One dollar – Day five:
As you look at your one dollar, what food will you buy for you and your family? You have to be careful, because it needs to be both safe and nutritious. Your toilet paper and other essentials also come from that same one dollar. What if one dollar per person per day buys you only flour and grain, maybe rice and beans to cook over an open fire? One dollar might provide enough food to generate maybe 800 calories per person. You soon realize that at 800 calories a day you will lose 20-30 pounds in a month. You grin, thinking that maybe you could stand to lose some weight. But then you wonder, “What happens after that?”

Look at your one dollar and ask, “How will I keep going if I can only afford 800 calories of food?” I must have enough strength to work or my family will not survive!” You realize that you used to think of poor people as being lazy, but on 800 calories a day you find fatigue and lethargy to be constant companions. You learn that if you mash your beans and refry them in lard, you will increase your calories consumed per day. But on some days when there is not even a dollar, your children eat only salt and tortillas. In Bolivia, many children and parents chew on coca leaves to reduce the hunger pains. Usually they have smiles and like to play games. Days like these, they are too tired even to play.

I wonder if your one dollar looks different from how it looked just a few days ago. Mine does. I’m thinking more about the one dollars I spend that really change my life at all.  But I’m getting a better idea about how much one dollar COULD change the world for someone else.