After surviving the regatta today was a normal Monday which meant that there was no fancy dinner planned that would completely wreck my budget of, as usual, 1.25 Dollar. At my workplace I am usually served two chapati and tea for free, paid by the kind commander of the fire services in Dar es Salaam who happens to be my boss in Tanzania. I added an orange (200 Shilling). Then I checked the radios, went out with my colleagues to secure a broken power line wire and when I came back my co-volunteer Tjark from another fire station was just about to arrive at our fire station with some repair work to do. After that I enjoyed a spartanic yet tasty lunch, consisting of one bread left over from the regatta, two bananas (400 Shilling) and one orange (200 Shilling again). After lunch I went on with designing a new report sheet for the control room when the alarm was ringing again. After putting out a fire in a suburb I finally got home, chatting my way through the neighborhood, buying some fruit for tomorrow (So that they will not appear in the statistics today) and ate an orange and a slice of watermelon (400 Shilling). Then our guests from Malawi had already made dinner for us, so nice job, Jakob! You made the aim. Together with the drinking water (900 Shilling) I was spending 2,100 Shilling or 0.95 Dollar on food today. If I counted the breakfast (800 Shilling) and the pasta for dinner (1000 Shilling) my balance would have suffered severely (3,900 Shilling or 1.77 Dollar). Still a lot of money less than most of us would usually spend to sustain ourselves but I would have missed the mark again. So I am deciding to count this day to my favor…
The waste campaign lost some of its statistic significance since a lot of other people have started to share my dustbin with me. Are they trying to make me fail? Is there a conspiracy behind it? You never know. At least I managed to reduce the use of plastic bags from four to two, using my shopping bag presented on the first day.
If you want to support the Global Solidarity Challenge 2016, you can get informed at http://videa.ca/ and donate at my campaign page: http://solidarity.videa.ca/participantpage.asp?fundid=1846&uid=3438&role=1
And these are some impressions from the third day, as life goes on, me trying to live on 1.25 Dollar per day.
Fire engine interior
My colleagues inspecting the scene
The daily challenge: Traffic jam
The fruit and vegetable stand down the street and my bicycle