Living below the line

As I sit here drinking my hot, milky drink with cinnamon and bush honey, eating gingernuts - not because I'm hungry, but because I like it - I contemplate doing the upcoming 'Live below the line' challenge, paying only $2.25 a day for everything you eat and drink for five days. Because that's what 1.4 billion people generally live on, and they have to buy everything with that, not just food.

I'd be eating a few of these mung bean sprouts (I love my sprout jar):

And consulting this book a lot:

My family isn't keen, and the children (well, the boy child at least) are far too fussy. (Ah, I hear you say, a child would never let him or herself starve - but I'm sure Jack would if the food choices didn't suit him. Maybe he'd give in after a few days. He would, however, consent to exist on potatoes, rice, apples and eggs.) So it would be a solo mission for me, all the while preparing normal "rich people's" food for them.

Isn't it nice to be on the rich side of the world - to sleep on a mattress elevated above the floor, to wash clothes in a machine every day, to have multiple condiments to choose from, to be able to afford almost anything in the supermarket but find it hard to decide what to have for dinner. To be able to fill your children's bellies each day, and let them go to school instead of making them work to support the family. To have a separate room for sleeping, let alone a bedroom each! Oh, the luxury.