Kelly's Expenditure

Manda Hill shopping centre

In a land of extreme poverty, there is extravagance but not for 80% of the population. You can see the extravagances in the gleaming tinted windows of the 4x4's parked up in the car parks of the two major city shopping centres and in the shops window displays within. Most signs of personal material wealth are kept securely hidden behind anti-personal high voltage electricity and razor wire topped ten foot garden walls, in the affluent leafy tree lined shady suburban city tarmac streets and out of bounds and minds of the people of the compounds.

It's difficult to comprehend how in a land where the price of food is comparable to the UK, families of rarely fewer than 6 or 8 live on less than the equivalent of £2 per day. At first glance you assume the cost of living must be cheaper and at second glance it just doesn't add up. Third glance brings a sort of feeling akin to despair. Despair doesn't feed the families though. I suppose it's a question of removing the extravagances of life, at least those that we are used to, and by that I mean myself.

Boy

Much of life without extravagances involves survival and I suppose that despite our western extravagances and luxuries, we too in the west simply survive. Our survival generally is arguably easier, although that detracts from people who have to exist hand to mouth in the UK too. This website isn't about them though. There is absolutely no system of social security or unemployment benefits in Zambia. The poor are left to beg, borrow, grow and most notably, share between themselves.

I didn't visit Zambia and asking people I met how they spent the money they had raised each day so I don't know how they did it. Family and tribal ties and values are very different in Zambia and southern Africa and this is conducive to feeding the those in extreme poverty. It means people don't starve to death and the consistency of the rainy season in Zambia has avoided any agricultural and subsequent humanitarian crisis' in recent years of memory. Political issues surrounding the production, cost and distribution of mealie-meal continue to have consequences in the country. If the rains don't turn up or are erratic the food situation is fragile. Starvation is just around the corner. Malnutrition is common, somewhat normal.

Shopping centre fast food place

Kelly Mukuka, the Head Coach of the Dynamic Stars Academy and founder of the Dynamic Ministries Football League provided me with a insight into his monthly expenditure. He is by no means one of the poorest in the compound and he has an extended family and different ways and means of an income but his circumstances give some idea of life in the country. He sells clothes and shoes to friends and neighbours.  I think it's somewhat frugal and it needs to be. Kelly raises money for the academy and takes 20% for his own daily/monthly necessities. These can be broken down as follows:

• Accomodation - he needs a two roomed house, essential for secure storage of the football equipment he has accumulated for the academy. This would cost in the region of K700 (£70-£80)  per month, including electricity. He doesn't have one at the moment as he was forced to leave his last residence after the landlord put the rent up. He now shares his aunties 12x10 foot  windowless shed and single bed with his 18 year old nephew, Emmanual. Emmanual doesn't mind one bit and they get on well but there is little room for the equipment which is stacked up along one wall on top of a bit of furniture brought from his last house. He's a pastor, an unpaid position, at the weekends at one of the hundreds of local churches and so he has an old suit. He's proud of this and likes to hang it up on a coat hanger on the far wall. At the foot of the bed is a table housing a small and, i suppose broken would be the word, television. Houses can be found for £30-£40 per month but these would not have electricity. 
• Food - he needs 1 bag of mealie meal a month (15kg?) at K70 (just over £7). This would give him nshima once a day. Kelly eats in the evening, after the sun has set and it's too dark to play football any longer. 
• Charcoal - the electricity is good but it's unreliable and goes off several times a week. Something i don't really understand to do with surges. You hear people talk about it but not in a way they are bothered about. It just happens like the sun going down. It remains a luxury one can and does live without. Many people either can't even afford it or make do without it - it's less hassle that way. An extravagance with electricity for the rich is having your own generator. A supply of charcoal for the month costs K50 (just over a fiver). If you have time but no money for charcoal there is always bits and pieces to be found and gathered from rubbish at the sides of the road or landfill sites. Electricity has hidden costs aswell. If you have a supply and want to uses it, you also need a cooker. Some people just have one of the electric spiral metal hob rings detached from a cooker and resting on a breeze block with two wires attached. It's ok but you can't cook scones and thing like that on a hob; myou need an oven. Ovens are ezpensive and as a result, often communal. I have a story about an oven for another time.
• Spending money - Kelly finds that this adds up to K20 (£2) daily and is used to add beans to his diet, transport to the city costs or to provide fritters for the academy children at the pitch following training.
• Misc - K20 (£2) monthly. This covers such extigencies as candles and some matches to light them. He needs pay-as-you-go credit on his mobile phone but never has that much. You can buy 20p Talktime scratch cards from the little shack shops.

Chainda Compound shopping centre

His total monthly expenditure amounts to something like £150. In my opinion that's pretty frugal in a land where the cost of living, to reiterate, is not that much different from the UK.