I’ve always wanted to write a “day in the life” blog while on the race, but never have! Since we’ve been in Africa for the last couple of months (where life is quite different here), I figured this would be a good place to write one.
My squad and I are currently in Rwanda. Before this, we were in Ethiopia and tomorrow we are traveling to Uganda for month 11! I’m going to write about our first day of ministry here in Rwanda.
We knew we would be teaching English to kids but we did not know what level they were at- if they knew no English at all or have been learning since they were born. We had an idea of some songs we wanted to teach the kids and thought we would possibly review the ABC’s, but other than that we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into (pretty typical on the world race haha).
The next morning on our first day of ministry, we were welcomed by hugs from 20 two to seven year olds. The kids here always love to get hugs and to hold our hands. We walked into a tiny classroom with only two tables, some benches, a chalkboard and chalk. We quickly learned that the kids were at different levels with their English. It was hectic trying to get the kids to pay attention but also fun to get to know all their different personalities. By the end of the first session of teaching them for around 3 hours, we realized we would have a lot of lesson planning to do in order to continue teaching them each day.
After the morning session, we ate lunch. This month, all our food is cooked for us which is such a blessing. Our host has been so intentional in asking us what we like to eat and doing his best to cook that for us. We are so grateful for how they continue to serve our team.
After lunch, my team and I did a house visit. We went to a women’s house, talked with her, and prayed for her. Then we were told by another one of our hosts, Donut, (his name is actually Donald but for the first few days of being here we thought he was saying “Donut” so that’s what we call him now haha) that we were going to teach older kids English. We then found out the older kids didn’t know about this so none of them showed up at the school. So our host told us to walk around the village to tell the older children and to gather them. While walking around with our host, that plan somehow faded away and we found ourselves surrounded by around 30 villagers (adults, kids, and babies). We were just hanging out with them and holding their babies. Here, all the people call us mzungus (that means white person). Then our host told us he was going to show us around the village. So we started following him and a bunch of kids wanted to hold our hands and also walk with us.
At this point we were walking across town for a while with a group of kids following us. Donut then got a call from a friend asking if we wanted mangos. We said “sure!” and were told to wait there for the friend to bring us mangos in his truck. While we were waiting, Donut wanted to show us a beautiful view so we all walked a little farther. We saw the awesome view and then more villagers who lived in that area came out to talk with us. We chatted for about twenty minutes and then Donut told us that actually his friend with the mangos wasn’t coming. So we began our walk home. We never did teach older kids English that afternoon but we did get to let them know to come to the future classes we would be teaching!
Life in Africa is quite different than America, but the laid back, go with the flow lifestyle is such a breath of fresh air! I’ve met some of the kindest people I’ve ever met in my life here and am so thankful God brought me here!
