Recently we’ve been talking more about money with people in order to get a better understanding of how hard it is for people in our village to afford the things they need. We found out the starting salary of a worker at St. Mary’s and we learned the monthly food budget of one of the workers and his family of three. This information got us thinking about the relative value of the dollar/kwacha in our village. 
There is so much discussion at home about people living on a dollar or less a day, so we started to think about how reasonable it is to equate the value of a dollar in Malawi and the US. We came up with some interesting facts:
At my last job’s salary, if I started work at 8AM Monday morning, and calculated my salary on a 10 hour day, I would have earned the starting month’s salary of a worker at St. Mary’s by 9AM that same day
I would have earned that same worker’s entire annual salary by 10AM Tuesday morning
If we stopped at those facts we would immediately see a huge income disparity but we would also miss the very important second part of the facts:
I would also have earned the annual food budget of the family of three I mentioned above by 1PM on Monday
And if that worker at St. Mary’s wanted to pay my rent for one month it would take him 11 years
Clearly there is somewhat of an offset.
The income earned in the US is much higher but so are the expenses. This is not to say that the people here have the resources they need or that poverty is not a huge concern. In fact, most families are closer to 5 or 6 and often care for other relatives, which makes the demands on their incomes even greater. I only bring it up because hearing that someone is earning a dollar a day sounds quite different when their food budget is less than 50 cents a day.
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