Every Race is different. Every racer’s experiences are different. Every month is different. But so that you can see what a random day on my Race is like I’ve typed up what happened on Thursday, August 4, 2011 in Chaputo, Mozambique.
This month is different than any other month on the Race thus far. We are in the bush. Without running water. Without electricity. Our dinner is cooked over a fire and to get warm before bed we sit by the fire. For showers we either heat water over a fire or on our portable gas stove. And to flush the toilet you take water from the basin outside the bathroom and throw it down the toilet. But I LOVE this month.
315am Roosters start to crow. Ugh. Feel around my tent for my earplug that always falls out and shove it far back into my ear. Pull my sleeping bag over my head. Fall back asleep.
655am Alarm goes off. Unzip my tent and run to the bathroom. Put on my sneakers, grab my ipod, and off for a jog around the property. Stand in God’s presence and thank Him for giving me this opportunity. It is beautiful here.
745am Wash up and put on a skirt for morning church.
8am Church starts, right on time which is surprising for Africa. We start with songs, all with actions or clapping or dancing. Sermon begins. First in Portuguese, then translated in Shongon, and finally into English for us.
9am Finish up church and walk back to find hot bread for breakfast. Breakfast always consists of fresh bread bought that morning from the bakery and peanut butter (a staple for any Racer’s diet). Sip tea/coffee and chat for about 30 minutes
930am Change out of church clothes and into work clothes. Now in month 8 we tend to wear the same thing every day until it’s time to shower again, so today I switch my black skirt to khakis.
945am Head over to the house we’re building for Anna & Felito, our contacts and founders of Africa on Fire. I’ve designed them a house and today we are marking with the walls and doors will go. (Check out my blog called “A house for Anna & Felito”). And in Mozambique this just means dragging your foot in the dirt to show where things go, maybe using a tape measure if its accessible.
1015am Gather sticks of bamboo, some wet reeds and plop myself down on a cinderblock. We are constructing their walls out of bamboo and so we have to make long tubes of bamboo that will be cut and nailed in as walls. I’ve never built a house out a bamboo but this is how they do it here. It’s pretty mindless work but takes awhile. Day 3 of constructing walls and we have many more days ahead.
1132am Notice Hannah & Sarah getting ready to jump in the truck to pick up lumber and there for we need to push the truck to get it started. After 3 goes at this we get the truck started!
1135am Back to bamboo
1250pm Take a break to enjoy some coffee and read my Bible. My headlamp has run out of batteries and without electricity here it gets dark around 6pm so if I want to read now’s my time.
150pm Lunch! Just like breakfast lunch consists of the same thing every day… but it’s so good and we get excited every day. Fresh salad with an amazing fresh dressing and again warm fresh from the bakery rolls. Let’s just say just like every other country we eat way too many carbs. Oh well, it’s the World Race and food doesn’t have calories/carbs/fat, or so we pretend.
250pm Lay in the tent reenergizing before afternoon church. End up playing Word Warp on my ipod instead.
328pm Change back into my skirt and walk to church
330pm Church starts again with singing but todays service also includes a conga line. Our side of the line is apparently walking too slow so I get tickled by the lady behind me so that I move faster. Like morning service it’s lead in Portuguese, translated to Shongon for the older generation, and then into English.
445pm Heat up water on our portable gas stove for more tea/coffee.
445pm Walk around the property with Brittani, Carrie, & Hannah
550pm We notice that the fire is started to we make our way over there. It’s dark now so there’s not much else to do. Start off with our nightly feedback session and then enjoy the heat of the fire.
640pm Dinner is ready. White rice covered with some pumpkin leaf / coconut milk concoction, again yum. We are truly blessed by the food this month. We serve the men their food first, then Rose the cook, and then ourselves. In some African cultures men sit in chairs while the women have to sit on the floor but we too are given chairs in Mozambique.
715pm Dinner is finished. Usually we just hang out by the fire until we can peel ourselves away and head to bed but tonight is special. We decide to have a sing off with the workers that live on the property. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard African music but apparently every single African is an amazing singer, and as for myself…I’m not so great. With the help of our translator and with Carrie’s knowledge of Spanish we are able to translate our idea of a sing off. We start with an old favorite and even introduce the leg guitar and one of us pulls out our spoons from dinner to add music. Their song is amazing, they all hit every note from bass to soprano singers. After going back and forth a few times we wait for the judge to reveal the final score. 9/10. They win, not surprised and they were very gracious with the scoring.
840pm Sing off turns into story time / skits / jokes. Mostly everything was lost in translation but that just made the jokes funnier. After feeling like I couldn’t laugh anymore we decide to call it a night.
