Angela Giles Klocke | Colorado Writer, Photographer, Speaker, Princess

My Journey: Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3 — Day 4 — Day 5

It was hard. And it was worth it.

What I missed the most -

• Green smoothies (totally felt the change in my energy and “other” things)
• Coffee (I wanted it more because everyone around me was drinking it)
• Choice

Fact: I ate on $7.50 for a total of 5 days. That’s the cost of a value meal at many fast-food joints. Did I feel amazing last week? Not really, but then again, how amazing do we feel after one of those value meals? And that’s ONE meal.

Fact: I went to the grocery store Friday morning – Day 5 – and did not buy doughnuts or any junk, really. I’m proud of that.

Fact: This challenge taught me a lot, much of which I am still processing, some that I’ve already shared.

One question that kept coming up all week was “Why? If you aren’t in poverty, why would you want to eat like you are? For what purpose?” To that I answer, the same reason people do the 3-day walk for breast cancer, even if they’ve never had it. The same reason people share about adoption, even if they’ve never adopted. All to raise money and awareness in an active, participating way.

I typically spend Friday nights at home by myself watching documentaries on Netflix (I’m wild like that). I’ve twice watched “Half the Sky” and have seen many different stories about sex trafficking and poverty. It truly breaks my heart. It’s one of those issues that is universal. It doesn’t matter that it mostly happens somewhere else. The fact is, it happens. And it happens everywhere. Human trafficking isn’t an un-American issue no more than poverty is. It may not make the news as much, but it’s happening. Again, regardless of where it happens, people are people, and the voiceless deserve a voice.

Over the weekend, I finished reading “The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine” by Somaly Mam. For a better part of Sunday, I read it while sitting across the table from my own precious daughter. The horror stories in the book brought tears to my eyes, and I’d occasionally look across the table and watch my daughter working diligently on her homework. The difference in her life and that of the young girls in the book were like night(mare) and day. Again, not even for half a second can I imagine her going through such harrowing pain.

“…When you’re a frog, it’s best to keep your head low. You don’t stick your neck out and try to change the world. I understand that. I don’t feel like I can change the world. I don’t even try. I only want to change this small life that I see standing in front of me, which is suffering. I want to change this small real thing that is the destiny of one little girl. And then another, and another, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself or sleep at night.” -Somaly Mam, The Road of Lost Innocence

That part resonated with me. Individually, perhaps we can’t change the whole world, but we can try and change the whole world of one person. And then another, and another. But if we all came together, if we all said NO MORE!, if we all stepped up and decided to change the world, we could. We could stamp out poverty and put a sudden stop to human trafficking. But until that day, until we can get everyone who wants happy change to come about, let’s each do a small part and stand in front of one girl, one boy, one woman, one man, one pet, one wild animal, whatever, and TRY.

“A seed is like a little girl: it can look small and worthless, but if you treat it well then it will grow beautiful.” -Somaly Mam, The Road of Lost Innocence

Starting Weight: 109
Ending Weight: 105
Total Loss: 4 pounds
Other Effects: Loss of appetite, lethargic. Full appetite has yet to return. And yet, my heart is full, my future is challenged, and my life will not be the same.
Conclusion: I’ll do it again next year.

I ate on $1.50/day from April 29th – May 3rd to raise awareness of and funds to support the 1.3 billion people who live under the extreme poverty line. Please make a donation to the Somaly Mam Foundation: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/angelagilesklocke

A nod,
a bow,
and a tip of the lid
to the person
who coulda
and shoulda
and did.
-Robert Brault, A Poem Missing the Word Woulda

PS: Remember to feel blessed when you “have” to do this -

- because billions don’t get to.

“In 2011, 46.2 million people (15.0 percent) were in poverty.” -FeedingAmerica.org

“According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they ‘die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.’” -www.globalissues.org

I’m living on $1.50/day from April 29th – May 3rd to raise awareness of and funds to support the 1.3 billion people who live under the extreme poverty line. Support what I’m doing — or join in yourself: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/angelagilesklocke

** Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3 — Day 4 **

When I was 12 and 13, my three brothers, mom, and I lived in a tiny rundown two-bedroom trailer. It sat on the very same spot where our first much larger trailer (and much nicer) burned to the ground, and then our replacement trailer (also very big and nice) was repossessed. To say we had fallen on hard times was an understatement. For more than a year, we lived without running water and electricity, and our toilet was a bucket that we had to dig a hole for daily and burry. So, in addition to the cramped space without a way to bathe daily, it smelled BAD.

We received food stamps, but without going into too many details, they didn’t go far. Our food was slim pickings. I’ve shared in the past more of the story of those times, but I’ve come to a relieving conclusion recently (before this project, but this week has reinforced that conclusion), and that it is that the story is behind me and the right now is what matters most. Still, I take from the past the memories, and I wish only to use them to help in present and future endeavors. Times were hard, and I’ll leave it at that.

We lived in Florida. Picture us in a tin can with sweltering heat. It was miserable, we were hungry, and life wasn’t what any of us ever wanted, most of all, my mom. It’s no surprise that I easily fell for an older boy and hoped for him to save me from the life I was in. He bought me stuff and took me out to eat. The extent of my knowledge about relationships was limited, but I knew I liked being liked, and I really liked eating.

Though I’ve faced hard times in the years since, I’ve never faced longterm misery like those two years. There have been weeks when the money hasn’t gone far and we’ve had to budget very carefully to eat, but it’s never been as bad as it was so long ago. And yet, even as bad as it was, my life was almost a fairy tale in comparison to what so many others go through. It’s hard for me to imagine, knowing the scars I carried over from my childhood, how hard it must be to not understand why your belly hurts, or to not be able to feed your own child, or to reach such a desperate state of being that you’d abandon or sell your own child.

When I think of my mother from those years, and I realize how hard it must have been for her to cope with the way things were, so many pieces fall into place. It’s so easy to want to point fingers and blame and feel sorry for yourself, but with grace, with time, with understanding, we can better understand why some moms and dads do the things they do. I know there are people out there who make selfish decisions in life that only prove to harm other people, but I have also come to learn that sometimes it’s about coping, dealing with the situations we’re in. And it doesn’t always look pretty. In fact, it often looks ugly, even horrifying.

Perhaps we don’t understand how certain things happen, why parents leave, why family would sell a niece or a cousin or a daughter into sex slavery, but maybe we don’t get it because we’ve never looked desperation fully in the face and been pushed into the mud ourselves. My mother did send me away to live with someone else once, and maybe that’s what her desperation looked like. Maybe she allowed me to date the older boy who ultimately became my first husband because she desperately hoped it would lead to a better life. I don’t know, and maybe she doesn’t either. But perhaps instead of blame and anger over what someone has done as they stare down the barrel of darkness with no light in sight, maybe we can just accept it happened, lift ourselves (or each other) up, and move forward.

The why and the how need not matter. What matters is right now, today, love. If we care to care, if we try to try, we really can save the world. I believe that. I really believe that.

Today is the last day of Live Below the Line eating on $1.50 a day, but donations will be open until May 31. I ask you humbly, please give. A couple of dollars, $10, $20? Any amount helps. Let’s raise money and awareness and help these young women step out of their painful pasts, into a future that is full of hope, love, and grace. Thank you!

I’m living on $1.50/day from April 29th – May 3rd to raise awareness of and funds to support the 1.3 billion people who live under the extreme poverty line. Support what I’m doing — or join in yourself: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/angelagilesklocke

** Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3 **

Today I don’t want to talk about how the lack of food is making me feel. I want instead to talk about the subject at hand, the organization I chose to do this for, the Somaly Mam Foundation.

Do you have a daughter? A sister? A niece? A friend’s daughter? A student? Whoever she is, I want you to go look at her. Either go look at her face, into her beautiful eyes, or pull up a picture and just look at her. See her.

She’s precious, isn’t she. She’s beautiful, funny, amazing, all things wonderful. She’s innocent. Maybe she’s 3, maybe she’s 16. She is loved, right?

Now I want you to let your mind go for just one quick minute to the idea that someone took her from you and sold her to a brothel to be used by dozens of men a day.

Go ahead: Go there for just 5 seconds.

You can’t do it, right? You don’t WANT to, right? Because it hurts. The idea that someone would hurt her, do that to her, put her through that, make her life a living hell, it’s too much. My heart starts racing just trying for half a second to picture my own precious daughter in that kind of situation. I can’t do it. I brush the idea away as quickly as I allowed it in.

But this is happening. It’s happening to too many to count. And I want you to pay attention to this: It’s happening everywhere. Not just “over there,” not just in Cambodia, where the Somaly Mam Foundation is located, not just in some other far away country. It’s happening in America, too.

“Not only is human sex trafficking slavery but it is big business. It is the fastest-growing business of organized crime and the third-largest criminal enterprise in the WORLD.” (emphasis mine)

“The United States not only faces an influx of international victims but also has its own homegrown problem of interstate sex trafficking of minors.”

Read more here: FBI – Human Sex Trafficking

Sex trafficking isn’t somebody else’s problem. It’s everyone’s problem. It should have a place in all our hearts because it affects all of us, and it shouldn’t matter if it was only happening somewhere else. People are people, and they matter! American, Cambodian, Indian, African, we all matter the same. So we should all care the same, whether it’s an American problem or not (but I remind you, it IS).

Somaly Mam is one of many who have come out on the other side of being sold into sex slavery. And she’s taken that pain and that experience to turn around and look it straight in the eye, a challenge to save all the others. Her life is a testimony to how pain can be turned into love, and that’s why I am participating to raise money for her foundation. It doesn’t matter to me that she isn’t here in America. What matters is that she loves, and as Bob Goff reminds us, love does. It doesn’t just talk, it DOES. Somaly does. She faces danger as she rescues young girls from brothels, and she takes them in and loves them.

It is my desire to raise enough funds to take care of at least ONE of those girls Somaly has rescued and loves. It is my hope to do so with your help. That’s why I’m doing this. To love her from afar for what she does on a daily basis. Love her with me, please.

“They told me they could help me to find a job, and my family was poor and needed food. The job turned out to be in a brothel. I was forced to take 20 to 30 clients a day, and was denied food or tortured if I refused or asked for a break. The money went straight back to the brothel owner, to pay off my ‘debt’ for room and board. They threatened to find me and kill me if I left.” -Somaly Mam Foundation, The Issue

I’m living on $1.50/day from April 29th – May 3rd to raise awareness of and funds to support the 1.3 billion people who live under the extreme poverty line. Support what I’m doing — or join in yourself: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/angelagilesklocke

** Day 1 — Day 2 **

This morning I decided that I needed more bulk in the morning rather than having several small meals throughout the day. The previous two days showed me just how bad it feels not to have much food on the belly when trying to make my way through a normal day. So, for breakfast, I treated myself to a half cup of black beans AND a cup of rice with spinach. Yum!

I ate the rest of the day’s allotment of rice at lunch and definitely felt much better with the combination of “bulking up” earlier in the day. Granted, I ended up with an unexpected day at home with no need to expend any energy (and no walking a mile since it’s, ummm, snowing. Again. Happy May!), but home or out, I don’t like feeling weak and tired and achy. All the same, even though this has been better, it hasn’t been great. Still have a headache, still feel like I’d like to do nothing, and I can’t seem to concentrate on what I’m writing here. Fatigue hangs heavy on me; I can’t shake it.

Let me put an American spin on this: You know how on Survivor, the contestants grow weak and are sometimes weird/angry/crying after just a few days out there? Yes, that. They aren’t eating much and they are still having to compete and they are living outside in hot and cold conditions. It’s miserable. I’m nowhere near that miserable, but I get it. I feel the impatience in my attitude, and the weariness in my bones. I am daydreaming about what I could be eating (found a lollipop in my desk that I received with a recent photo print order and I got very excited, like I found a real treasure among nothing else to eat, and then I realized I couldn’t actually HAVE it, and I was immediately disappointed), swilling water to fill the emptiness (did you know that in many places, mothers will feed their children mud just to try help the terrible hunger pains go away, even though they know it isn’t good for them?), and constantly glancing at the clock in hopes that it has miraculously become Saturday.

Did I mention this is hard?

I want to be sure I get that point across not so you feel sorry for me but so that you will gain a better understanding of how millions in this world live on a daily basis, with no “Happy Saturday” in sight.

Number of children in the world
2.2 billion
Number in poverty
1 billion (every second child)
-www.globalissues.org

Snapshot Moment: Last night, when adding spinach to the boiling water to cook it, I dropped a large leaf on the floor. Without thinking about it, I scooped it up and tossed it into the garbage. In less than a second, I realized what I had done and just stared at it for a moment. I had just thrown away a perfectly good piece of food because it had fallen on the floor. I could have rinsed it off, even. How often do I waste food that others would love to have? How often do I pile too much onto my plate and either eat it until my stomach hurts or scrape it into the garbage? Oh, the very idea hurts my heart.

Truth: The problem with opening your eyes to see and your heart to feel is that it’s hard. It hurts. And the more you look, the more you see, so the more it hurts.

I think we get caught up in our busy lives so much, we forget that we CAN make a difference. It doesn’t take a rich person to change things. Collectively, we can all make changes and differences and help people. Even those with the least can do so much.

“Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.’” -Mark 12:41-44

Sometimes it’s not about if your little bit can make the difference. Sometimes it’s more about where your heart is. I implore you to look inside and find out what truly breaks your heart. Whether it’s poverty or abuse or animals or cancer, you too can be the change you want to see.

And if your heart breaks for sex slavery and poverty, I humbly ask that you make a donation – no matter how small or large – to the Somaly Mam Foundation through this Live Below the Line fundraiser I’m currently living.

If you can’t give money, however, please give of yourself.

“Infinitely more important than sharing one’s material wealth is sharing the wealth of ourselves — our time and energy, our passion and commitment, and, above all, our love.”
-William E. Simon

I’m living on $1.50/day from April 29th – May 3rd to raise awareness of and funds to support the 1.3 billion people who live under the extreme poverty line. Support what I’m doing — or join in yourself: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/angelagilesklocke

** Day 1 **

By yesterday afternoon, I had a headache and a grumbling tummy. At dinner time, I opted to trade out one half cup of beans for a piece of bread. I was surprised at my longing for it. And by the time I crawled into bed, food was the only thing on my mind. And my aching head. I began bargaining with myself that I only had 4 more days, that this was no big deal, and then I fell asleep to ideas about my first big meal on Saturday.

And it had only been one day.

I started today with the same headache I went to bed with, a half cup of black beans, and then a 3-and-a-half hour class. Sitting in that room, going over a very heavy subject, I found myself distracted by what combo of foods I would eat when I got back home. At one point, I almost started writing a grocery list for next week based on meals I really want to eat now. And still, it’s only day 2.

I am amused by how much of my mind thinks about food, more so, I’m sure, because I can’t have it. I am distracted and weaker and carrying a headache I can’t shake. Can you even for one second imagine how others go through life on a daily basis? I have the luxury of having few required physical and mental tasks this week, and yet what little I have to do, I don’t want to. I would prefer to sleep this week away. Again, can you imagine having to take care of children, work in the fields, run a business, go to school (if you’re allowed), or just plain walk when you hardly get to eat? If you’ve ever had to fast for medical tests, you’ve had a glimpse. Now multiply that by every day of your life.

“I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.” -Robert Kennedy

You know what makes this week the hardest for me mentally? It’s knowing there IS food for me to eat. The rest of my family is eating as they normally would, and my cabinets, though not overflowing by no means, have food. And if they were empty (and I think we Americans tend more often than not to view “empty” and “nothing” differently than those in poverty, since we’ll open our cabinets and see a can of cream of mushroom, green beans, and some peanut butter, then declare there is nothing to eat), I could drive my car – or even walk – to the grocery store and purchase whatever I need. Or want. It’s usually more about want than need, right?

But still, the idea that the food I could eat is RIGHT THERE is the hardest. The little voice in my head (or my stomach, really) cries out, “No one has to know! Eat the leftover spaghetti! Have a cookie!” Because…IT’S RIGHT THERE! I could do. I could reach out and have it.

Think about the family living in poverty who can see the wealth around them? Or the parents who work in the fields to harvest food that they can’t even have? Or the children with distended bellies watching the tourists eat, waiting for their scraps? How is that OK?

We have enough to go around in this world, and yet so many suffer. It breaks my heart. I cry out at the injustice…from my comfy home with my food and my pets that I spend more money on than people get for food, and still, I know there has to be a better way. This world shouldn’t have poor people, let alone those starving to death, so hungry that in desperation they sell a child into sex slavery, or abandon them in hopes that someone will take care of them.

poverty
the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor.

I don’t have the answers for what we should do to save the world. All I know is we can’t stop trying to reach out to our brothers and sisters in love, holding our hands out to lift them up, whether that means a hand up from pain, from a deep hole of poverty or just to stand with them. We cannot stand close-fisted, keeping what we have all to ourselves. So be it money or food or time or a voice, let us not look away and pretend we don’t see, that we don’t know. Let us see, let us help, let us love.

I’m living on $1.50/day from April 29th – May 3rd to raise awareness of and funds to support the 1.3 billion people who live under the extreme poverty line. Support what I’m doing — or join in yourself: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/angelagilesklocke

{6:00 a.m. Made coffee but not for self. I’m not concerned with working coffee into my daily $1.50 allotment, as I have given up coffee willy-nilly in the past. In fact, I recently went several days to detox a bit. I won’t be truly tempted by the coffee I can’t have until around Day 4.}

These are the foods I have chosen to live on for the next 5 days –

Now, the fact that I bought canned beans and boil-in-the-bag rice says a few things about me. Also, the fact that my menu isn’t varied is on purpose. Let me explain.

I deliberately chose just a few items to exist on because when one has little money, one does not have much. As a young teen, my family and I existed for weeks at a time, if not months, on ramen noodles. I could easily have resorted to ramen for this week’s challenge, but one of the luxuries of choosing to eat at a poverty level rather than it being forced on me is that I was able to avoid ramen because I hate it. It is a taste easily associated with a very bad time in my life, and therefore I do not eat it at all. There is something very telling in the fact that I can choose with pickiness not to eat something.

Also, my items are of convenience. Rather than choosing to spend hours cooking beans and rice from scratch and exert any extra energy, I went the easy route. OK, that’s not true at all. I went the easy route because I can’t properly cook rice without it turning into mush (or being crunchy), which is again very telling of my pickiness versus real poverty. In times of very little money in our household (not poverty but one of those kinds of weeks – we all have them), we would avoid all convenience foods like that.

The truth is, I planned out my week differently than I know others did. I didn’t break down calculations or try to get many different items. Though I know it will be difficult, I planned my week of poverty eating in a way that I have to greatly ration what I have, knowing I will feel hunger pains, knowing I will feel weak at times. I don’t just want to go through the motions; I want to feel to remember. I want to have the longings for different food, for luxuries, for candy, for whatever. While my goal is to raise funds for the Somaly Mam Foundation, my personal goal is to begin changing the way I operate in this life. To be a better steward of the money I have, to not waste, to appreciate everything I have and be able to do more to help others.

{8:30 a.m. Half cup of black beans.}

I don’t for one second believe this will be easy. Poverty isn’t easy. Even just barely getting by isn’t easy (I live closer to this property line). I’ll be exploring this week how poverty affects people all over the world, how it leads to such things as young girls being sold to brothels by their own families out of desperation (I’m not saying it’s right or that I agree, but I can certainly understand desperation) and homelessness and on and on and on. How the cycle is hard to get out of from generation to generation.

I will be reading Somaly Mam’s memoir as well, which I have saved specifically for this week. I first “met” Somaly in the “Half the Sky” documentary (available on Netflix) and have read a bit in the book of the same name. She is one of many in this world who have been hurt beyond belief but who has taken that hurt and turned it around to help so many others. I admire her for that, and that is why I chose her foundation to raise funds for.

My fundraising goal: $612
Because that’s how much it costs to support one girl saved from sex slavery for a year. We might not be able to save the world, but we can save one.

{11:00: Half cup of brown rice with spinach. Small portion (less than half cup) of black beans.}

Starting Weight: 109
Note – I am not in any way trying to lose weight. But I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of weight change takes place this week based on this small diet.