September 16, 2012
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Rice and Beans for a Month
I’ve been eating rice and beans all my life. My mom makes great rice and beans. I never thought there was anything odd about eating rice and beans until my friend, age 14, came over to my house and had never eaten rice before. I began to notice that perhaps I was a little different.
I’ve been eating rice and beans on an almost daily basis for around ten years now, as I have gone back and forth from Northeast Brazil and served there. I learned that there is nothing that smells better than a big pot of Brazilian beans cooking on a hungry afternoon. I have seen the poverty around me that brings me to my knees.
A couple of years ago, a friend told me of her idea for her family to eat only rice and beans for one evening a week, to sit down and remember the other half of the world that lives on the buying power of $2.50 a day or less. To identify with the 1.4 billion people who live off of less than $1.25 a day, and what most of them eat: only rice and beans. I thought that was beautiful.
Since then, I’ve been hearing of people eating only rice and beans for a time, to donate the money saved, and to learn a little more of what poverty is like. To those in poverty, this may seem like insignificant baby steps—but we have to learn how to walk some way, and I would rather fall moving in the right direction. I put it on my list of things to do this year. And the time to talk about it over, the time to do it is now. So here I am.
The Challenge: one month of rice and beans (September 13-October 12, 2012). There are many different forms of this that people have done, and churches that have hosted these fasts. Here are some well organized sites that explain how they did it:
- http://www.solidrockinternational.org/riceandbeans
- http://prairieprincess.hubpages.com/hub/The-Rice-and-Beans-Challenge
The first week I am going cold turkey: just rice and beans. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I have learned that when you don’t have—you DON’T HAVE. I am allowing myself one “seasoning” for each meal (salt, onion, garlic), and occasionally some tea. This is like the 1.4 billion people who live off of $1.25 a day.
For the following three weeks, I will eat rice and beans, but can be creative (within reason) about it. This is like half the world (over 3 billion) who live off of $2.50 a day (and most of the people I work with in Brazil). I am hoping this will give me a lot of good ideas to share with my friends about what they can do with their rice and beans. Cheers to a new project!
