Last week, Emily Bullock, a long term RESULTS activist decided to try living below the line….from her VSO placement in Nigeria.

I couldn’t even afford a cup of tea

From Monday to Friday last week I spent a mere ₦250 (Nigerian Naira) on food.  This is equivalent to £1 or $1.60, and I was in good company as around 135 million Nigerians (90%) live on less than $2 a day, and 105 million of these (70%) on less than $1 a day.

The difference was that my allowance was purely for food and drink, not rent, transport, medicine, phone calls, cooking fuel or other essentials.  I mention cooking fuel because to make water safe to drink it is necessary to boil or treat it.

 So what is an essential? Well I decided that tea was not, nor were seasoning or salt.  The food I ate was adequate but repetitive and boring.  My diet consisted mainly of carbohydrates: rice, bread and spaghetti; each day I managed one or occasionally two small portions of protein and some vegetables.  I ate fruit only three times. 

One of the challenges was limiting myself to ₦250 per day, rather than giving myself ₦1250 for the five days.  This meant that I had to shop daily and could only afford a few items; one was a 500g pack of spaghetti, which lasted for four dinners and three  breakfasts!

I realised why so many items are sold in tiny but affordable sachets, and how important it is to help people to access credit, on ₦250 a day, I couldn’t afford to go and buy rice from the market.

Like 800 million people in the world, each night I went to bed hungry and I also slept more than normal throughout the week.  While I only touched on the reality of this life, I am now more aware of how it feels, and that for most people with whom I interact daily, maybe by buying a product from them such as food or phone credit, or a service such as transport, this is their daily existence not for five days but forever.

Its hard just to function on this amount of money, let alone access healthcare, send children to school, or buy a mosquito net.

I was born in a British hospital, attended a British school and university, my chances were relatively equal irrespective of the income of my family.  As a citizen of this world, I have a duty to fight for a world that is fairer, and as a citizen of Britain I can demand for a world without hunger and poverty by lobbying decision makers such as my MP, and Prime Minster.  RESULTS UK gives me the tools to do this; you too can join in the fight to end hunger and poverty.  Click here to find out more.  

To find out more or to Live Below The Line for RESULTS UK, click here.

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Live Below The Line is being administerd by the Global Poverty Project