Yaoli: Living with Less

July 7, 2009

One of the first lessons we learned while staying in Tanzania was surviving with simplicity. You do not need to use the standard 35 liters a day of water consumed by an average American… you cope with maybe 3 to 5. This means turning off the tap when shampooing your hair, brushing your teeth, and soaping your body. This means not flushing the toilet as often and scooping out a limited amount of water to wash your dishes. Here, we do not shower everyday. Nor do we send our clothes for laundering after wearing them only once.

Another thing to be conserved is energy. We can never be sure that there will be a steady flow of electricity when we plug our devices into the outlets. Therefore, one should never be caught without a reliable flashlight or a candlestick and some matches. There is not enough electricity to support multiple appliances: the sound system cannot operate in conjunction with the TV. Turning on our laptops dims our ceiling light.

Only after deprivation of modern-day equipment do you realize how many hours you expend daily on watching TV, surfing the internet or listening to music. After finishing work at the dispensary, we often have nothing to occupy ourselves with and must come up with things to do. We play with the children of our homestay parents and those of their relatives’. They are ingeniously creative at entertaining themselves without Wii video games, computers, or sophisticated toys. We saw cars made from water bottles, a game involving just a wheel and a stick, and “hacky sack” made of a ball of grass. In the past two weeks, Sanaa and I have rediscovered the joys of jump roping, playing with cards, bouncing rubber balls, and dancing to the radio. We also took walks around the village, learned to peel potatoes using a plain knife, and rolled dough for making chapatti. Instead of iced coffee or smoothies, soda in a glass bottle became a rare sugary treat to savor under the afternoon sun.

Living simply brings people together. Hordes of children of different ages can be seen playing together in the fields. Without complex machinery, chores are completed under the collaboration of many hands. But this also means the work is difficult and time-consuming. Washing clothes, cooking, and cleaning can take hours.

Yet for many of those living with less, they embrace their life and its challenges. A bumper sticker I saw on the window of a truck summarizes their perspective: “Yesu Atosha.” Jesus Enough.