I open my eyes and glance at my watch. 5:50 am. My usual wake up time. There’s no need for an alarm as the numerous roosters, dogs, pigs, and ducks make plenty of racket to wake me up in the morning.
As I get out of bed I consider my options for the next couple hours.
Option 1: Go running. This month, I’ve been doing this more often in the afternoon than the morning. This morning it’s already blazing hot so I opt out of this and go for…
Option 2: Quiet time. I grab my Bible and journal and choose a coconut tree to sit under in the shade. I’m reading through the Bible chronologically and look forward to the things the Lord shows me as I read.
I eat a breakfast of dry granola and wash it down with lukewarm water.
8 am. Time for the English for Children class that I teach with two other teammates. We usually have about ten kids somewhere between the ages of 5 and 8.
Sometimes one will be taking care of a younger sibling and bring them to class. Those are the days when it feels more like a daycare and I wonder if we’re really accomplishing anything. But we go on anyways…
“A” is for apple. “B” is for book. “C” is for cat… and we review these every day.
Srey Nang and Sealy, two of the sweet girls in my class
10 am and class is over. A teammate and I ride our bikes to the stand down the street where we buy fresh sugar cane juice with ice for 25 cents.
We found out about a week into our time here that the ice they use isn’t from filtered water…you’d think this would stop us but we continue to drink it. I think at this point my longing for something cold to drink overpowers common sense…
(Note: the month is now over and we all survived the unclean ice. Thank the Lord!)
Arriving back at our house, I go over to the mango tree where we have a hammock and a bench type thing to hang out at some teammates are hanging out. We talk for awhile and then I read.
11:30 am. English class again that I teach with one other teammate. These kids are somewhere between the ages of 10 and 13. There’s usually about fifteen of them.
12:30 pm. Lunchtime. Lunch and dinner are cooked for us by our ministry host’s sister. There are about six different meals that are rotated between. For this meal we are served rice, french fries, and pineapple. Not a very well balanced meal but then again those have been few and far between in the last ten months so I’m not going to complain about this one. I dig in.
1 pm. Usually my afternoons include reading, hanging out under our Mango tree in our front yard, taking a bike ride, playing volleyball, running, and climbing coconut trees.
There’s a man we’ve dubbed as the “Coconut Man” who goes around to houses in the village climbing the trees and cutting down the coconuts for people. He gets paid $5 a tree so I had the idea of that maybe I could start a business someday if I ever live in a place where there are coconut trees. So I’ve been practicing climbing them.
What I didn’t realize was that, while climbing up is super hard, climbing down is next to impossible! I’ll make it a few feet up one of these thirty foot tall trees then have to start climbing down while I still have enough strength left to get close enough to the ground to jump the rest of the way. Not as easy as the coconut man makes it look…
I think it’ll be awhile before I’m able to start my own business.
Fresh coconut!
Mangoes are also fresh here and the search for ripe mangoes happens daily…
I’m glad I’ve acquired a taste for mangoes this month as they’re the most plentiful fruit here. At some point during the day, you’ll often see one of us climbing a tree to get one or using our six foot long “mango pole” to try to knock some down from a tree. Problem is, all the ripe mangoes within reach have been picked so often I resort to eating semi unripe ones. They’re still edible but I’ll take ripe any day!
At random times during the day I might be sitting peacefully reading or talking when I hear a kerplunk as a mango falls out of a tree, hits the tin roof of our house , and rolls to the ground.
“MANGO!!!” I shout as I drop whatever I’m doing and sprint across the yard to be the first to get to this delicious ripe mango. There are usually a couple of us racing for it. First come, first serve!
(Wow, typing this makes this sound like survival of the fittest- I promise we aren’t cavemen no matter how desperate this makes us out to be!!)
4 pm. Running. It’s often cooler at this time in the afternoon than in the morning because clouds roll in and sometimes even sprinkle a few drops of rain. I lace my shoes and head off onto the dirt paths with a couple teammates. All throughout the run we can hear children shouting hello as we pass their houses. They love seeing white people!
4:45 pm. I stretch and attempt to stop sweating enough to take a shower and not be still pouring buckets of sweat when I’m finished.
5:15 pm. Still sweating. I give up the thought of being dry when I towel off and head off to shower with our brown water that’s pumped straight from the pond behind our house where the cows and pigs bathe. It makes me wonder if I’m any cleaner than before I took a shower- but this is just one of those things you can’t wonder too much about.
5:30 pm. English class for youth that I teach with two other teammates. This class has 30 youth and is sometimes hard to control. Once again it makes me wonder if we’re making any progress with them. But we continue anyways knowing that it’s more important to show them patience and
6:30 pm. Dinner! Tonight it’s my favorite meal here that we’re served- carrots, peppers, pork, and rice. I pick as many ants out as I can…and try not to think about the ones that are inevitably still hidden in every bite I take.
7:20 pm. Team time with the
A-Team! Even though we live with each other we take intentional time as a team every day to give each other feedback and spend time together.
This time looks different everyday, depending on whose day it is to lead. Sometimes it’s simple and fun, like playing Bananagrams or watching a movie, while other times it’s more spiritual such as a prayer and worship sesh. Tonight is my night to lead so we listen to a sermon by Louie Giglio.
9:15 pm. The sun’s been down for almost three hours and in this land where everyone goes to bed with the sun and gets up with the sun, it might as well be midnight already. I lay in bed reading for awhile before falling asleep to the hum of our fan and the howling of the dogs- apparently the only creatures who don’t follow the up with the sun, bed with the sun rule.
And just because it’s nighttime doesn’t mean there’s not activity going on still…
There’s the rat– who we so affectionately named Melvin- who lives in the rafters above our heads that we can hear scrambling around as we go to sleep.
The scorpion that was crawling on my leg one night.
The 3 inch long roach that woke me up by biting (do they even bite? I don’t know but this one did!) my finger.
The gecko that fell from the ceiling onto my teammate’s bed as we were going to sleep.
Teammates scrambling out of bed in the dark to be the first to get the mangoes that have fallen and woken us all up with a start.
Believe it or not, these are all true stories…you never know what will happen next here!
And the next day it starts all over!
