My dearest readers,
It has been a considerable amount of time since last you heard from me and you may be wondering if I’ve fallen off the face of the map.
So to set your minds at ease, here’s the scoop.
I’m in Africa.
And loving every minute of it.
“So, what does one do in the bush in Mozambique?” you might ask. Well let me tell you.
August 15, 2011
5:30am- wake up and fight the urge to use the bathroom to catch a few more minutes of sleep (the “bathroom” consists of straw walls, a wooden plank door with large gaps, concrete floor and a 2×2 sq. ft. piece of shower material on the ground. “Shower” is located inches away from the toilet that doesn’t flush and is usually full of unpleasant scents and surprises)
6:00am- realize I’m still awake (thanks to the roosters) and give in
6:30am- as quietly as possible, unzip tent and head out for morning run
7:00am- fill up a plastic bucket for a quick “shower” (fill up a bucket and dump it over yourself)
7:30am- Team Bible Study over instant coffee and rolls
8:30am- head out to work (taking long rods of bamboo and binding them together with wet grass until they are hundreds of feet long. These will later be cut into shorter lengths to form the walls of the missionary’s house)
9:30am- take a minute to remove the splinters from your hands
11:00am- Brittani gets her wish…it’s chicken slaughtering time! (Brittani and Carrie have been chasing the millions of chickens here since day one, but today our hosts finally decided we’d have meat for dinner and we watched it all. )
12:30pm- finish wall construction
1:30pm- daily delicious lunch of salad and bread
3:00pm- comb dreads out of our teammate’s hair (Jessie has had African style braids for the entire Race. We spent 3 hours removing them yesterday, but the dreads remain)
3:40pm- learn that the chicken we watched die earlier is our responsibility to prepare
4:00pm- with all other teammates away or busy, begin prep with Rose on the headless chicken
-start fire
-scoop water from the large garbage bin into tea kettle and place over fire
-fetch chicken from inside house and place in large pot
-pour boiling water over chicken and begin to pluck feathers
-rinse off the knobby skin and continue to pluck until clean
-hold various parts of the body as Rose chops them off (using the same handle-less knife used to cut the grass ties for the “walls”)
-wash innards, remove mystery film from the meat
-find discarded innards stuck to your shoe
-given onions and peppers to chop up ( after asking if I could wash my feather, blood, salmonella hands first…)
-sauté onions and add rice while chicken (bones, organs and all) cooks over the fire
6:00pm- enjoy dinner around the fire
7:00pm- freak rain storm sends us in for cover.
7:15pm- Feedback
8:00pm- without electricity or a common area, head to my tent for the night
8:30pm- scream bloody murder and very nearly say bad words as I spot a LARGE, African spider on the bathroom door…maintain a visual on said spider using headlamp while simultaneously holding open the porta-potty-esque toilet seat and doing the Asian squat
9:00- slip in the ear plugs and fall asleep to the beat of my heart
This is normal. This is home. This is Africa.
