Miri's reflections on the challenge

My thoughts on day 5:

Gosh I'm craving some chocolate brownies, oh and some egg fried rice. This experience has been very, very challenging. Especially going to a Justin Bieber concert with not much energy to be jumping and dancing, but it is okay.

My reflections after the challenge:

It just really teaches you to actually look around and appreciate what you have now. The first day was okay, I’m never a big fan of having breakfast in the mornings anyway.  So that was kind of easy, but the hard part hit me bad. I'm so dependent on always coming home and snacking on everything I can find. Whereas during the challenge, at lunch breaks I would be so thankful for the apple I got everyday. It definitely made my day.

Over all I’ve learnt a lot through out this experience. I think this time around I’ve gained more of a perspective than the previous years. Its probably that I was still a bit young, and never actually looked at it the way I do after doing it recently for the second time. Yea no I have really grown over the past two years. I look at it this way, If I was a domestic worker and I get paid, say round about R100 which is $10. Now with that $10 I probably have to commute back and forth to work. You not only have to think about yourself, but also your kids, and the lunches for school. Probably dinner too, and truth is that’s what I grew up like with. My mum got paid R85 in Canadian dollars that’s about $8 if she was lucky.

Some days she could not even afford a taxi both ways to work, or even my transport money which was $1.99, so she walked 10km in the morning to get to work. I walked 5km to school. The fact that I got into a nice school, and had a uniform, school books was cause my mum worked for the guy who was my English teacher at the school I attended. She worked extra hard, so I could stay in the school.  

My mum Lindiwe still gets paid that amount. Here I was thinking that the world was going to end if I did not have a cup of Green tea in the morning, but I did not actually. I’m still here living, but the frustrating part is that knowing out there somewhere there’s a family or person, even an animal who does not have a meal today, or $10. Which hurts me, so feeling a little bit of hunger in a week is not that bad.