After several very long travel days that included sleeping on top of a bus in front of a bar (check out Amaris Torres' blog about the travel experience), we made it to Beira, Mozambique. Our ministry for the month is working with a boys orphanage called Kedesh.
The orphanage is amazing! It houses between 25 and 30 boys from ages 7 to 18 or so (many of the boys don't know their actual age). I'm pretty sure that any boy would dream of growing up here. Let me give you some insight to what the boys do at the Kedesh orphanage (please note that we are here during the boys' summer vacation from school. Usually their day consists of going to school, but not for the next few months).
-Wake up between 4:30am and 5:00am to music that is blasting from the house
-Go for an obstacle course run that is about 1kilometer (some of the boys run it multiple times). The course consists of climbing over a spider web rope obstacle, chin-ups, running under low hanging trees, jumping off dirt hills and more.
-Work in their own individual gardens. Each boy has a garden that he planted and will care for. The food that is produced is shared amongst all of the boys.
-Do household chores such as water the general flower gardens, clean the bathrooms, sweep, etc.
-Compete in an intense volleyball competition. There are usually 4 teams and they do a small bracket type game.
-Eat breakfast around 8am or 9am.
-Help out with different projects around the orphanage. There are several buildings that are being built, a goat fence is being built, and laundry. They building projects are mostly on hold because there is not enough water to properly mix concrete. We are waiting on rain.
-Eat lunch between 12pm and 1pm.
-Play some sort of organized game such as baseball, volleyball or soccer.
-Take an afternoon break. It is too hot to work between 1pm and 4pm so some people take naps and rest. The boys are infatuated with making chairs out of scrap lumber, so they use all sorts of power tools and build their own chairs.
-Make popcorn about 7pm. (with butter and salt! It is such a great treat!)
-Start watching a movie. The boys have a different genre of movie that they watch every night. Saturday night is a fighting movie, Sunday is an animated movie, one night is a romantic comedy, etc.
-Take a break from the movie when dinner is ready and eat dinner.
-Finish the movie and go to bed between 9:30pm and 10:00pm.
I'm telling you that this is a boys haven! They live on a very large plot of land that has more mango trees than I can count! They have a swamp/pond that is stocked with fish (the pond has all sorts of vegetation growing on it that you can walk on. It is the closest thing I have ever seen to walking on water. It cannot be fished yet, but one of our projects for the month is to clear off some of the vegetation from the pond so that it can be fished). They farm chickens (legitimate free-range chickens) and goats. There are two dogs that live here and three cats.
I'm loving being here and participating in the daily activities of the Kedesh orphanage. Check out the Kedesh website to learn more about what is going on here.
