, Rufio and Jen helped prepare the meal. (I forgot to mention- a group walked to Fresh & Easy at 3pm to buy food for the next day)

While everyone was having dinner I took a short nap under my “house”. I began to feel cold and super uneasy, then I felt I needed to relieve my stomach. I ran to the bathroom and barely made it, all my food came up :( I briefly talked to Anthony on the phone to let him know I wasn’t feeling well. While on the phone I could contain my tears. I didn’t want to give up on the Challenge but at the same time I knew I had to go home to prevent any liability issues if something were to happen to me. I prayed about it and tried to sleep it off. Anthony arrived at 11pm to drop of Rob, the staff that would be staying on campus. He offered to take me home but I refused and told him I was feeling better. I am glad I did.

Reflection:

Looking back on this day, I didn’t have enough to drink for all the moving around I was doing- I was dehydrated. I was also stressed about making sure all the details for the food and what not were in place. But I am glad I didn’t feel well. The reason I say this is because in a sense my situation allowed me to think about the many challenges that people in a developing country have to face. I didn’t have enough water consumption because all our water had to be boiled. It took us a while to get the water boiled, and ready for people to drink, in that processed I must have forgotten to drink some myself. I also didn’t want to take any medication since that would put me over my $2 budget. My not feeling so well also put me to question how dedicated I was actually going to be. Right after I got off the phone with Anthony my mom called to check up on me. Before I told her how I was feeling, she started giving me all sort of food advice for the meals I was going to prepare for Thursday. After the short conversation I had with her I knew I couldn’t give up. If I had left it would have let down both the fellow participants and my family that was rooting for me (especially my nephew). So I sucked it up and choose to stay, I don’t regret it.

Thursday:

The rise of the sun woke me up naturally. It was such a good feeling to feel tired after the sun set and be ready to go once the sun rose. Now in days we don’t pay attention to nature we work until it’s late because we have artificial light and get up according to our plans for the day. I woke up in time to help make breakfast, there were three helpers already there preparing hard boiled eggs and toast. We were trying to get the breakfast out by 7am so we accidently undercooked some of the eggs. They were a little runny but people didn’t complain they just ate them :)

I attended both my classes for that day, theater and econometrics. It felt a little weird to look “bummy” while everyone else was nicely groomed. For lunch we had rice and beans. I have to say I am a good bean cooker, a talent I never knew I had. I babysat on Thursday evening so I didn’t get to help with dinner, baked potatoes. When I came back from babysitting, from 2-7pm, I ate a potato, so good! We had a debrief session at 9pm to get to know one another and talk about why we were doing the challenge. I forgot to mention that our group shrank from the 80+ people that signed up to 35 people who actually committed to doing the Challenge. I was relieved in a sense to get a smaller group since this meant less cooking and more intimacy with one another. The debrief session really intrigued me we had almost all the majors at Loma represented. And in my head I broke the participants into four groups:

1. Those who had travelled abroad and had personally seem people live on less than $2 a day.

2. Those who were active with local homeless organizations

3. Commuters who cared about the cause but were also glad to stay on campus (save on gas & time) and get their meals covered for $2 a day

4. Those who just wanted to have a giant sleepover under the stars and enjoy time with friends

Friday:

For breakfast we each had a banana and a cup of oatmeal with a choice of raisins and brown sugar. After breakfast I attended my biotechnology class. Besides the beans I didn’t have to do much for lunch so I enjoyed a nice walk cross campus to attend my international economics class. The challenge ended at 2pm after that people could go back to their “homes” clean up and then meet up again at 4pm to eat our last meal and debrief. We had a little less than $100 left that was leftover from our budget of $2 per day. The choice was presented if the group wanted to add some chicken barbeque to the menu for the last meal, as a group we voted to donate the leftover money instead. I was quite grateful that many choose to donate instead of treating themselves to meat. For the last meal we literally cooked up all of our leftovers and had a feast while we discussed what we learned during our Challenge. Oh I can’t forget, before we began our discussion, Rufio made an entrance with two cakes for Jessica. It had been Jessica’s birthday on Sunday but she was so busy planning and working out the details for the $2 Challenge that she didn’t get to fully celebrate her birthday. While we all sang Happy Birthday to Jessica and thanked her for all she did I couldn’t help but think how real this Challenge felt. We had all grown so close in the past few days that it truly felt like a little community working through all of our struggles. The singing took me back to the days under sun in China, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Mexico where I had celebrated many birthdays with a homemade cake, rice and beans. Even though our living conditions were not exactly like a developing country with that I mean our “houses” on manicured grass and ocean view, we did come to a realization that living with such limited supplies is a struggle. In the few days that we did this Challenge many opened their eyes to think of new ideas on how to help our fellow brothers and sisters abroad. Some learned that cutting down on their resource usage was not as hard as they imagined. Some vowed to use the computer lab more often, cook a few meals that were cheap, not use their cell phones so much, and so on. For me, well, I came to appreciate my bed and the shower a little more. As much as I like to pamper myself with long showers I came to realize that not everyone could so I should try to conserve as much as I could. My bed, lets just say, it never felt so good!

I am feeling much better

All your prayers much have been heard. After an upset stomach in the evening I tried to sleep it off under my card board home, it worked. I woke up at 6:30am feeling great. So far the experience has been quite eye opening. We are all living in community and as a community we have split up chores. My cooking hasn't been as hectic as I thought because of all the great help everyone is putting into meals. We have groups that walk and buy the meals at a local grocery store and usually have about five people preparing the meal. Yesterday we had bean tostadas for lunch, and rice, beans, and tortillas for dinner. Today we had hard boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, and toast for breakfast. For lunch we enjoyed rice and beans with tortillas and for dinner the group is having baked potatoes. We have actually been doing quite well with our budget and all of our meals together are less than $2. With the leftover money we have decided as a group to treat ourselves to something nice Friday, the last day. We plan on adding coffee to the menu and fresh fruit. The group was even thinking about a barbecue for our debrief session but of course "I've rather not" ;)

Thanks again for all your support!!!

Love,

Maira

Living in a developing country ;) on $2 a day is challenging!

There's a great positive atmosphere here and people are being fed, both great!
But I am physically and mentally drained. It’s only been a day and I already vomited twice; my body isn’t used to so much sun exposure…
I am using a “public source” of internet so I can’t write much.
Keep me in your prayers :)

Travels to a developing country here in the US

It’s been quite hectic these past few days but it is about to get a little harder. Many of you know I like to travel to developing countries in the hope to one-day change the poverty statistics. If is unfortunate that half the world’s population lives on $2 a day or less. I am reminded by Dr. King’s words, “As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich...As long as diseases are rampant, I can never be totally healthy...I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.” So what am I doing?

For three days starting Wednesday I am living outside on cardboard pretending to live in a developing country while surviving on $2 a day.

While Anthony says I am crazy and refuses to participate, 75 other people are joining me. The microfinance club, Jessica a dear friend, and I are organizing and putting this event at PLNU. If you are interested in learning more watch these two videos from last year:

Produced through PLNU-3:37 minutes

http://vimeo.com/4047437

Broadcasted by CW 6-1:56 minutes.

http://www.sandiego6.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=599975@xetv.dayport.com&navCatId=5

There are two main reasons why I am choosing to lead and participate in the $2 challenge. The first and most important is to spread awareness on campus about what it means for people to live on $2 a day or less. Besides being a slum town in the middle of our campus road we are also posting information on worldwide poverty along the campus “Caf. Lane” and are going to be exposed to the media to spread this message all over San Diego. But secondly, I choose to participate because the money raised by this even will go towards the Grameen Foundation and its partner organizations to support economic recovery efforts in Haiti. As many of you know I worked for Esperanza International, a microfinance organization that promotes development, in the Dominican Republic. Esperanza Int’l is a Grameen Foundation partner organization. I got to experiences first hand how well organized and efficient Grameen is. Grameen is the largest microfinance organization in the world, it is known for its founder Muhammad Yunus, a nobel prize winner. Grameen is also partnering with Lazarian World Homes (LWH) in Haiti to rebuild homes, having worked for LWH in both Armenia and Mexico, I too know this is a great Christian organization.

So how can you help?

Prayer. Pray for safety so our group can make a statement without getting sick (one student had a seizure last year). Pray for me as I am in charge of feeding all the participants, a little nerve wrecking since I am not a good cook. Continue to pray for Haiti so it can rise from being the poorest country in the western hemisphere to a developed country. And lastly, donate to this cause. We are having a friendly competition with the University of San Diego, they had their $2 Challenge a couple weeks ago and raised $300. I think we can beat that!

All donations are tax-deductible, you will receive a receipt from PLNU is you donate $10 or more. Link: https://commerce.cashnet.com/IA2

Make sure you designate the donation to "Slum Town- $2 Challenge".

Thanks.

Love,

Maira