I know one thing that I wanted to know before I left on The Race was what daily life would look like. Living life like you have never lived before surrounded by the same people but constantly changing countries and cultures was like nothing I had ever done before. There really is no norm. Every place is different, every Race is different but here is what a typical day on Challenge Farm in Kitale, Kenya looks like.
7:00 A.M. I wake up to the breakfast bell for the 120+ street children that live on the property. Their laughter and the sound of a bouncing soccer ball in the field next to us does not stop until around 9 p.m.
8:30 I finish my quiet time and go into the breakfast hut for a cup of coffee and whatever breakfast Daniel has cooked for us that day. Sometimes oatmeal, sometimes bread and butter and sometimes….Cinnamon rolls!
9:00 is a good time to hand wash all of your laundry in the sink out back. If you get them on the line early enough they will be dry before the afternoon rains come.
9:30 We all go up to the teacher’s lounge for tea time. We drink a pail full of chai every morning made with fresh milk from the cows on the property which tastes interesting at best, but the teachers are always eager to talk to us and share their stories.
10:00 our first class of the day begins. We teach art, bible, music, and games rotating through four different age categories. Class gets progressively easier as the children get older. By the time the 8th graders get to us, we hardly have to do anything! The kindergarteners are a different story…
12:40 P.M. We finish our last class and go back to the teacher’s lounge for lunch. We either have corn or sometimes corn. It will come in the form of Ugali (a type of ground corn with water mixed into a type of paste) or a mixture of maize with beans. Even though it is simple it is very filling, but I don’t really mind eating it one bit!
2:00 We begin our afternoon projects on the property. I helped organize and alphabetize all of the donated books in the student library and I am now helping Beka teach dance class, which mostly consists of keeping the kids in a line and from running into each other. In Africa, even the 5-year-olds have better moves than me!
3:10 Everyone finishes their afternoon activity which can be anything from painting dorm rooms to milking cows to tutoring the kids. On Mondays we have chapel with the children at 3. We share testimonies and they usually sing for us. A little boy, Richard, fell asleep on my lap this week during the sermon. Poor little guy couldn’t keep his eyes open!
5:30 We are finished on Challenge Farm and head back to the house where we are camped in the back yard. We cook dinner on our gas stove that is anything from grilled cheese to spaghetti. Meals almost always include guacamole. There is an overabundance of avocados in the rainy season and we eat them at least once a day.
6:30 Team time! I get together with my team of 6 and we talk about the day, encourage each other share testimony, pray and of course good old feedback! Mostly we just end up laughing with each other as the stars come out over Kenya.
9:00 when it gets dark out everyone starts to get tired. I retire to my UN refugee tent with my four tent mates and we usually end up watching an episode of something on someone’s laptop until we fall asleep ready to do it all over again!
My life is so blessed and I thank God every day for giving it to me!
