Our daily bread

As I waited one recent afternoon for the electricity to come back on, and attempted to plan a dinner meal that would use up as much of our perishable food as possible, a friend texted me. Her home had been without electricity for many hours as well, and she said she would pray that our power would be restored soon. “Living here changes your prayers, doesn’t it?” she said. And it’s true.

We often invite our three children to join us in praying the Lord’s Prayer right before bed, and I watched my littlest watch her older brother pray last night. She stared at him as he spoke, entranced, it seemed, by the common words that filled the mosquito net, a small shelter of liturgy in a stormy sea. As I’ve prayed this prayer of late, I have lingered over the part that says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Something about life here in Tanzania—some quality of rawness, an edge of inconvenience and desperation—has kept me hungering for daily bread. I can’t count on things I used to; I can’t count on stable electricity and internet, or roads that are consistently repaired, or stores with re-stocked inventory, or rains that come on a regular basis. I feel more at the mercy of circumstance here, forced to dance with a fickle partner, who threatens to trip me up and keeps me on my toes.

Yet I know I am one of the fortunate ones. I am rich by local standards, rich enough to have money not only for today but also for tomorrow, money enough for margin and stability for my family. And I think, daily bread can mean such different things. As my good husband and I drove home from a dinner date last week to celebrate our ten years of marriage, we mused upon the disparity of economic realities of people here. We had enjoyed an excellent meal at a local Indian restaurant—two pots of curry, plus rice, garlic naan, and some scrumptious tandoori paneer. And, thanks to a recession in the Tanzanian economy that currently has the shilling dropping in value against the dollar, it only cost us a little over $20. Pretty reasonable for an anniversary dinner.

But we thought about the Tanzanian field workers who labor alongside my husband when he conducts his field research—uncomplaining mamas who work for hours in the hot sun, bending to hoe and water plants to feed their families, and eager young men and women, hoping to scrape together some extra money to attend university. And for all their hours of work they earn the equivalent of $3 a day. Three dollars to buy some daily bread… which would buy a loaf of bread but only that, and how then to cover the other needs that crop up, as plentiful as weeds in a barren field? And we realized that it would take a whole week of work for one of those Tanzanian mamas or brothers or sisters to earn enough money to eat dinner at that Indian restaurant. A whole week’s wage for one meal… how is this anyone’s daily bread?

Earlier this month, our family had the pleasure of meeting our Compassion child, a small and lovely teenage girl who lives in a rural area about three hours from Arusha. We drove to that town and then ventured even farther into “the bush” to visit her at her school, through a gorgeous and rugged landscape, over roads that barely seemed like roads. When we arrived, sore but grateful, we roamed the well-kept campus of her boarding school and marveled at our sponsored child’s accomplishments. We learned that over 1,000 girls applied for entrance to this school last year, and they only admitted 125 girls, our child among them. We knew she was bright, but we didn’t know she was so brave. And we didn’t understand the difference one dollar a day makes in her life, how our small investment offers her a support network in Tanzania, encouragement, a future and a hope.

If living here has changed the way I pray, I hope it also changes how I conceive of what I have and what I hold dear. I pray it gives me new courage to face my circumstances with gratitude. I pray it gives me new grace to receive as well as give, to accept invitations from Tanzanian colleagues, to feed the neighbor children who linger in our house each day. I pray it gives me the wisdom to lift up my daily bread and be willing to bless it, to break it, and to share it, trusting that the God who is enough will be enough for me and for all my brothers and sisters around the table.