Slightly stealing this idea from another missionary: To give you a better idea of what life is like here, and the things that come up each day, I'm going to blog each day for a week about things in detail, especially things that wouldn't normally come up with life in the States, like "I was caught in the rain on my boda boda" or "I took a cold shower because the power was out so the electric heater didn't have time to warm up."
So without further ado, here we go!
MONDAY
First things first when I woke up today—no different from life in the States—I made coffee. But unlike in the States, I boiled my water on the gas stove since the power was out, and made it with a French press rather than an electric drip machine.
Then at 8:15 I met my boda driver who took me to work. It’s about a 15 minute drive, and was uneventful today. I first headed up to the children’s home to have them color puppets I’ve been drawing, and we’ll eventually put together a puppet show. That’s always like a zoo. Dealing with kids in any language is a challenge, but it’s even more challenging with the language barrier. It makes it 10 times more difficult when they can’t understand “sit down and wait your turn,” and when fights break out between the kids, it’s sometimes impossible to understand the situation, who is the inciter and who is the victim, and how to handle the situation. But I made it through coloring today without too many incidents!
Then I headed to the office for staff devotions. Everyday we meet midmorning to sing songs, pray, and someone shares a message. It’s an uplifting time where we get to share about what God is doing in each of our lives. After devotions we have a tea break. It really breaks up the morning. A few hours of work, then devotions and tea, then before you know it it’s almost noon!
Denis, my program coordinator, is out of the office for the next 3 weeks on a time of leave. Our other 2 volunteers are university students, and classes have just started back up, so I’m pretty much running the exit program ship alone! Ok so I guess I should say here that there has been some restructuring lately, and the exit program is now being called Youth Rebuilders Project, or YRP. Without boring you with the details, we’re still basically doing the same thing, just with a different title. New look, same great taste.
So with Denis out of the office, I’m unsure how things might go for the next few weeks. Most of the things I do come directly from him. For example, maybe one of my tasks for the day will to be to write an update on the situation of a youth to put in their file. Maybe something significant has happened to them recently, and we need to keep their file up to date. But Denis is the one who passes on the information to me. He tells me a summary of the kid’s situation, and I compile a report for their file. Without him, if you were to task me to write an update on that kid, I’m useless!
So I have a few things up my sleeve to be working on while he’s away—some documents I’ve been working on for the last few weeks that I can continue to work on. But I learned today that you don’t have to go looking for things to come at you if you’re the one in charge—they come to you!
Immediately after tea, I was presented with one of our youth who needed an increase in school fees. So I needed to write a letter and fill out a fund requisition form for him. I’ve written letters like this before, so that wasn’t too hard, but I had never actually dealt with money or requisitions before. So after I wrote the letter, I wasn’t sure what to do next. Another program coordinator seemed to know who to take it to, so he did that while I started to work on something else.
But I had just sat down when I was interrupted by a woman who didn’t speak great English. She needed something to do with money, but I’m not sure if she needed money or she was trying to give me money for something. So I called Denis, even though I hated to disturb him on his day off. It turns out she was one of our FEP (Family Empowerment Program) mothers who had received a loan to start a business, and she was paying back her weekly amount. So I drafted a very official document on scratch paper saying I had received the cash, and off she went.
Then my colleague who had taken the request for the boy’s school fees had come back, saying that the executive director actually needed us to process 4 other requests with other youth who were in a similar situation to this boy. I had written a report on 1 of them last week, and found a report Denis had done on another one… but I couldn’t even put a face with the names of the other 2 kids, much less write a report on their current situation and requisite funds for them!
Thankfully though, it was lunch time, so we would deal with it later. Lunch today was matooke (green bananas, steamed and mashed up), posho (made from maize flour, thick and flavorless), and beef. Mmmm. On the way to lunch, we were told by a boda driver that one of our former youth had delivered her baby just a little earlier. Unfortunately she is one of our former youth and not one of our current youth because of her situation with the pregnancy. But we still had to go see the baby and make sure that both mom and baby were doing well and were healthy.
The boda driver told us that the baby had started coming when she was at home, and the boda driver found her and another woman accompanying her as they were heading down to the clinic. Apparently they didn’t even make it to the clinic—she delivered on the boda! Can you imagine??
So after lunch, my colleague Joseph and I hopped on a boda and headed down to the clinic to see her, and at this point I was thinking about how I won’t be bored for the next few weeks; life comes at you in large helpings here if you let it.
Both the mom and baby were doing fine. Of course the mom was in a lot of pain, but she was healthy, and so was her baby girl. I got to hold the baby, and that was amazing. I realized that I don’t think I’ve ever held a newborn baby, not just hours after birth. I’ve held babies a few days old, but this was incredible. What a beautiful thing, new life. Unbelievable.
After visiting the clinic, we went back to the office, and Denis came in shortly afterwards. He had a couple things to take care of, and while he was on the phone with one of our upper management staff, he was asked to cancel his time of leave. Poor Denis, didn’t even make it a whole day on leave!
So like I said, I’m fairly useless without him in the office anyway, so with him there to fill in the gaps of information for me, I was able to draft a few more requisition letters for kids needing school fees, scholastic materials, or business start-up capital.
Just before it was time for me to go home, it started pouring down rain. After awhile it finally stopped so I called my boda driver to come get me, only to watch it start pouring again. By the time he made it here, it was only drizzling. So we made it through the mud and the cold drizzling rain, finally safe and warm at home.
When my roommate Cassandra got home, she had quite a story! On their way home from work, they reached a flooded part of the road that they couldn’t pass. A taxi was stuck in the middle of it, and they had no choice but to pass by foot. When she and another neighbor finally reached home, their trousers were wet up to mid-thigh! Pretty crazy!
Well the power was out, and we were told there was actually a reason this time. They’re doing something with the transformer or something, so they had to cut off the lines for about 48 hours. Since I’ve been here, it hasn’t been off for that long of a time at once, but at least this time there was a reason and a little advance notice!
So the rest of the evening involved a cold shower (the hot water heater is electric, so no power, no hot water) and then working on the puppets for the puppet show with the kids by lantern light. As long as my computer battery would last, I was able to Skype with Jeremy, then I read a book until I fell asleep, which was really pretty early! Something about the power being out and sitting in the dark for hours really just makes me sleepy, and I usually hit the hay pretty early when it’s out!
