Thank you for following GSC campaign 2016! Today I reached my aims more or less, but in the evening only hot chocolate (approx. 1,000 Shilling) helped to overcome the exhaustion of being a firefighter in Tanzania. I admire and I am proud of all the team members who fully focused on their challenges, yielding great response from their generous donors, powering VIDEA’s work in East Africa. Although my financial contribution is in fact Zero, it was a good experience for me and if I was able to share one or two thoughts with you that you found worth thinking, I can say that it was not only an experience for me. An experience that, briefly said, tought me that I could probably not live on 1.25 Dollar per day if I was working under the current conditions, although some of my colleagues supposedly do, at least in terms of spending money for food. So I am now continuing with my Personal Solidarity Challenge, being white, privileged and and full of Western ideas, trying to be an authentic colleague, comrade and friend to the firefighters I go to the scene with. We are from totally separate worlds and still there is a small common space when we share one aim, rushing to some place where people need help. We have different approaches which often cause conflicts if I try to make my opinion clear, which I deem valuable. In return I would not have to pay attention to their way of thinking. When I fly back I will be a hero since the narrative of my people dominates the perception of good and bad in the official records of planet Earth. If I say that I failed because they are animals, people will believe me – in a certain way, because nobody would like to be an open racist. That does not mean that I believe less in my values which are often different from the values I experience in Tanzania. But my aim is to accept that there are worlds that may lie beyond what I can understand with the thoughts I brought from my white upper class private school sailing club classical music environment. I want to see their world as a world with its own right to be although I may not love it. I want to stand together with the people around me, perhaps not sharing one belief, but at least being humans with all our human wishes, thoughts and fears. Good bye, GSC! It is time to go on with PSC.

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.

Oh man, the Global Solidarity Challenge! There it is and I don’t know how to deal with it. Ok, that is not completely true, I had already thought about living on 1.25 Dollar or 2,750 Tanzanian Shilling per day and producing less waste. Nevertheleless I had not taken any precautions to move from riches to rags all of a sudden. Fortunately I live in Tanzania which means that food prices are extremely low compared to Western countries. Moreover, as a volunteer we are theoretically assigned a food budget of 2.50 Dollar per day, which is just twice the Challenge budget.

To support the campaign, visit my page at VIDEA: http://solidarity.videa.ca/participantpage.asp?fundid=1846&uid=3438&role=1

And that is how my first day went: I woke up and was feeling hungry. I thought of the plan to make bread since one kilogram of flour costs just 1500 Shilling (a bit more than 0.50 Dollar), then I thought of the oatmeal I had bought the day before and the yoghurt in the fridge and decided to take a shortcut. In total, my breakfast took 2,200 Shillings, so that one Dollar was already gone when I left the house to design prototypes at a local crafts NGO workshop. By noon one of the workers brought me a dish of Ugali (Maize porridge) with vegetables. Since he belongs to the group of persons who probably really live on 1.25 Dollar per day I decided to accept his invitation as an escape to save my budget. After a day at the workshop it was time for dinner. The salad ingredients took 600 Shillings, the sip of Coke 300 and the Pilau (Spiced Rice) from the day before was ca. 300, too. After dinner I snatched an orange from the fridge, 200 Shillings. The water I drank over the day was mainly boiled tap water which I count as free. In total I used 3,600 Shillings for food, which is 1.64 Dollar. That means that I did not completely fail for the first day, but more care can still be taken. Tomorrow is becoming a challenge since I am invited to a regatta at the Yacht Club where Western prices prevail. For the lunch on board I am baking bread and preparing red lentils, estimated personal budget for these two dishes: 1200 Shillings.

The waste challenge went well today. One banana peel, a yoghurt bag and one plastic bag for the salad ingredients went to the dustbin since I forgot to use the bag I had brought to carry the vegetables.

Tomorrow: How the regatta was and where we buy what we eat.