It’s 8am, time for the wakeup call because breakfast is ready. The breakfast table is set, there’s bread and bananas and tea. I have breakfast with my team and our pastor asks us to pray together as we start our day. I go to get myself dressed and have an audience of neighborhood children lined up to watch me brush my teeth on the hill out front. Then we make the mile long walk to Liberty Preparatory School and Church. As we walk the red dirt road children run full speed to see us on the street. Muzungu! Muzungu! They yelled to us as they waved excitedly with huge grins. The phrase simply means foreigner or traveler, but for them it is a source of great joy to see someone new in their quiet village.
By 10am we have reached the school and found our way to our assigned classrooms. For me, I am working with the preschool and kindergarten classes. “Our God is a great big God!” is a song our squad leader taught to them and they chanted it every day afterward. “Baby Jesus Baby Jesus, I love you, I love you. You are my Savior, You are my Savior, every day, every day….” Is another song they sang both in English and then in their own native language. My squad leader has a degree in education and experience as a preschool teacher so thankfully she is there to help the first week. But after this I am on my own and with having no expertise with teaching I asked God, ‘what am I supposed to do with these kids?’ God told me all I had to do was love them. So much time was spent singing, laughing, cuddling, and playing games outside or coloring pictures together.
We have now hit 1pm and it is time to have lunch with all the teachers in the “teachers’ lounge”, which doubles as a sanctuary on Sundays. We have our lunch of rice with beans and a dish called ugali (corn flour cooked to the consistency of a very thick cakey paste) and often bananas and porridge. We all visit and eat before the afternoon session begins. My young children head home early for the day, so I tell them goodbye and watch them walk away, some with a 7 mile journey ahead just to get home. I spend the next couple of hours walking the beautiful grounds getting some exercise and spending time with Jesus. I walk past the pigs, take a look at the cows, and walk down the red dirt hill past men pushing bicycles loaded down with bundles and bundles of bananas or gallons upon gallons of water.
By 4pm the school day is done and we make the walk home. Muzungu! Muzungu! All over again. We have some time to take our “showers”, filling a large yellow jug with water, carrying it to the little outside washing closet area, filling a basin, and washing ourselves one cup full of water at a time under the warmth of the sun (which is good because that water sure was cold!) At 6pm there’s the call for dinner. Any given day there could be chicken or pork and even sometimes beef. Typically there’s rice, maybe some noodles, avocadoes, and another African dish called matokai (cooked and mashed banana concoction). We have dinner as a team with our pastor and his family. We all sing a worship song together as the meal and conversation come to a close.
Now its 8pm and the team leader calls for team time. Maybe we will worship, or maybe tonight it’s just playing a game together. Or we may even discuss what God is currently teaching us or what ways we are challenging ourselves to grow closer to God. Then we have feedback with each other, where we highlight the ways we saw Jesus in each other that day or we constructively pour into one another and point out those ways we could have looked more like Christ in situations for the day.
By 10pm I am in bed reading, talking to God about the day and what tomorrow holds. I have to work on my sermon because it is my turn to preach at the church on Sunday. I fall asleep knowing that at 8am we will do it all over again. This is life on the World Race in Africa, and it doesn’t get any better than this.
