[Note to the reader: please read with an Australian accent. Preferably out loud and in a public place. If people ask what you’re doing, give them the link and tell them to comment.]
G’day, mate!
We’re here in Australia, the land they say is down under, but I’m not sure anyone’s ever really inspected that statement. Also, for the life of me I can’t figure out if the toilets really do flush the other way.
This month is MANistry month- the men (of God, also known as the MOGs) are all together, which means the ladies get to have their own little shindig. Waka’s women have combined forces with Tandem’s girls to create a new team: Takamamas- nine women on a mission to take on Darwin with nothing but the powers of strength and courage and a wonderbra (ok, maybe that’s the Spice Girl’s tag line, but it totally works).
So what exactly is happening, besides lots of late night girl talks and secret runs to the kitchen hunting for chocolate and other necessary goodies?
We’re at Darwin Christian Outreach Center, a church turned business that’s committed to expanding the Kingdom of God by strategically setting up pastors who know how to manage finances (brilliant) as well as preach the Gospel, thus allowing them to focus more on ministry than begging for money. Since we’re only here for three weeks and it happens to be school break, what we’ve been doing primarily is stuff around the Center so they don’t have to hire temporary people while the staff is on holiday.
Mornings begin somewhere between 6 and 8 (at least, that’s when they serve breakfast). Some of my teammates must have had their sanities confiscated at the airport because they’ve been getting up before the sun to go running. Oh yeah, I might be one of them…
Breakfast is cereal or toast with a side of instant coffee or perhaps tea. My team discovered oatmeal hidden in the back of the kitchen and got a bit giddy over it. The aboriginals like about 7 or 8 pieces of toast, slathered in butter and jam.
Morning duties begin between 7:30 and 9, and can include:
Kitchen work. Someone has to help clean up before and after meals, mix juices (also known as cordials) and powdered milk (only a week or two expired), restock pantries, and help prepare food.
Housekeeping. This includes going room to room collecting old sheets and towels and replacing them, cleaning bathrooms and floors and driving the buggy back and forth to the laundry room.
Office work. The office personnel may answer the phone, file papers, shred papers, retype papers, push papers, slice her finger on papers, discover cockroaches in boxes of paper, see how well said cockroach shreds in the shredder…
Yard work. Options include raking, discovering the mango grove in the back with horses in it, wheel barrowing, dirt digging, rubbish removing, bin changing, random assignment completing.
Laundry. Tabi is our resident laundry guru, and she’s been helping wash, dry, fold and stack mountains of laundry for the center.
Market Representing. Two or three girls go to the market and entertain children on Friday evenings.
Pig food. This one kind of grosses me out, but a few girls are needed to help sort all the food going to the pigs. They eat all the leftovers- stale, moldy, weirdly combined… sick.
Bakery collecting. At the end of the day, the local bakery donates all their unsold goodies, so we stock up a whole pick up truck full of breads, pastries, pies… you name it, we got it. And we eat it. So much for getting rid of all our Race weight this month…
There's a tea time at 10:30, then lunch at 12:30, afternoon snacks available all day, dinner at 6 and supper 9aka dessert) at 8:30.
That's a LOT of food, especially compared to PB&J three times a day last month.
The weather's incredibly hot here– it hit 34 degrees today and then humidity on top of that! You literally wake up sweating and spent most of the day soaked. Grrrooossss.
After dinner (before supper), we have team time, which, with nine girls is prreeeetttyyyy funny and tends to go long. At the end of the night we pile onto our beds and hope the fans get enough breeze on us to let us sleep.
Oh Darwin.
I love it. 🙂
