GAZA: living on a dime

Living on a dime

Sometimes ‘living on a dime’ is just an expression we use. For some it refers to cutting back on expenses or maybe even dipping into a savings or credit account to make ends meet. But for some people, in some places, this expression literally is a style of living.

The world is divided into three parts: First World countries, Second World countries and Third World countries. Poverty rates differ drastically between each division due to many, often overlapping, political, social, strategic, cultural and economic situations. Many in the Third World deal with very high poverty rates, where people have to scratch through their daily lives and find ways to feed and bathe their children, to put them to sleep in a safe place and find clothes for them to wear. But “need is the mother of all inventions”, and many people use their ingenuity to do some or all of that daily.

Palestine is not much different from any other Third World country. It also suffers from poverty, and has witnessed a huge increase in poverty rates over the last eight years. The Gaza Strip is a small part of Palestine that extends along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It is densely populated and suffers from very high rates of poverty and unemployment.

The Gaza Strip has three main commercial ports that allow goods, materials, medical aid, building tools, food to enter. Unfortunately, they stay closed most of the time because of the political situation that we suffer from which leaves all Gazans living on a dime whether we chose it or not.

No electricity, no fuel, no food, no water, no medicine and no life is our daily life here in Gaza; but life cannot stop; it just has to go on and Gazans make sure that happens. Of course, these band-aids have their advantages and disadvantages. Take fuel for instance. Gazans came up with a fuel formula that the world was not aware of before by mixing cooking oil with gasoline. The fuel they came up with can make cars run perfectly.

Advantages: it is very cheap as people turn to falafel shops and restaurants to take huge tanks of used cooking oil for half a dollar each.

Disadvantages: it pollutes the air with huge amounts of smoke and damages the car’s engine if used over the long run.

The fuel formula has been used to develop other products too. Gazans invented cooking tools and ovens that work using the same formula.

Advantages: the oven is very powerful and takes no time to cook, plus the formula is very cheap.

Disadvantages: It produces very high heat and can be dangerous to start and operate.

Using the same formula you can also have a light bulb which is very useful due to the constant electricity outages and a heating system that comes handy in winter.

Advantages: cheap sources of light and heat.

Disadvantages: It produces polluted smoke and can be dangerous to operate and start.

Small (but effective) electric cooking tools:

Cooking tools that depend on electricity to produce a huge amount of heat in no time using iron as the main component in manufacturing them.

Advantages: cooks in no time, very small and doesn’t take any space and very cheap (very affordable).

Disadvantages: the electricity is out most of the time, which makes the electric tools useless, very dangerous and contains naked wires.

Living tents: it's not an invention but they coped with living in tents like living in houses due to the demolish of their own homes.

Advantages: better than living in the street, a place to live and sleep in and without monthly rent payments.

Disadvantages: It doesn't protect from the rain, can burn while cooking, very hot in the morning and cold in the night, strained dogs can bite through it and hurt the whole family, and doesn’t apply as a healthy living place.

Gazans live on scratch literally, they use wood and flammable materials to make fire, tents to live in, any edible things for food, public or nearby faucets for water or children's bathing and dish washing, the beach to bathe their children and wash their clothes and dishes, sleep on the floor, and any kind of cloth to sew and stitch for their children to wear.

"Living on a dime" has a whole new sensation here in the Gaza strip that you have to come, see, feel and experience yourself.

Omar