so today i’m not at ministry because i was bitten by an ant. on my eyelid. and proceeded to have an allergic reaction and my whole eye is swollen almost shut. as i lay here with an ice pack on my eye i realized something, saying yes to the world race also means saying yes to a new sense of humor. i was looking back on the past 8 months of my race and while there are some good, solid lessons i’ve learned there is also so much i’ve learned simply by being able to laugh at times where most would cry. i want to take a moment to talk about the real life struggles of a racer.
travel days:
i remember when i got to launch and we found out we were sleeping overnight at the airport and my poor naive self thought “oh my god. yes. this is the perfect way to start out my race! this is so exciting and new!” and now 8 months later, i just found out we have a 15 hour flight into south africa in two weeks and i’m thinking “crap. do i have enough dramamine? i need to find where my compression socks went to. i hope they have different movies on this plane ride” because after 8 months of long (and i mean LONG) travel days, the excitement has worn off. in fact, i’m trying to not focus on the fact that after this 15 hour plane ride comes a 5 hour bus ride to swazliand and then let’s not even think about how long we have to travel from there to our ministry site. but i just have to remember that there are 45 other suckers who have to do this same travel with me so at least i’m not alone and on hour 8 of the 18+ hour travel day i can look at my friends and know that they’re just as miserable as i am and then laugh because that’s all we can do.
“hygiene”:
now we’ve all gone a few days without showering but…have you gone a week? yeah me neither. i’ve actually gone almost a week and a half while wearing the same clothes i’ve worn all week in a country that has a normal temperature of 100 degrees with a heat index of 105 degrees. oh, and did i forget to tell you that we literally sweat all the time? i wake up at 6 am covered in my own sweat. i also might have forgot to mention the fact that we have a shower here, i just choose not to use it. go ahead and say i’m gross because i am but when you literally sweat while you are in the shower and you are forced to put clothes on that are either drying from the sweat the day before, or are still currently wet from sweat, you too will rethink it. people of the race have introduced to a new form of showering. it’s called the “baby wipe shower” and what this means is you, a grown adult, use baby wipes to replace a real water shower. i’m telling you, this is good information here. back home i would have scoffed at the idea of choosing to use baby wipes instead of an actual shower but not anymore. i’ve lived the struggle and honestly i’ve been wearing the same 5 outfits for the past 8 months and they have a permanent stench to them so at this point i’m thinking it really doesn’t matter anymore. after your baby wipe bath just put on some good smelling perfume and boom- you just had yourself a world race shower!
wifi:
it’s been a week since i’ve talked to anyone back home and all i want to do is skype my parents. i wake them up at 5 am because the time difference is obnoxious, my mom groggily answers my call says good morning and then for some odd reason her voice starts sounding like a robot. “mom, can you hear me? mom? mom? mom..can you hear me?” “leslie. leslie you’re frozen. i can’t see you. leslie, i can’t hear you. leslie? leslie?” that’s how a typical call sounds like since i’ve been gone. i remember month two i almost smashed my phone on the ground because i was so annoyed with not being able to talk for more than 2 seconds before everything cut out. now i’m just able to laugh knowing that well..at least she saw me for 2 seconds before i froze. even though i know this is ultimately how the conversation will go, i still try every single time. i literally had no idea what wifi was until the race and now i can tell you that when you go to a mega mall there will be free wifi and all you have to do is make up a phone number and name on the login page and then you have internet access! for about an hour. most of the time you can send messages and if you give yourself 10 minutes you can probably get that picture to load on instagram. learning to just laugh at the chaos of trying to communicate back home has taken a few months but now it just comes with the territory. “hey does anyone want to go into town for wifi” actually means “hey who wants to walk 20 minutes to go eat overpriced food at KFC while trying get good signal because there are 5 of us trying to skype back home” we all know that’s what will happen but we all go anyways thinking “hopefully this time it’s different” a word to the wise, it never is. but it’s okay, you’ll learn to laugh. 🙂
miscommunication:
it happens every day. your host will think they told you what time they were going to pick you up for ministry but in reality they didn’t and you are still asleep when they are outside honking for you to get in the car to leave. “ok so tomorrow you guys will be teaching at an english camp for about 2 hours. there’s around 50 kids.” aka- “okay so you’re actually teaching for the full 8 hours. there are 50 kids, yes. but their levels of understanding english ranges from none to halfway fluent. oh, and there won’t be a translator there…good luck!” i quickly learned that nothing is what it seems on the race so always double check the information you hear. but just know that even when you do double check it will probably still change so just learn to roll with the punches. like when we show up to church to listen to the pastor preach to find out that oh…we’re the ones preaching and leading worship? okay, let’s do it! or the whole squad wakes up at 3 am to load on a bus to head to the next country only to find out that somewhere along the line the wrong date was down for the bus pick up so we’re all up and packed at 3 am for no reason. it’s the little things like that where you just learn to shrug it off and say “it’s all good” and actually mean it. miscommunication is a normal part of the race and if you don’t learn to fly by the seat of your pants and laugh at the situations you are thrown into then your race will be unbearable until you do.
bugs and other insects:
they are literally everywhere. you can’t get away from them and you can’t kill them all. trust me, i’ve tried. they infest our backpacks. i’ve had them in my hair. i mean, i got bit by one ON MY EYELID. how did i not feel it crawling on my face? probably because i literally always think there are bugs crawling on me so i disregard most of those sensations. i had 32 ant bites going down my side and then they itched so bad i scratched my skin raw. i’ve gotten viral meningitis from a dang mosquito bite somewhere in the dominican repulic. the bugs are very real and they are in every place you live. that’s just how it is. when we watch movies at night they swarm our laptop screens. they are always buzzing around me. i’ve become freakishly good at swatting in mid air and killing mosquitoes that fly by. it is what it is. some days i still have minor meltdowns when i can’t get away from them but most of the time i just grin and bear it thinking “my teammates can’t think i’m mentally unstable because of some dang bugs”
community:
not going to lie, i was most excited about living in community for 11 months. living with people who are seeking after the lord and learning from them as we go. little did i know that community also means picking other peoples hair out of the shower drain because it’s backed up and i’m standing in used shower water. or learning to be okay with the fact that nothing is ever just mine. the shampoo and conditioner i bought now belongs to me and at least 3 other people. toothpaste is a community object and if i have something i need to vent or cry about, i better be okay with at least 10 people walking in and out of the room as i do so. community also looks like letting someone else have that last cup of coffee even though i woke up early just so i could make myself a cup. sleeping in a room with 5 or more people at a time is normal. in thailand we had 6 bunk beds and 2 mattress on the floor in a room the size of well..a really small room. we literally had to step on the mattress on the floor to get around. one night my squad leader ashley stole my pillow (out from under my head) while she was asleep. i just learned to deal with it. but i will tell you the next night she tried to do it again and i just smacked her hand away and then we laughed until we cried the next day over it. community is a huge blessing because i chose it to be, in every way.
the race life is one that you either quickly adjust to or spend your entire 11 months in pure, utter annoyance. it’s probably one of the hardest things i’ve had to do. luckily god already blessed me with a good sense of humor so i’m able to laugh off most anything that is thrown at me but i just wanted everyone to have an behind the scenes look at what life on the race really looks like. while my instagram pictures might be on point, there’s always more to the story 😉
