At the moment we live on an Adventures in Missions base in a “team house”. The house is split up in two big sections with two connecting rooms. The one bigger section has the boy’s room, kitchen, and dining hall/common room. Then there’s the connecting area that has the team leaders room. And finally the section of the building where I live, it includes two girls rooms. Other than the main building we have a fence surrounding the base, water tower (that we are 100% not allowed to climb), unfinished building where you can sit if you need alone time, cement block, trash pit, and everyone favorite space *drumroll please* covered area where everyone hangs their hammocks.
My room has 15 girls in it, the one next door has 18. I ended up getting a bottom bunk in one of the corners of the room, it’s nice but very dark. Up until we went to South Africa I would sleep on my sleeping bag because I didn’t have a sheet for the mattress, but now I have a sheet. I’ve decorated the place realllly nicely. By that I mean I taped up a letter and two pictures that my sister and friend sent me with. I also keep some letters in the wooden slats above me. Me and the 14 others share 2 sinks, 1 mirror, 3 toilets with curtains, and 3 showers. Surprisingly, it feels less crowded than my bathroom at home that I only shared with Catie. I store my stuff in packing cubes laid on my backpack.
In the kitchen we have two small fridges and a meat freezer. We also have a sink, a cabinet, stoves that you light with matches, a thing that boils water, some toasters, a microwave, and a small oven. I spend extra time there because I help cook dinner a lot for ministry. The dining hall has fold up tables and plastic chairs. There’s also a shelf that everyone can store personal snacks on. We have to be really really careful about keeping the kitchen clean because TIA (This is Africa). If you leave a crumb on the counter, 30 minutes later a swarm of ants will cover it. If the peanut butter jar in the cabinet has a smudge on the lid there is a chance ants will get inside and our sandwiches will be a different kinda “crunchy” peanut butter and jelly.
Oh yeah, for food I have a total of 3 eggs, 2 pieces of fruit, and 2 rice cakes with peanut butter and jelly to portion until dinner. Dinner cycles a bunch of different options with what’s available at the grocery store. We drink water and instant coffee or tea. But we can’t drink the tap water, or even use it to cook with. Whatever is bad in the water isn’t fixed when it boils so instead we drink out of big jugs of water that we carry up from a storage room down the road.
Our group does all of our own cleaning, too. That includes sweeping, mopping, washing dishes, hand washing our clothes, and burning trash. Hand washing clothes is funny because we all take turns with four sinks behind the kitchen. I still haven’t quite figured out a good technique or ratio of water to detergent, but I’m working on it. To dry the clothes we hang them high on the fence so goats don’t eat them. We also have to make sure they don’t stay hung up late at night because a certain type of fly lays eggs on them and then the larvae can burrow into your skin and you could need surgery. I’m not kidding and it sounds unpleasant so we’re pretty good at not leaving clothes up over night! Burning trash is also a new experience! But most of the time, if I don’t look at what’s burning, it just feels like I’m at a little bonfire with my friends or I’m camping.
For fun we sit in our hammocks, play cards, water color, read the Bible, and talk. Sometimes we watch movies on people’s laptops and if we really want to make it special we pop popcorn on the stove to go with it. Other than what I’ve described there’s a path, random goats and chickens wandering around, grass, and some trees. I run on the path for fun too in the morning.
The area around us is pretty empty. Other than some people’s housing there’s a gas station/grocery store we can go to on Saturdays for fun. They sell a lot of snacks and non-American flavored Lay’s Chips. But that gas station takes either a public van ride, which can take 5 minutes to an hour or so to wait for (you never know, there’s no schedule), or an hour and 40 minute walk. There’s also a very small grocery store a five minute walk away. That grocery store is one small room and sometimes they sell coke or ice blocks (ice blocks are frozen juice in little plastic bags). On saturdays we can also go to Nisela which is a really cute restaurant! It feels really special to go there.
Sometimes it’s really beautiful. Especially at sunset, the sky is so open and it’s a little different every night. The stars are beautiful too, which makes sense since there’s really no light pollution here. It’s spring here, not fall, and so the leaves are coming back and things are starting to get green and look alive. Behind the house theres also some beautiful hills. Most people call them mountains, but since I grew up looking at Pikes Peak I’m gonna call them hills. They grow a lot of sugar cane and the fields are so green and wide and a lot of the time from the road we see huge flames and giant clouds of smoke because they burn the fields to clear them. It doesn’t seem the most environmentally friendly but it’s something different to see.
I hope I did everything justice. Like I said in my last blog, I like how we’re living. I like having so much time to get to know people and talk. I like having less stress from living simply, and I like that I know I need to appreciate it because I probably won’t ever get to live so isolated and in Africa ever again.
