Let me give you a glimpse into a day down on the farm in Swaziland. I would wake up most days when one of the roosters would crow.
Unfortunately this was usually around 4:30-5:00 or earlier. I then tried to sleep through 7:00 or so and eat oatmeal, a food I never ate before the race. Not intentionally anyway. I would then have quiet time and get ready for the day. About nine we would get in our little rental car and head for the care point. This would take up our day until 12:30 or 1:00. We would then head for home and eat lunch. This normally consisted of peanut butter and bread in some form. By the way a big thank you to my mom, from the team for all the American peanut butter! Yes there is a big difference! After lunch we would clean up from the day at the care point. This included showering in our cave of a shower. Think of a block building complete with spiders, very little light and a pipe hanging out of the ceiling. When you turn on the water you get cold water. Not so bad on the hot days but a real exercise in speed cleaning on the cold ones!
Our campsite on the farm
The rest of the day is taken up with laundry getting ready for the next day and other necessary chores around the farm such as cutting firewood. This leads me to one of my favorite parts of the day. The fire. It was my job to start the fire for the evening meal. This was our only hot meal of the day (I don’t count oatmeal as a hot meal). Katey and Sarah would make something delicious in the cauldron and it was my job to cook it. After dinner we watched movies on the laptop, read books and got things ready for the next day. Now I know why people didn’t have a lot of hobbies back in the old days. Everything takes so long when you have to do it by hand! I would turn in at the end of the day which normally showed up around 8:00 pm. The crazy like of a world racer.
