Living on One Dollar (2013) Movie Script
[ Birds chirp ]
[ Up-tempo music plays ]
[ Water running ]
[ Clicking ] You guys want to eat eggs?
You got food?
Filming. My name is Chris, and I
grew up just outside of New York City.
This is Zach, and he's a close friend of
mine from Seattle. We've grown up with very
similar lives. These are the
houses we were born in...
Our families... the awkward
middle-school phase...
The sports we played... and these
are the things we did for fun...
I met Zach during my first year at college,
and we quickly became close friends.
Our lives are fast-paced, and these are the
things that we're used to seeing every day.
[ Atm whirring ] [ Horns
honking ] [ Atm beeping ]
This is chino. He is 12 years old and
lives in a rural village in Guatemala.
He lives in extreme poverty, on less than one dollar a day.
How can we begin to understand
what his life is like, about what it means to
live every day with no clean water, little
food, and poor shelter? And just like chino,
there are over 1.1 billion people around
the world that survive on one dollar a day.
Zach and I study international
development in school, but there are some
things that a textbook just can't answer.
So we're creating a plan to spend our summer
living on only one dollar a day in a rural
Guatemalan village -- in
chino's village.
Okay. Bye, mom. I love you.
Muah!
I mean, I think it's just an amazing opportunity
to learn for myself what it really means
to live under a dollar a day... which, coming
from this reality, I can't really say I have any
idea.
I love you. I love you, too.
I'll see you.
We're bringing along two filmmakers...
And setting out to better
understand the reality of extreme
poverty firsthand. Let's do this.
[ High-pitched voice ] Hello!
[ Whooshing ] [ Mid-tempo music plays
] We're beginning our journey in
Guatemala city with a six-hour ride
on the back of a crowded chicken bus.
We are headed to the village of pea blanca
that's representative of rural poverty
in many parts of the world. In these remote
areas of Guatemala, 7 out of 10 people
live under the poverty line.
[ Breathing heavily ]
Is that -- are you hitting stuff there?
Well, I think we've got a
boundary of, like, a big rock right here,
so this might have to be our edge.
Sweet. Maybe it can
be chipped away. Yeah.
It can.
Okay. Why is it
going out like that?
You're pulling it too hard.
Pulling it too hard? No.
[ Chuckling ] Sadness. Right.
We're getting everything...
Eight weeks of this is going to be
pretty intense I'm not going to lie.
[ Both laugh ] Oh, God.
I cannot believe it came together
this is so one of those ideas
that we'd talk about and never do.
Well we're here...
Audio recording. Filming, filming.
[ Chuckles ]
[ Sighs ] [
Chuckles ] Well...
[ All chuckle ] We're here in the
rural highlands, in the small village
of pea blanca. There are about 300
people living here, most of whom are
Mayan. Most of the people only
spoke a Mayan dialect called
Kaqchikel, and it was impossible to learn.
[ Both speaking Kaqchikel ]
We want to live as close as possible to the
reality of poverty, so we're replicating a
few key aspects of it. Our budget for the
trip is one dollar a day each, for 56
days. But instead of giving ourselves
one dollar every day, we're
making our income unpredictable.
This way, we do not know when
we'll get paid. We're doing this because
many of our neighbors are employed
informally as day laborers or farmers, so
they never know when they'll get paid or how
much they'll make. We're simulating this
by taking our total budget of one dollar
a day each and splitting it into
random numbers between zero and nine.
Then, every morning, we'll pick a number out of a hat.
If we pick a nine, we make
nine dollars that day. Pulled a nine.
No way!
You got a nine? Or it's a six.
That's a nine, for sure.
It's great, ain't it? Well-picked.
Dude. He's good.
A second aspect of poverty we want to simulate
is the process of starting our own business.
So we're taking out a loan of $125 to pay for
somewhere to live and for a plot of land to
grow radishes on. Our small loan is
part of a service for the poor called
microfinance. Zach and I have heard
both good and bad things about these
banks but wanted to see firsthand if they
were helping in pea blanca, both from our
neighbors and by taking out a loan ourselves.
This means that, every 15 days,
we'll have to pay back small installments of
$6.25, or else have to default on our loan.
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
What would you say? I mean,
we've got 1,312 quetzales.
That's pretty decent. That's
how much we have left, yeah.
So... Get a chick
and sell some eggs.
Yeah, I mean, out of that, we could get -- I
mean, if we buy a chicken out of that, that's...
Dude, we're not buying a chicken out of that.
I think we should buy a
chicken out of that. No, dude.
Like, chickens don't, like,
automatically lay eggs. [ Chuckles
] We don't have money for feed.
And we can buy, like, fruit or anything
else that's so much better for us.
Okay, we'll research, dude. We'll
research the chicken-egg complex.
I will be so angry if our chicken doesn't lay eggs.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Chuckles ]
Hola. Is that really where
we're gonna [Chuckling] get water
from?
Oh, dude, there's a bug in there.
Sean, you should check this
out. That's actually how
much stuff is in there.
Hey, we have a water source.
[ Chuckles ]
That was the whole point. Then we can't
grow anything that's gonna finish by the time
we leave. But if we can actually
grow radishes, essentially, in time,
does that sort of switch our idea back?
Well, except for that I still
don't know how to really grow radishes.
[ Chuckles ]
Yeah. Like, anything depends on
the soil content, which we have no
idea about. Like, it depends on
how much fertilizer we need.
You just need to know how to farm, and we just don't.
I mean, we could wing it and try
and hope that it works.
Yeah. diez?
Ah. Diez. S. Ah.
Es muy caro? Muy caro.
Yeah.
Qu mala. como as?
S. Como as.
[ Speaking Spanish ] Graciasdon Carlos.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Chuckles ] S.
Muchsimas gracias. Mm-hmm.
[ Chuckles ] Oh, no. Oh!
Oh! [ Speaks indistinctly
] Holy cow! Oh, man!
Six. Hey. Gracias.
De nada.
[ Both chuckle ]
[ Speaking indistinctly ]
One of my questions was, were the people
living in extreme poverty, like, really thinking
about how they manage money, or was it this
survival mode, and it's like just trying to scrape
together anything they have just to
feed their children? [ Horn honks ]
[ Horn honks ]
[ Both speaking Spanish ]
[ Cash register dings ] [ Cash register
dings ] [ Cash register dings ]
[ Cash register dings ] [ Chicks
chirping ] We can't buy that.
Firewood is probably the most expensive
thing that we were buying in our budget.
But we are living on the line, on the edge,
always, of being able to drop into a really bad
situation. [ Cash register dings
] A little bit bumpy, too.
Whoa! Ooh. [
Chuckles ] Ooh.
[ Sighs ] All right.
[ Blows ]
[ Slurps ] Ahh! This
is the best thing I've
ever eaten. [ Chuckles ] [
Pencil scratching paper ]
1 pounds of black beans gives us 1,600 calories.
1 pounds of yellow rice gives
us 2,000, roughly. But, still, like, 3,600
calories split amongst four people is not
good enough for our daily
value.
[ Chuckling ] Yeah. Zach
fell flat on his ass after.
Every time we stand up, for some
reason, like, get huge head rushes.
I've almost passed out, like -- I don't
know -- today probably like three times.
And I don't know if that's a lack of nutrition
or what the deal is, but Zach actually went
for it today. We had our first full-on
fall, and when he came to, he was only
speaking in Spanish. [ Thunder rumbling
] I'm used to eating a lot.
I'm used to being active a lot. But when you're
not eating anything -- when you're eating
like 500 calories, you become incredibly lethargic.
You have zero energy to do
anything.
[ Speaking native language ]
[ Girl giggling ]
[ Machete chopping ]
This is only my second week actually in pea
blanca, and I feel like we're already showing
signs of being worn down and dejected.
We all have these pulgas.
We all kind of got destroyed on our dirt floors.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
And, you know, that was [Chuckles] that was
the point where I was like, "I want to go"
home. Like, I need
to get out of here.
"Why am I doing this?" And we were eating
better than a lot of the people in the
community.
Jose enrico just brought us a gift.
He wrote us a letter.
[ Speaking Spanish ] s?
Aw, gracias, Jose.
S.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Indistinct shouting ] Oh.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking Spanish ] [
Children giggling ] Oh.
Yay! Okay. [
Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking Spanish ] S.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Chuckles ] [ Indistinct
talking in Spanish ]
[ School bell rings ] [ Children shouting
excitedly ] That was absolutely nuts.
Did you see that madness? That was 315 kids
playing with like 6 different balls at the
same time. And I don't know.
What's up, Carlos?
And I don't how many games and, like,
snacks were distributed, but that was nuts.
That was nuts. How fun. Yeah. How fun.
[ Both speaking Spanish ]
We really didn't know who he was, initially,
that he was kind of just the kid that was
always around. And he was just,
like, so eager to learn.
[ Speaking Spanish ] How...
Are you?
Pssh! Hi. It turns
out chino's family
couldn't afford the $25 cost of books and supplies
for school. They had a family of eight
that lived in a single room. They no longer had
electricity, because they couldn't pay for
it. You know, his father never knew
when he was gonna work or not,
'cause he worked as a day laborer.
And chino, who is 12, had to
work in the fields.
We'd see him coming, walking up the Mountain
with this thing wrapped around his head and,
like, a huge bundle of, like, logs and
sticks behind him. At one point, Chris asked
chino, like, you know, "if you could
do anything, what would you be?"
And chino's response was, you know, "I'm gonna
be a farmer." And Chris was like, "no, like,
what would you be if you could be
anything? " And, I mean, he was like, " I'd
be a pro soccer player." But at 12 years
old, chino had accepted the fate that he was
gonna be a farmer.
[ Speaking native language ]
Chino, like most of the people here,
speaks Kaqchikel and only a few words of
Spanish. [ Speaking Spanish
] [ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking indistinctly ] Aguacate.
Aguacate.
O? En ingls, eavocado.
Avoca-- avocado.
S. Avocado.
Both: Avocado.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Food. [ Speaking
Spanish ] Ik?
Ik. Both: Ik. Ik. [
Both speaking Spanish ]
Both: Candle. Candle.
A candl.
Candl. Yeah, I mean, I think
I completely saw myself in a lot
of them. You know, I was, like, eager
to learn, where you're, like, so
excited about building little things outside
of our house, and, you know, that's
what I did for my childhood, and realizing
that it is the situation that they're in
that's holding them back, not
who they are.
Hey. cmo ests? How...
How are you?
How are you? How are you?
"How... are... you?"
[ Rooster crows ] The rbanare growing.
I know.
I'm gonna pay off on my finance loan.
[ Sniffs ]
I'm gonna eat more. [ Chuckles
] It's gonna happen, man.
I can sense it already. [
Chuckles ] Very clumpy, though.
They are really clumpy.
That's bad, right?
Everything about a banana just brings me joy here.
You peel it back. It's naked.
It's a naked fruit. [ Speaks indistinctly
] I just take a bite and savor
it each time like it's the best bite of
banana I will ever take, every single time.
I just make sure, like, the top
of the banana is always even after.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, your teeth
marks kind of indent it like this.
Yeah. So then you got to play
the game and, like, reverse the
bite. Oh, nice. Yeah. Move it up.
So that it's even, you know?
And it slows down your eating,
too.
As economics majors, Chris and I were really
interested in, how did a person living under a
dollar a day manage their money?
So we were asking people
questions like, "how much money do you make?
What are your expenses?"
Where do you save money? Do you
have any outstanding loans?"
You know, these are really personal questions
for anyone. Hola. Buenas tardes.
Hola. Buenas.
[ Speaking Spanish ] Anthony, in, I
think, the first week we were there, he
was, like, the first grown-up from the community
to come to our house, introduce himself.
You know, he was so excited to
meet us.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Chuckles ] [
Grunts ] [ Chuckles ]
Ah. See? Just 24 and 20 years
old, Anthony and rosa already manage
a household of eight people. Mm.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Baby coos ] [
Chuckles ] Oh.
No? [ Baby crying
] [ Chuckles ]
As a family, they survive on $1.25 each per day
to pay for not only food, but larger costs
of a new baby, their kids' education,
and repairs to their house.
Like, his wife is 20. I'm 20.
And she has three children.
His wife's younger than me, dude.
He's 24.
I look up to her so much. [ Both speaking
Spanish ] They're teaching us how to more
efficiently make fires... cook more substantive food...
And better bargain in town.
Living so close to the edge, these small changes
are having huge impacts on our lives.
Probably the most important one is lard.
We bought some straight lard
today in town to try to add to our fat content.
If you could feel this texture
right now, it is one of the
foulest things ever. [ Sizzling ]
This lard right here has -- what was it -- 208
grams of fat and 1,080 calories, which is the
equivalent of more than the rice or beans that
we were eating. And we started mashing our
beans and refrying our beans in lard.
It's so good in the stomach.
[ Speaking Spanish ] In our third week,
they invited us over to their home for a
small snack. But when we arrived, they
were preparing the traditional meal
of pulick, served only twice a
year for special occasions.
[ Both chuckle ] Oh!
Oh! s?
S. Claro. Claro.
Mmm. Sean, you can sit down.
Yeah.
He wants to say a few things
to the camera. Oh. S.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Muchsimas gracias a mi hermano.
Yes.
[ Chuckles ] Our desire to repay
Anthony and rosa, not only for the
expense of the incredible food but also
their generosity, is overwhelming.
They have so little, yet they're willing to give so much.
We all agreed that, somehow, we
will save the money to cook them
a pulick dinner before we go.
We have like 60.
It's only three days.
We can just decrease our amount. We can
get like, you know, a pound and a half.
I mean, I don't think we even really need
to dip into our savings that much...
Yeah. ...At all.
That would be awesome.
If we just want to, like, not eat very much.
[ Shivers, sniffles ]
[ Rooster crows ]
I drew a low number today, so we're having some...
Struggles with how we need to
pay Anthony's family back and also pay off
our loan, which is due in three days.
So...
We drew really low numbers for four days.
I pulled four numbers in a row,
and two of them were zeros, and two of them were ones.
So amongst the four of us, we
had 12 cents a person to live on, per day.
And, you know, we woke up, and
it was market day, and we
literally have no money for food.
Open the other one now.
[ Hinges squeak ]
So this is a big pull we need
a minimum a two or higher
if we get a one no
bananas if we get a zero
we have to go talk to Anthony
and take out a loan from him.
Let's see it. It's a nine.
No way!
No! [ Chuckles ] Yeah!
Seany boy! Dude, you're the
clutchest puller in the world!
[ Giggles ] It's a mosh pit!
Whoo!
Yes! Oh, my God!
Dude, so huge.
Bananas for everyone! [ Chuckles
] We got lucky and pulled a
nine. But what if you're out of
food and you don't know the next
time money will be coming in? How do you
choose between feeding your child or keeping
them in school?
[ Water splashing ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Both: S.
Both: S.
It's... Day 28. Right?
Day 28? Day 28. Yeah.
We had started to do these really
amazing interviews around the fourth week.
And Chris and I spoke Spanish, so we were
understanding everything that was going on,
and, you know, we had started to be affected
by these stories, but Ryan and Sean
didn't speak Spanish. And they were talking,
and they were like, "when you finally"
deal with learning how to survive, it's not
so bad." No problem -- it's not that
hard, you know? We're halfway through.
I could do this for another, you
know, two years. I just got really
angry and upset because, clearly, the
people we're around, you know, they had
learned to survive. But it wasn't okay.
And it wasn't easy for them, and they had to,
like, work so hard every single day, and they
couldn't follow their dreams, because they
couldn't go to school, and 'cause they had to
provide for their family. And Chris and I
were so involved with this research that we
weren't sharing what was going on.
What were some of the
questions in general? I mean, I guess I
don't really even know what you guys were
asking. We started getting into
where all their income was coming
from and, you know, like, what skills they use
to work and what they really deal with to find
money in emergencies, and, you know [Chuckles]
their lives are so much more complicated than
our initial interviews showed. Even something
as simple as what you cook with is important.
A broken stove or cooking over an open fire
can have dramatic effects on the health of a
family, especially on the kids.
[ Baby crying ]
[ Speaking Spanish ] Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
It's incredibly hard to save up a large amount
of money for a cooking stove, but Anthony
did it with 12 of his friends by using an
innovative idea called a savings club.
Together, they each decided to save $12 every month.
And at the end of each month,
the total sum of $144 would be randomly
distributed to one of the members.
This process then repeats itself until each
person has benefited from a large sum of
money at a single time. And that large
sum of money was much more useful to them
because they could take that money and spend
it on a big-ticket item like a stove or
maybe pay for a wedding. And, you
know, that's really innovative.
[ Camera shutter clicks ] And we started talking
about how close this community was, and we
hang out with chino every day. And his mom, this
past year, got really sick, and they don't even
have enough money to, you know, get a car to go
to the hospital in town, and Anthony covered the
entire thing.
[ Speaking Spanish ] And Anthony actually
paid for them to go to the hospital.
He paid for the doctor's visits. And
the medicine. And the medicine.
Anthony can afford the loan because he's
the only one in the village who has a formal
job.
Unlike everyone else, he can count
on getting a regular paycheck.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
And while Anthony did help these other people,
like, that's still a huge strain on their own
finances. Yeah, that's where, like,
if there was an institution willing
to take on that risk and lend to someone like
chino's parents, you know, then they don't have
to put a strain on Antonio. And, you know,
not everyone has that community around them
or the people they can go to
in times of need. Hola.
And, you know, and that was
something that -- hola.
Hola. Holachino. Chris.
[ Chuckles ] What's up, chino?
Zach, hola. cmo ests?
Bien. Bien. How are you?
[ Chuckles ]
Qu bueno. Good. I am good.
You look nice.
How are you? How are you?
Good.
S. Bueno. So, yeah, not everyone
has, you know, such a tight-knit
community around them. So, if you have an
emergency like chino's parents here, like,
what are you gonna do if you don't have that
person right next to you or you don't have
the emergency funds or that community
to rely on? That's true.
Actually, temple is pretty sick at the moment.
He's got a little bit of an
upset tummy.
This is just going to make me vomit.
[ Chuckles ]
At one point, I had both giardia and E. Coli
at the same time, and, you know, that's no
good, especially when you only have two pairs
of boxers and you're sleeping, you know, on
the same mat, sharing a blanket with someone next to you.
I think Chris is really sick.
I just heard him get up. It just doesn't
sound like he's doing very well.
Dude, I think I have that like
sulfuric burp thing happening again.
[ Burps loudly ] [ Breathes deeply
] Like, I can't even push on my
stomach. [ Breathes deeply ] I
can't sleep another night like
this. We're gonna go get
Chris tested for some bacterial
infections and see if he has a parasite,
or, hopefully, it's just a stomach thing.
Today, in town, we found out that
Chris has some parasites in his stomach.
It's called giardia -- giardia, I believe.
And it's, like, lmng in my
small intestine in here. And it causes, like,
excessive bloating and stomach pressure.
[ Speaking Spanish ] Doscientos quetzales.
The medicine is 200
quetzales. So even if people could
afford to get tested, it's incredibly
expensive to actually get the medicine.
There's no way we could pay
that cost. I have to use medicine
that we brought in case of emergency.
[ Siren wailing ] If we can't budget for
a simple sickness, what will we do in
the case of a more serious problem?
Just two months before we
arrived, hurricane Agatha smashed through Guatemala.
Disaster workers in Guatemala
say at least a dozen people are dead.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking Spanish ] [ Speaking
Spanish ] The tropical storm Agatha
slammed into its pacific coast
Saturday.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
If you've lost everything, how do you
get the money to get back on your feet?
How do you begin building a lump sum to start a business?
We wanted to see if getting a
loan from a traditional bank was
even an option for our neighbors.
Okay, so, you're gonna have to put the
camera down initially, I think, unless you
want me just, like, through the
door and then put it down. Yeah.
Buena, Buenas.
We can't take photos inside. So, um...
Are you, uh, going for the, uh,
discreet film? Yeah.
Yeah, sweet.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Let's get out. Let's get out. Let's get out. Let's get out.
That was highly illegal to be
doing. So, I tried to see if we
could get a 3,000-quetzale loan.
And the problem is we need all of these other items.
We need a receipt of our
electricity bills. We need an N.I.T. Number,
which she said costs a bunch of money
to get. We need a copy of the amount
of money we're making, which I
don't think we can get if we have an informal job.
Bills from the last three
months, two people who will sign for us, and
then we need to be able to sign our name, too.
There's no chance we could get a loan
from that bank. There's just no way.
We visited rosa again to see
if there were any other options.
Grameen provides reliable savings accounts
and loans designed to empower the poorest
of the poor to improve their
lives.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
With a loan of just $200, rosa was able
to start her own weaving business.
It was so huge to see the potential for
what even the simple access to credit can do
in the lives of our neighbors, of
our close friends. Ah, s. Oh.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Light laughter ]
When a grameen borrower receives a loan,
they also commit to opening a long-term
savings account, a safe and a convenient
way to build up a large sum of money.
We found that beyond using a loan or savings
account to start a business, our neighbors
were using them to absorb shocks and
make investments around the house.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
These financial services, such as microfinance,
they go far beyond just providing extra
capital. They really shape the family.
And they have these side effects
of empowering women.
Finally, we have rbanos. We have grown our rbanos.
And now we have tons and tons of
rbanos. What happened is
there's an explosion of rbanos.
Instead of selling our radishes, we're
giving them out as gifts to thank the people
we've interviewed. These radishes represent
a new source of income for us, one
that could move us closer to $2 a day.
While that still doesn't seem
like much, it would double our livelihood.
And it's kind of those small,
incremental changes that actually have such
a profound effect on people that are lmng
at that level.
And, you know, I feel like that will have such
an impact on the next generation of that family,
that it's really there that we'll
see progress out of poverty.
[ Up-tempo music plays ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
So, after all of this research, we had
saved up the whole time for this pulick
dinner.
It was just this amazing moment, and that
was the last day that we were there.
A little bit of Monica in my
life a little bit of Erica by my
side a little bit
of Rita's all I need
a little bit of Tina's what I see
a little bit of Sandra in the
sun we wanted to convey just,
like, how appreciative we were
of what they had done for us. Not only from,
you know, what they had shared with us, but
being our friends and, you know, building a
relationship with us, and in many ways teaching us and
accepting us as a friend instead of just, you
know, a foreigner. mambo number five!
Aah!
What can I do as an indmdual?
That's the hardest part about
it, and what we were talking about last night, is...
That there is no one answer, you
know? That we've poured, you know,
$2.5 trillion into international
development trying to end poverty, and a
lot of times it's just made things worse.
But, like, that's what we're trying to prove
so much right here is the power of partial
solutions that, like, you know, there's more
people who are not lmng in poverty than there are
who are lmng in poverty. Like, each
indmdual can affect and help a single other
indmdual. We can change the world.
Hello.
Hello. How are you?
Good. Thank you.
How are you? I'm good. Thank you.
What is your name?
My name is Carlos. What is your name?
My name is Chris.
It's nice to meet you. It's
nice to meet you. [ Both laugh ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Good morning. All: Good morning.
How are you?
All: How are you?
[ Speaking Spanish ]
How are you? All: Good.
Good. S.
What... ...ls...
...ls...
...your... ...Your...
...Name?
...name? [ Speaking
Spanish ] What is your name?
I now have a much deeper respect
for someone lmng at that level.
I personally -- I lost 20 pounds in just two months.
And I got to go home and
rehabilitate, but what if that's someone's life
where they live like that day in and day out,
with no nutrition and not an adequate amount of food?
It was something that we
could never have, you know, imagined.
It was something we had to live.
[ Camera shutter clicks ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Graciastone. Ohh, s.
Muchas gracias.
Oh, Zach! Can we have it? Can we have it?
Look, it's a chicken!
Can we have it, Zach? I
really -- [ Dog barking ]
[ Laughs ]
[ Up-tempo music plays ]
[ Water running ]
[ Clicking ] You guys want to eat eggs?
You got food?
Filming. My name is Chris, and I
grew up just outside of New York City.
This is Zach, and he's a close friend of
mine from Seattle. We've grown up with very
similar lives. These are the
houses we were born in...
Our families... the awkward
middle-school phase...
The sports we played... and these
are the things we did for fun...
I met Zach during my first year at college,
and we quickly became close friends.
Our lives are fast-paced, and these are the
things that we're used to seeing every day.
[ Atm whirring ] [ Horns
honking ] [ Atm beeping ]
This is chino. He is 12 years old and
lives in a rural village in Guatemala.
He lives in extreme poverty, on less than one dollar a day.
How can we begin to understand
what his life is like, about what it means to
live every day with no clean water, little
food, and poor shelter? And just like chino,
there are over 1.1 billion people around
the world that survive on one dollar a day.
Zach and I study international
development in school, but there are some
things that a textbook just can't answer.
So we're creating a plan to spend our summer
living on only one dollar a day in a rural
Guatemalan village -- in
chino's village.
Okay. Bye, mom. I love you.
Muah!
I mean, I think it's just an amazing opportunity
to learn for myself what it really means
to live under a dollar a day... which, coming
from this reality, I can't really say I have any
idea.
I love you. I love you, too.
I'll see you.
We're bringing along two filmmakers...
And setting out to better
understand the reality of extreme
poverty firsthand. Let's do this.
[ High-pitched voice ] Hello!
[ Whooshing ] [ Mid-tempo music plays
] We're beginning our journey in
Guatemala city with a six-hour ride
on the back of a crowded chicken bus.
We are headed to the village of pea blanca
that's representative of rural poverty
in many parts of the world. In these remote
areas of Guatemala, 7 out of 10 people
live under the poverty line.
[ Breathing heavily ]
Is that -- are you hitting stuff there?
Well, I think we've got a
boundary of, like, a big rock right here,
so this might have to be our edge.
Sweet. Maybe it can
be chipped away. Yeah.
It can.
Okay. Why is it
going out like that?
You're pulling it too hard.
Pulling it too hard? No.
[ Chuckling ] Sadness. Right.
We're getting everything...
Eight weeks of this is going to be
pretty intense I'm not going to lie.
[ Both laugh ] Oh, God.
I cannot believe it came together
this is so one of those ideas
that we'd talk about and never do.
Well we're here...
Audio recording. Filming, filming.
[ Chuckles ]
[ Sighs ] [
Chuckles ] Well...
[ All chuckle ] We're here in the
rural highlands, in the small village
of pea blanca. There are about 300
people living here, most of whom are
Mayan. Most of the people only
spoke a Mayan dialect called
Kaqchikel, and it was impossible to learn.
[ Both speaking Kaqchikel ]
We want to live as close as possible to the
reality of poverty, so we're replicating a
few key aspects of it. Our budget for the
trip is one dollar a day each, for 56
days. But instead of giving ourselves
one dollar every day, we're
making our income unpredictable.
This way, we do not know when
we'll get paid. We're doing this because
many of our neighbors are employed
informally as day laborers or farmers, so
they never know when they'll get paid or how
much they'll make. We're simulating this
by taking our total budget of one dollar
a day each and splitting it into
random numbers between zero and nine.
Then, every morning, we'll pick a number out of a hat.
If we pick a nine, we make
nine dollars that day. Pulled a nine.
No way!
You got a nine? Or it's a six.
That's a nine, for sure.
It's great, ain't it? Well-picked.
Dude. He's good.
A second aspect of poverty we want to simulate
is the process of starting our own business.
So we're taking out a loan of $125 to pay for
somewhere to live and for a plot of land to
grow radishes on. Our small loan is
part of a service for the poor called
microfinance. Zach and I have heard
both good and bad things about these
banks but wanted to see firsthand if they
were helping in pea blanca, both from our
neighbors and by taking out a loan ourselves.
This means that, every 15 days,
we'll have to pay back small installments of
$6.25, or else have to default on our loan.
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
What would you say? I mean,
we've got 1,312 quetzales.
That's pretty decent. That's
how much we have left, yeah.
So... Get a chick
and sell some eggs.
Yeah, I mean, out of that, we could get -- I
mean, if we buy a chicken out of that, that's...
Dude, we're not buying a chicken out of that.
I think we should buy a
chicken out of that. No, dude.
Like, chickens don't, like,
automatically lay eggs. [ Chuckles
] We don't have money for feed.
And we can buy, like, fruit or anything
else that's so much better for us.
Okay, we'll research, dude. We'll
research the chicken-egg complex.
I will be so angry if our chicken doesn't lay eggs.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Chuckles ]
Hola. Is that really where
we're gonna [Chuckling] get water
from?
Oh, dude, there's a bug in there.
Sean, you should check this
out. That's actually how
much stuff is in there.
Hey, we have a water source.
[ Chuckles ]
That was the whole point. Then we can't
grow anything that's gonna finish by the time
we leave. But if we can actually
grow radishes, essentially, in time,
does that sort of switch our idea back?
Well, except for that I still
don't know how to really grow radishes.
[ Chuckles ]
Yeah. Like, anything depends on
the soil content, which we have no
idea about. Like, it depends on
how much fertilizer we need.
You just need to know how to farm, and we just don't.
I mean, we could wing it and try
and hope that it works.
Yeah. diez?
Ah. Diez. S. Ah.
Es muy caro? Muy caro.
Yeah.
Qu mala. como as?
S. Como as.
[ Speaking Spanish ] Graciasdon Carlos.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Chuckles ] S.
Muchsimas gracias. Mm-hmm.
[ Chuckles ] Oh, no. Oh!
Oh! [ Speaks indistinctly
] Holy cow! Oh, man!
Six. Hey. Gracias.
De nada.
[ Both chuckle ]
[ Speaking indistinctly ]
One of my questions was, were the people
living in extreme poverty, like, really thinking
about how they manage money, or was it this
survival mode, and it's like just trying to scrape
together anything they have just to
feed their children? [ Horn honks ]
[ Horn honks ]
[ Both speaking Spanish ]
[ Cash register dings ] [ Cash register
dings ] [ Cash register dings ]
[ Cash register dings ] [ Chicks
chirping ] We can't buy that.
Firewood is probably the most expensive
thing that we were buying in our budget.
But we are living on the line, on the edge,
always, of being able to drop into a really bad
situation. [ Cash register dings
] A little bit bumpy, too.
Whoa! Ooh. [
Chuckles ] Ooh.
[ Sighs ] All right.
[ Blows ]
[ Slurps ] Ahh! This
is the best thing I've
ever eaten. [ Chuckles ] [
Pencil scratching paper ]
1 pounds of black beans gives us 1,600 calories.
1 pounds of yellow rice gives
us 2,000, roughly. But, still, like, 3,600
calories split amongst four people is not
good enough for our daily
value.
[ Chuckling ] Yeah. Zach
fell flat on his ass after.
Every time we stand up, for some
reason, like, get huge head rushes.
I've almost passed out, like -- I don't
know -- today probably like three times.
And I don't know if that's a lack of nutrition
or what the deal is, but Zach actually went
for it today. We had our first full-on
fall, and when he came to, he was only
speaking in Spanish. [ Thunder rumbling
] I'm used to eating a lot.
I'm used to being active a lot. But when you're
not eating anything -- when you're eating
like 500 calories, you become incredibly lethargic.
You have zero energy to do
anything.
[ Speaking native language ]
[ Girl giggling ]
[ Machete chopping ]
This is only my second week actually in pea
blanca, and I feel like we're already showing
signs of being worn down and dejected.
We all have these pulgas.
We all kind of got destroyed on our dirt floors.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
And, you know, that was [Chuckles] that was
the point where I was like, "I want to go"
home. Like, I need
to get out of here.
"Why am I doing this?" And we were eating
better than a lot of the people in the
community.
Jose enrico just brought us a gift.
He wrote us a letter.
[ Speaking Spanish ] s?
Aw, gracias, Jose.
S.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Indistinct shouting ] Oh.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking Spanish ] [
Children giggling ] Oh.
Yay! Okay. [
Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking Spanish ] S.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Chuckles ] [ Indistinct
talking in Spanish ]
[ School bell rings ] [ Children shouting
excitedly ] That was absolutely nuts.
Did you see that madness? That was 315 kids
playing with like 6 different balls at the
same time. And I don't know.
What's up, Carlos?
And I don't how many games and, like,
snacks were distributed, but that was nuts.
That was nuts. How fun. Yeah. How fun.
[ Both speaking Spanish ]
We really didn't know who he was, initially,
that he was kind of just the kid that was
always around. And he was just,
like, so eager to learn.
[ Speaking Spanish ] How...
Are you?
Pssh! Hi. It turns
out chino's family
couldn't afford the $25 cost of books and supplies
for school. They had a family of eight
that lived in a single room. They no longer had
electricity, because they couldn't pay for
it. You know, his father never knew
when he was gonna work or not,
'cause he worked as a day laborer.
And chino, who is 12, had to
work in the fields.
We'd see him coming, walking up the Mountain
with this thing wrapped around his head and,
like, a huge bundle of, like, logs and
sticks behind him. At one point, Chris asked
chino, like, you know, "if you could
do anything, what would you be?"
And chino's response was, you know, "I'm gonna
be a farmer." And Chris was like, "no, like,
what would you be if you could be
anything? " And, I mean, he was like, " I'd
be a pro soccer player." But at 12 years
old, chino had accepted the fate that he was
gonna be a farmer.
[ Speaking native language ]
Chino, like most of the people here,
speaks Kaqchikel and only a few words of
Spanish. [ Speaking Spanish
] [ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking indistinctly ] Aguacate.
Aguacate.
O? En ingls, eavocado.
Avoca-- avocado.
S. Avocado.
Both: Avocado.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Food. [ Speaking
Spanish ] Ik?
Ik. Both: Ik. Ik. [
Both speaking Spanish ]
Both: Candle. Candle.
A candl.
Candl. Yeah, I mean, I think
I completely saw myself in a lot
of them. You know, I was, like, eager
to learn, where you're, like, so
excited about building little things outside
of our house, and, you know, that's
what I did for my childhood, and realizing
that it is the situation that they're in
that's holding them back, not
who they are.
Hey. cmo ests? How...
How are you?
How are you? How are you?
"How... are... you?"
[ Rooster crows ] The rbanare growing.
I know.
I'm gonna pay off on my finance loan.
[ Sniffs ]
I'm gonna eat more. [ Chuckles
] It's gonna happen, man.
I can sense it already. [
Chuckles ] Very clumpy, though.
They are really clumpy.
That's bad, right?
Everything about a banana just brings me joy here.
You peel it back. It's naked.
It's a naked fruit. [ Speaks indistinctly
] I just take a bite and savor
it each time like it's the best bite of
banana I will ever take, every single time.
I just make sure, like, the top
of the banana is always even after.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, your teeth
marks kind of indent it like this.
Yeah. So then you got to play
the game and, like, reverse the
bite. Oh, nice. Yeah. Move it up.
So that it's even, you know?
And it slows down your eating,
too.
As economics majors, Chris and I were really
interested in, how did a person living under a
dollar a day manage their money?
So we were asking people
questions like, "how much money do you make?
What are your expenses?"
Where do you save money? Do you
have any outstanding loans?"
You know, these are really personal questions
for anyone. Hola. Buenas tardes.
Hola. Buenas.
[ Speaking Spanish ] Anthony, in, I
think, the first week we were there, he
was, like, the first grown-up from the community
to come to our house, introduce himself.
You know, he was so excited to
meet us.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Chuckles ] [
Grunts ] [ Chuckles ]
Ah. See? Just 24 and 20 years
old, Anthony and rosa already manage
a household of eight people. Mm.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Baby coos ] [
Chuckles ] Oh.
No? [ Baby crying
] [ Chuckles ]
As a family, they survive on $1.25 each per day
to pay for not only food, but larger costs
of a new baby, their kids' education,
and repairs to their house.
Like, his wife is 20. I'm 20.
And she has three children.
His wife's younger than me, dude.
He's 24.
I look up to her so much. [ Both speaking
Spanish ] They're teaching us how to more
efficiently make fires... cook more substantive food...
And better bargain in town.
Living so close to the edge, these small changes
are having huge impacts on our lives.
Probably the most important one is lard.
We bought some straight lard
today in town to try to add to our fat content.
If you could feel this texture
right now, it is one of the
foulest things ever. [ Sizzling ]
This lard right here has -- what was it -- 208
grams of fat and 1,080 calories, which is the
equivalent of more than the rice or beans that
we were eating. And we started mashing our
beans and refrying our beans in lard.
It's so good in the stomach.
[ Speaking Spanish ] In our third week,
they invited us over to their home for a
small snack. But when we arrived, they
were preparing the traditional meal
of pulick, served only twice a
year for special occasions.
[ Both chuckle ] Oh!
Oh! s?
S. Claro. Claro.
Mmm. Sean, you can sit down.
Yeah.
He wants to say a few things
to the camera. Oh. S.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Muchsimas gracias a mi hermano.
Yes.
[ Chuckles ] Our desire to repay
Anthony and rosa, not only for the
expense of the incredible food but also
their generosity, is overwhelming.
They have so little, yet they're willing to give so much.
We all agreed that, somehow, we
will save the money to cook them
a pulick dinner before we go.
We have like 60.
It's only three days.
We can just decrease our amount. We can
get like, you know, a pound and a half.
I mean, I don't think we even really need
to dip into our savings that much...
Yeah. ...At all.
That would be awesome.
If we just want to, like, not eat very much.
[ Shivers, sniffles ]
[ Rooster crows ]
I drew a low number today, so we're having some...
Struggles with how we need to
pay Anthony's family back and also pay off
our loan, which is due in three days.
So...
We drew really low numbers for four days.
I pulled four numbers in a row,
and two of them were zeros, and two of them were ones.
So amongst the four of us, we
had 12 cents a person to live on, per day.
And, you know, we woke up, and
it was market day, and we
literally have no money for food.
Open the other one now.
[ Hinges squeak ]
So this is a big pull we need
a minimum a two or higher
if we get a one no
bananas if we get a zero
we have to go talk to Anthony
and take out a loan from him.
Let's see it. It's a nine.
No way!
No! [ Chuckles ] Yeah!
Seany boy! Dude, you're the
clutchest puller in the world!
[ Giggles ] It's a mosh pit!
Whoo!
Yes! Oh, my God!
Dude, so huge.
Bananas for everyone! [ Chuckles
] We got lucky and pulled a
nine. But what if you're out of
food and you don't know the next
time money will be coming in? How do you
choose between feeding your child or keeping
them in school?
[ Water splashing ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Both: S.
Both: S.
It's... Day 28. Right?
Day 28? Day 28. Yeah.
We had started to do these really
amazing interviews around the fourth week.
And Chris and I spoke Spanish, so we were
understanding everything that was going on,
and, you know, we had started to be affected
by these stories, but Ryan and Sean
didn't speak Spanish. And they were talking,
and they were like, "when you finally"
deal with learning how to survive, it's not
so bad." No problem -- it's not that
hard, you know? We're halfway through.
I could do this for another, you
know, two years. I just got really
angry and upset because, clearly, the
people we're around, you know, they had
learned to survive. But it wasn't okay.
And it wasn't easy for them, and they had to,
like, work so hard every single day, and they
couldn't follow their dreams, because they
couldn't go to school, and 'cause they had to
provide for their family. And Chris and I
were so involved with this research that we
weren't sharing what was going on.
What were some of the
questions in general? I mean, I guess I
don't really even know what you guys were
asking. We started getting into
where all their income was coming
from and, you know, like, what skills they use
to work and what they really deal with to find
money in emergencies, and, you know [Chuckles]
their lives are so much more complicated than
our initial interviews showed. Even something
as simple as what you cook with is important.
A broken stove or cooking over an open fire
can have dramatic effects on the health of a
family, especially on the kids.
[ Baby crying ]
[ Speaking Spanish ] Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
It's incredibly hard to save up a large amount
of money for a cooking stove, but Anthony
did it with 12 of his friends by using an
innovative idea called a savings club.
Together, they each decided to save $12 every month.
And at the end of each month,
the total sum of $144 would be randomly
distributed to one of the members.
This process then repeats itself until each
person has benefited from a large sum of
money at a single time. And that large
sum of money was much more useful to them
because they could take that money and spend
it on a big-ticket item like a stove or
maybe pay for a wedding. And, you
know, that's really innovative.
[ Camera shutter clicks ] And we started talking
about how close this community was, and we
hang out with chino every day. And his mom, this
past year, got really sick, and they don't even
have enough money to, you know, get a car to go
to the hospital in town, and Anthony covered the
entire thing.
[ Speaking Spanish ] And Anthony actually
paid for them to go to the hospital.
He paid for the doctor's visits. And
the medicine. And the medicine.
Anthony can afford the loan because he's
the only one in the village who has a formal
job.
Unlike everyone else, he can count
on getting a regular paycheck.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
And while Anthony did help these other people,
like, that's still a huge strain on their own
finances. Yeah, that's where, like,
if there was an institution willing
to take on that risk and lend to someone like
chino's parents, you know, then they don't have
to put a strain on Antonio. And, you know,
not everyone has that community around them
or the people they can go to
in times of need. Hola.
And, you know, and that was
something that -- hola.
Hola. Holachino. Chris.
[ Chuckles ] What's up, chino?
Zach, hola. cmo ests?
Bien. Bien. How are you?
[ Chuckles ]
Qu bueno. Good. I am good.
You look nice.
How are you? How are you?
Good.
S. Bueno. So, yeah, not everyone
has, you know, such a tight-knit
community around them. So, if you have an
emergency like chino's parents here, like,
what are you gonna do if you don't have that
person right next to you or you don't have
the emergency funds or that community
to rely on? That's true.
Actually, temple is pretty sick at the moment.
He's got a little bit of an
upset tummy.
This is just going to make me vomit.
[ Chuckles ]
At one point, I had both giardia and E. Coli
at the same time, and, you know, that's no
good, especially when you only have two pairs
of boxers and you're sleeping, you know, on
the same mat, sharing a blanket with someone next to you.
I think Chris is really sick.
I just heard him get up. It just doesn't
sound like he's doing very well.
Dude, I think I have that like
sulfuric burp thing happening again.
[ Burps loudly ] [ Breathes deeply
] Like, I can't even push on my
stomach. [ Breathes deeply ] I
can't sleep another night like
this. We're gonna go get
Chris tested for some bacterial
infections and see if he has a parasite,
or, hopefully, it's just a stomach thing.
Today, in town, we found out that
Chris has some parasites in his stomach.
It's called giardia -- giardia, I believe.
And it's, like, lmng in my
small intestine in here. And it causes, like,
excessive bloating and stomach pressure.
[ Speaking Spanish ] Doscientos quetzales.
The medicine is 200
quetzales. So even if people could
afford to get tested, it's incredibly
expensive to actually get the medicine.
There's no way we could pay
that cost. I have to use medicine
that we brought in case of emergency.
[ Siren wailing ] If we can't budget for
a simple sickness, what will we do in
the case of a more serious problem?
Just two months before we
arrived, hurricane Agatha smashed through Guatemala.
Disaster workers in Guatemala
say at least a dozen people are dead.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Speaking Spanish ] [ Speaking
Spanish ] The tropical storm Agatha
slammed into its pacific coast
Saturday.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
If you've lost everything, how do you
get the money to get back on your feet?
How do you begin building a lump sum to start a business?
We wanted to see if getting a
loan from a traditional bank was
even an option for our neighbors.
Okay, so, you're gonna have to put the
camera down initially, I think, unless you
want me just, like, through the
door and then put it down. Yeah.
Buena, Buenas.
We can't take photos inside. So, um...
Are you, uh, going for the, uh,
discreet film? Yeah.
Yeah, sweet.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Let's get out. Let's get out. Let's get out. Let's get out.
That was highly illegal to be
doing. So, I tried to see if we
could get a 3,000-quetzale loan.
And the problem is we need all of these other items.
We need a receipt of our
electricity bills. We need an N.I.T. Number,
which she said costs a bunch of money
to get. We need a copy of the amount
of money we're making, which I
don't think we can get if we have an informal job.
Bills from the last three
months, two people who will sign for us, and
then we need to be able to sign our name, too.
There's no chance we could get a loan
from that bank. There's just no way.
We visited rosa again to see
if there were any other options.
Grameen provides reliable savings accounts
and loans designed to empower the poorest
of the poor to improve their
lives.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
With a loan of just $200, rosa was able
to start her own weaving business.
It was so huge to see the potential for
what even the simple access to credit can do
in the lives of our neighbors, of
our close friends. Ah, s. Oh.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
[ Light laughter ]
When a grameen borrower receives a loan,
they also commit to opening a long-term
savings account, a safe and a convenient
way to build up a large sum of money.
We found that beyond using a loan or savings
account to start a business, our neighbors
were using them to absorb shocks and
make investments around the house.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
These financial services, such as microfinance,
they go far beyond just providing extra
capital. They really shape the family.
And they have these side effects
of empowering women.
Finally, we have rbanos. We have grown our rbanos.
And now we have tons and tons of
rbanos. What happened is
there's an explosion of rbanos.
Instead of selling our radishes, we're
giving them out as gifts to thank the people
we've interviewed. These radishes represent
a new source of income for us, one
that could move us closer to $2 a day.
While that still doesn't seem
like much, it would double our livelihood.
And it's kind of those small,
incremental changes that actually have such
a profound effect on people that are lmng
at that level.
And, you know, I feel like that will have such
an impact on the next generation of that family,
that it's really there that we'll
see progress out of poverty.
[ Up-tempo music plays ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
So, after all of this research, we had
saved up the whole time for this pulick
dinner.
It was just this amazing moment, and that
was the last day that we were there.
A little bit of Monica in my
life a little bit of Erica by my
side a little bit
of Rita's all I need
a little bit of Tina's what I see
a little bit of Sandra in the
sun we wanted to convey just,
like, how appreciative we were
of what they had done for us. Not only from,
you know, what they had shared with us, but
being our friends and, you know, building a
relationship with us, and in many ways teaching us and
accepting us as a friend instead of just, you
know, a foreigner. mambo number five!
Aah!
What can I do as an indmdual?
That's the hardest part about
it, and what we were talking about last night, is...
That there is no one answer, you
know? That we've poured, you know,
$2.5 trillion into international
development trying to end poverty, and a
lot of times it's just made things worse.
But, like, that's what we're trying to prove
so much right here is the power of partial
solutions that, like, you know, there's more
people who are not lmng in poverty than there are
who are lmng in poverty. Like, each
indmdual can affect and help a single other
indmdual. We can change the world.
Hello.
Hello. How are you?
Good. Thank you.
How are you? I'm good. Thank you.
What is your name?
My name is Carlos. What is your name?
My name is Chris.
It's nice to meet you. It's
nice to meet you. [ Both laugh ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Good morning. All: Good morning.
How are you?
All: How are you?
[ Speaking Spanish ]
How are you? All: Good.
Good. S.
What... ...ls...
...ls...
...your... ...Your...
...Name?
...name? [ Speaking
Spanish ] What is your name?
I now have a much deeper respect
for someone lmng at that level.
I personally -- I lost 20 pounds in just two months.
And I got to go home and
rehabilitate, but what if that's someone's life
where they live like that day in and day out,
with no nutrition and not an adequate amount of food?
It was something that we
could never have, you know, imagined.
It was something we had to live.
[ Camera shutter clicks ]
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Graciastone. Ohh, s.
Muchas gracias.
Oh, Zach! Can we have it? Can we have it?
Look, it's a chicken!
Can we have it, Zach? I
really -- [ Dog barking ]
[ Laughs ]