Hello Hello from Gaborone, Botswana!
So. Updates (that may or may not be super long over due). Last month we were living and working just outside the capital of Swaziland in Manzini, and we partnered with the Adventures in Missions (AIM) base there. My work specifically was focused on something called a Carepoint. AIM has over 30 Carepoints all around Swaziland, and Eryn and I worked at the Thulwane Carepoint this month. The other girls on our team helped out with the sports ministry or at another Carepoint.
A Carepoint has a physical location (like I said, ours was in Thulwane), a shepherd that’s appointed to oversea everything, a preschool room and teacher and ladies that cook for anywhere between 50-300 kids every day. Our Carepoint had a preschool available to kids under 5 in the mornings from 9am to 12pm, and all of those preschool students had a meal (sour porridge, as they called it) around 10:30. Eryn and I helped to teach the preschool and serve food in the mornings, and sometimes with 20 preschoolers, it got a little crazy. In the afternoons, the Carepoint acts more like a feeding center, with the older kids stopping for a hot meal on their way back from school. We were told over and over again that for some of the kids, it would be there only meal of the day.
In the afternoons at the Carepoints, there’s different activities scheduled for different days. Somedays there’s a sports ministry that comes in, some days the kids help to work in the garden with the agriculture ministry, one day a week the shepherds teach the children a lesson about God from a book that we got to help edit. We got to see firsthand how these carepoints are run, how much work is invested not only into the children, but also into the shepherds that are ministering and loving them. It was a cool ministry to be a part of, and one that I would love to come back to if I ever find myself in Africa again. The Swazi people that we met were loving and very relational, and it was great sitting down to chat over lunch or dinner.
The country itself is b-e-a-utiful. It reminds me a little bit of Colorado, because it’s so mountainous. We were at a pretty high altitude this month, and I definitely felt it while we were walking around! A typical day for Eryn and I in Swaziland went something like this:
6:30am—you wake up because there’s 500 roosters crowing and people singing and teammates coming in and out of the room.
7:30am—you actually get out of your sleeping bag and start the day. For me, that was usually praying and listening to some worship jams.
8:30am—get dressed into your beloved and filthy missionary skirt, and make some breakfast. Then realize that you also have to pack a lunch and put some of your breakfast into a bag to eat for lunch later because you don’t know what else to pack.
9:15am—say goodbye to our other teammates and head out the door of our circle hut and down the dirt road to our Carepoint. We had to walk about 40 minutes to get there, so we’d usually rock out to some music on the way.
10:00am (…ish)—we get to the Carepoint and we check with our shepherd to see what she needs for the day. If she doesn’t need anything specific, we head into the preschool classroom where we are immediately showered in hugs, and then we try to find a way to help out the teacher. Sometimes this means we teach, sometimes that means we help corral the kids because they’re going crazy. Just depended on the day.
10:30am—break for sour porridge. Kids even as young as 2 were super independent and able to feed themselves, so we mostly just sat with them and made sure the chickens didn’t peck at their plates.
11:00am—back to class. We generally practiced writing with the kids, and then sang some songs and prayed.
12:00pm—we would leave to go hang out with our shepherd Sebe and eat our own lunches. We essentially ate in a storage closet because we didn’t want the kids to see that we weren’t eating the food they were, but Eryn, Sebe and I always had a good time.
1:00pm(…ish)—we do whatever Sebe needs from us that day. Sometimes that meant planting plants, sometimes it was just playing with and loving the kids, sometimes we taught bible lessons, sometimes we helped the kids with certain projects…just depended on the day.
4:00-4:30pm—at this point, we’d usually be done for the day, and we’d walk part of the 40 minute walk home with our shepherd Sebe. The walks home always felt a lot longer than on the way there, but sometimes, if we left really late, we’d get to see the beginning of an African sunset (which are the absolute best). There’s no sunrise or sunset or sky even that compares to Africa. It’s just the best.
5:30-6:30pm—we hang out with our team and make dinner, or take showers, or sit in our hammocks, etc.
8:00pm—by 8, most of my team was already cozied up in our little circle hut fast asleep. I was usually on the last ones awake, just staying up journaling or writing or praying or watching Downton Abbey with Heather…
So that’s it! A day in the life: Swazi edition.
This month, we’re in Botswana for an ATL (ask the Lord) month, which just means that we don’t have an agenda. We don’t have a specific ministry that we’re apart of, so we literally just get together every morning and ask the Lord what we should do that day. It’s the best. We’ve already got to make some really cool friends at the hostel that we’re staying at, so we’re all pretty psyched about this month. Also, it’s freezing cold and we’re sleeping outside in tents (the hostel has room to put tents up and we’re cheap sot you know that’s how we roll), so you know I’m walking around with like 7 pairs of pants on.
Prayers for this month would just be that we heard God’s voice more clearly than ever, and that He puts people in our path to minister to and love on. It’s crazy that we only have two months of this journey left! Whattttt?!
Thanks for listening, and until next time,
Bree
