A glance at my wrist shows me it is 7:10; time to meet with the rest of Banah for morning prayers. After prayers, all of us return to the kitchen for breakfast, beans, tempura battered feta cheese, and the freshly fried plantain chips. After breakfast, I come back to the room I share with Laura and Vicki, my amazing sisters in this crazy journey. I spend an hour and a half working at my computer before returning to the kitchen.
Today, Sarah is my culinary partner, which is great since she is a wiz in the kitchen! But we are not in charge of the cooking… we just follow our orders. We are handed four neon pink fruits with little green tips sticking out all over them. Sarah cuts and peels them; her hands now stained bright pink, while I ready the blender. A few chunks of the vibrant fruit get pureed in two cups of water. Blend, empty into a five-gallon pot, repeat. Once that is done, we are called outside to the lemon tree that is visible from the kitchen window. ElsaMarie (one of the girls here) has a hook in her hand to shake over a dozen of the tiny lemons down from the tree; we pick them up and bring them into the kitchen. We squeeze every drop of juice from them, and add it to our neon blend. More water goes in until the pot is nearly full, then a half a kilo of sugar, and we have a delicious drink that is better than Koolaid, and definitely not something that came from a package!
Now we are moving onto lunch preparations. I’m slicing onions and garlic and adding them to the black pinto beans on the stove. Sarah is shredding cabbage on the same slicer that shaved the plantains earlier. Spanish worship music is blaring from a battle weary, smoke darkened, boom-box on a kitchen shelf, as Sarah and I spend the morning chatting away, discussing plans for home, that elusive place we’ve all talked about for nearly a year.
Around 11:30, we are released from our work to go shower and change for lunch at 1pm, which is followed by our 2pm to 3pm siesta. From 3pm to 5pm, Banah gets together to talk about our plans for re-entry into American culture. At 5:45, we head back to the kitchen for dinner, this time surrounded by many of the kids from the orphanage, who are all back from school and done with their chores for the day. After dinner, I find myself unwinding in a hammock at the rancho (gazebo) by the shore, lulled into a relaxing daydream by the cool breeze and dark waves crashing on the rocks below. By 8pm, I am in bed, with the lights out by 9pm. I am really living up the last days of my twenties!
