I realize that a lot of my blogs are updates on what the Lord’s doing more than where the Lord’s doing it.
So I’ve decided to give you a taste of what life on the Race has been like for the past 16 days.
A normal day could look like this:
You wake up.
You realize that you are swinging 10 feet about the ground in a nylon hammock.
You wipe the sweat off your forehead and unzip your mosquito net.
You step out and head to the restroom.
Of course the toilet doesn’t flush so you reach out the window and fill a bucket with water.
You flush the toilet.
You use the next bucket of water to wash your hands and another bucket to catch the water as it leaks from the pipe.
You put on the same sweaty clothes you wore yesterday.
It’s only 7:15 so you spend the rest of the time before breakfast hanging with Jesus, reading your Bible, or recounting yesterday’s events.
Breakfast is at 8 and at 7:53 you start the hike over the hill, down 3 flights of stairs to your ministry host’s house where you eat meals.
Surprise: it’s bread and bananas. The classic. (Sometimes on good days you get cereal or toast or MAYBE pancakes. Those are the best days)
After breakfast you do about 30 minutes to an hour of manual labor. You move some wood poles down a mountain, you get bit by ants, you trip on your handy work boots, you move some more wood- its a pretty consistent cycle.
By this point you’ve sweated out half of your body weight. Jungle sun, jungle heat, jungle humidity. All too real.
You walk back up the hill to your room, do you climb into bed? no, you pee again. You’re on your third Nalgene by now.
It’s too hot to lay in bed so you nap on the wood floor- pro tip the lower ground is much cooler.
You wipe more sweat off your forehead and you scratch your mosquito bites.
It’s still only around 10 so you decide to do some laundry.
You spend an hour or two swirling sweat, dirt, and what’s left of your clothes around in a soapy bucket of water.
You hang it up- the sun is good for something!
You walk away for 7 seconds and when you turn around you find your favorite t-shirt being gnawed on by a cow.
You yell at said cow, chase it around for good measure, then rewash the shirt. (If you’re especially unlucky you may have to cut the sleeves off because the cow chewed all the way through the armpit)
You still got an hour until lunch so you do some work around the house.
You mop the floor, you sweep some bat poop, you scrape termites off the ceiling. The usual.
Lunch is at 1 and it is SO GOOD. Always rice, plantains, and some kind of meat. Typically a pack of knock off Oreos.
At 3 you board the boat.
You ride said boat to a nearby community.
You play with kids, you perform a Bible story in skit form, you sing some songs, and generally make a fool of yourself to make a kid laugh. You have the best times loving on kids and making life with Jesus attainable.
You wipe the sweat off your forehead.
Sometimes your ministry host finds you a boa constrictor or a sloth and you face all your worst fears or live out your wildest dreams as small Peruvian children laugh at you. Super fun.
You ride the boat back home.
You find a tarantula in your room. It’s okay, it’s only on the ceiling. You name it Marcel.
You walk down to dinner, between the boat rides and the time at the community you only have a small amount of time left before eating again.
Dinner is DANK as always.
Yola is an excellent cook, and she knows how to feed Americans. Super thankful for her.
You make some cinnamon tea with a ton of sugar.
After about an hour and a half of eating and talking around the circle of chairs in the host home you wander back up the hill.
THE TARANTULA HAS JUMPED ON TO THE GROUND.
Your squad leader smashes it with a broom and disposes of it. Marcel. DEAD.
You do some team time. You play cards, you worship together, you roast each other, you Chinese pray for each other- you just never know what you’re gonna get.
You fight for the 4 outlets that exist in your bedroom as the power comes on at 6.
You try to wash off the filth of the day. Do you use the provided shower head? No, you fill the bucket with water and dump it on yourself. Apparently people call it a bucket shower, and it is far superior to a regular shower.
You crawl into bed at 8:30 and the power goes out at 9.
You’re exhausted but simultaneously a little delusional. You have a dark party. You roast each other some more. You laugh so hard your teammates call them your “convulsions”. Sometimes you try to figure out how the heck heaven works.
The only time you ever stay up past 10 is when you watch a movie with the limited battery supply on your computer.
You frequently wake up to the urge to pee (due to your 27th Nalgene), to the sound of bats, to the sound of frogs, or to 5 am lawn mowing.
7 AM rolls around and you do it all over again.
