Poverty and Malnutrition: My Experience as a Christian Cult Member, Part 3

One of the biggest adjustments that was required of me as a new cult member was in the area of the living conditions. All of the single females lived in a small dorm. We each had a cot and a small shelf, and a box underneath our cot to store whatever personal possessions we may have brought with us. The cots in the dorm were very close together, less than a foot between them. That was the limit of our personal space.

We were living in an old warehouse, that was converted into living space, in a way that I am sure was not up to code. The floor of the dorm was made out of plywood, with no tile or any other type of floor covering. The pipes were exposed, as there weren't actual walls in most of the dorm other than what was part of the original metal warehouse structure. The bare pipes actually turned out to be a blessing because they gave us a place to hang up our clothes. That was essential since there weren't any closets or dressers.

The bathroom in the girls' dorm consisted of four toilets, side by side, with no stalls or walls for privacy between them. The showers were open, with a drain in the cement floor. So even in the bathroom, we had absolutely no privacy.

Relatively speaking, the singles lived lives of luxury, compared to some of the families there. Most every family there lived in old busses that had been converted into "homes." Some were fixed up fairly nice, but most were bare bones, without any luxuries to speak of. One family had five children, and even that family of seven lived in a bus.

We ate all of our meals together, as we didn't have any cooking facilities as individuals or families. There were about 60 people living in the commune, and our grocery budget, for all 60 people was $260 per month. Sure, this was a little over 20 years ago, but even then, just slightly more than $4 per person per month didn't go very far. We did have a farmer who donated massive amounts of black beans and potatoes to us, so that is what we ate most of the time. In fact, we had black beans and potatoes literally every day I was there. The beans were fixed the same way every day -- boiled with salt and pepper, without any additional seasoning or vegetables. We did have some variety with the potatoes -- mashed, boiled, fried, and on occasion, we had potato soup. For breakfast we typically had oatmeal, and on occasion we had pancakes and eggs.

To say that our nutrition was lacking would be an understatement. I remember thinking, "If I could just have a glass of orange juice. . ." Orange juice is what I craved most often, so my assumption is that I was severely lacking vitamin C. Once in a while a Catholic charity donated food to us, and when they did, they almost always included a good amount of grapefruit. I was so thankful for that and ate as many grapefruit as I could until they ran out. We also occasionally received discarded food from grocery stores, which provided us some much needed variety.

Every Sunday afternoon we had our only real meal of the week. It was usually something like meatloaf, or chicken. We savored absolutely every bite, knowing it would be our only real meal of the week.

I can't say that it was good to be malnourished, but I can say that living under those kinds of conditions helped me to be thankful for all of the little blessings of my life from there on out. In a sense, I am a much more grateful person than I would likely be, had I not experienced extreme poverty and malnutrition as a cult member.

The next part of this series on my experience as a cult member will cover the work we were expected to do, all without pay.