And as an added bonus, keep reading to spot the best picture in the history of the orphanage!
5:30 - My day begins when the megaphone goes off. Its literally the siren on a megaphone and its sounds like the Huskies scored a touchdown (if anyone can even remember what that sounds like). I usually shake the bugs off my net, out of my shoes, and off my clothes. After that, I sweep through the rest of my bungalow and talk with the animals, just like in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
This guy has been hiding out in the kitchen sink. Its a great place for him to hide, because my sink has neither running water or a connected drain line.5:35am - I usually get my wits about me and head over to the watering hole. Here I get to wait in line with all the kids and collect all the water I'm gonna use for the day. My main uses are only for drinking and showering.
6:00am - After picking up breakfast, I bring it back to my house. Breakfast is rice porridge. Recently we started getting sugar in it. For the first month I was here I swear somebody confused the sugar with the salt because it was almost unbearable salty at times.
Breakfast is usually a good time for me to get my necessities out of the way. I usually sit and eat it while I'm boiling my water. It need about a gallon a day here with all the work and heat/humidity. Its also a good time for me to get some reading in and spend some good quality time with Jesus while relaxing in my easy chair.
This is my easy chair. It was just sitting around here, and nobody ever used it or wanted it. And I'm such a sucker for anything free (ask me about the other 4 pieces of free furniture I've acquired over the years).7:00am - After finishing my water/Jesus time, I clean up a little bit, get a shave in (I'm now an expert in shaving without a mirror, by the way) and get ready to face the day.
I inspect the roof of my bungalow before heading out. It can get pretty windy here, so I just like to assess it from time to time, because it needs to hold up if it ever rains. We're in the middle of the dry season now, which only recently has been giving us trouble (stay tuned for a post about the well).
7:05am - This morning I decided to go and chat with the neighbors a little bit. I was being friendly, but I had a secret hidden agenda.
7:10am - I encounter the first neighbor. We hang out for a bit, talk about the economy, his 401k, Michael Jackson, the Mambas (nat'l soccer team). But I didn't find what I was looking for.
7:30am - I run into the second neighbor. They're an older couple. The invite me in for some coffee, he talks about the weather and what life was like back before the war while she shows me pictures of her grandkids. We have good little chat, but I still haven't found what I"m looking for. whoa-oh-oh-oh.
7:40am - I found it! If you recall an earlier story about a morning ritual in the jungle here, you'll recognize what I'm talking about. The morning practice of burning leaves and pollen to create fumes with the hint of something oh-so-slightly narcotic. I meet the neighbors to confront them with the issue at hand. We discuss the potential environmental merits of perhaps creating a compost bin, but I am quickly dismissed as outlanding and told to pack up my Western ways and go home.
Here is a picture of a smaller version of the epic toke-fests that take place most mornings behind my bungalow.8:30am - I sit in during one of Professor Tomas' lessons. Tomas is a friend of Victor who comes in usually about 4 days a week and helps the kids in primary school who are behind in reading and writing (which is just about everybody).
I'm just about as far behind in the reading and writing as they are and most days, especially if we're talking about verbs or tenses, it's really helpful. Other days its not, like if we're talking about whether the snake ate it's food or if the snake ate its' food.
The lessons take place inside the dining hall. And for all my HHS alumni reading this, the Portuguese word for dining hall sounds like "cafetorium".9:30am - After the lesson there is usually lots of work to be done. Below is an example of when the bathroom was being tiled. Victor and Christina are hard at work to get the brand/grand new boys dorm up and running. Yes, I know. Contrary to popular belief, Victor and Christina are not those do-nothing, stay at home orphange parents you all think they are.
This day, however, there was not actually any work to be done. Construction stops when there is not money coming in, which is about 4 days out of 5.So in my spare time, I will just hang around with the kids and chat, give help on homework, teach English, play games all of the above.
I made my way over to the boys "dorms" for a little while. I call it tent city, because while the boys dorm is being finished, this is where they're living. Don't be shocked, they've actually done quite well for themselves with the walls, roofs, porches, etc.
After that, I make my way over to the girls dorm. I'm enjoy checking out the "African re-bar" aka bamboo.11:00am - The first of the days many mini-emergencies take place. On other days its driving people to the hospital, having gov't officials show up without notice (not that we're hiding anything, they just generally suck), breaking up fights between neighbor kids, the list goes on. Today, it was mechanical (hooray)! A local NGO was bringing in donations when the car bottomed out on the gate coming into the orphanage and knocked the tailpipe clean off the car. TJ to the rescue! Sorry, no pictures. I was actually working during this one and couldn't take any.
After a quick change into my work clothes I started inspecting the car. I discovered that the tailpipe didn't break when the car entered the gate, this was just the final nudge it needed to drop completely out from under the car. The tailpipe was completely rusted-out and the muffler was tied to the car with an old bicycle tire.
1:00pm - After using some scrap-iron and a dozen or machine screws I attached the muffler and tailpipe back to the car. As I was prepping the broken section of tailpipe to weld a collar I made onto it (we have welding equipment here, but just stick welding, nothing fancy) another car pulls up. This is the director of the NGO along with his favorite mechanic. The mechanic is probably the same one responsible for "fixing" the tailpipe the other two times it had rusted out. He literally drags me out from under the car and proceeds to augment (read: destroy) my mounting brackets. He throws the tailpipe in the back of the car and drives off to his shop.
The boss of the NGO talked with his associates for a few minutes, and I could hear him reprimanding them for letting an estrangiero (foreigner) work on the company car. And then as they drive away he has the nerve to ask me (in Portuguese) if the mechanic could borrow our welding machine to repair the car. I was tempted to reply to him that the welding machine is a estrangiero too so he probably wouldn't like it, but Jesus restrained me and instead I told him I didn't understand what he was saying and packed up my tools.
1:45pm - After getting my clothes changed and discovering that my lunch had been given away (shima and beans), I put on my teacher hat and start with homework. I don't think the kids here (or most people in America) fully understand the capabilities of a mechanical engineer, they just see me working on cars, a coincidence. But they do know and understand that I love math and science. I won't talk a lot about teaching, because it and the education system here are going to get their own post later. But this is most of my time until dinner.
Everybody is hard at work doing the examples on the board.3:00pm - The afternoon today was filled with a particularly different brand of excitement. The girls apparently have an upcoming grudge match against some girls from their school and started soccer practice today.
After a few drill and exercises with a very serious Gabriel (in the yellow shirt), and not paying attention, which frustrated a very serious Gabriel (still in the yellow shirt) they started playing.
If I were them, I would opt for a medium than soccer, but none-the-less it was undoubtedly the highlight of the day as all the boys came out to watch the girls try their feet at the worlds game.
It was a source of endless amusement to myself and all the other boys, and a few of the workers even (the two guys far left) stuck around after their shift to watch the "excitement". When a goal was finally scored it resulted in all the 20+ boys watching the game to start jumping up and down and doing flips off the wall we were watching from.
The next day I didn't see a single girl who wasn't either limping or walking around as sore and as stiff as a geriatric. I made fun of a few of them by throwing their pencils on the floor and watching them pick it up (just kidding, I promise).
4:30pm - After the excitement of the girls soccer game most of them went to shower and ice down. I was held back because some of the little ones wanted me to be their choppa driver. Choppas are the little mini buses that regularly hold 20 people that dart all over the city. They wanted me to drive them to a restaurant for dinner. At the restaurant we had, you guessed it, beans and shima! I splurged and bought them for cake for desert. No big deal. After all, I had a little extra cash because it costs 5 bottle caps to ride the choppa.
When I got out of the choppa (a work bench) to get the cakes, I took what is quickly being known as the best picture in the history of the orphanage.
If you click on it you can view it in full wallpaper size. And I know that all y'all are gonna eat this up and send it to all you friends and introduce them to (from left to right) Jose, Mena, Ofeita, Samito, and baby Dorcas.5:30pm - When I first came here and didn't know the language I discovered that one of the easiest ways to serve people here was literally by serving - dinner, that is. Now they won't let me leave. Oftentimes I will be hunted down to make sure I am not running away and skirting my responsibilities just to serve dinner to everybody.
6:00pm - Dinner is served! The last few nights, thanks to a local donation, we've been getting chicken liver along with our rice instead of beans. So after I've divide up all the plates and then ring the dinner bell and get to dish them out to everybody. Usually there's about 60 plates for dinner needed to include everybody.
7:00pm - After dinner there's devotional. It consists of one-part singing and one-part of a little scripture lesson given by one of the older kids here.7:30pm - Devotional gets finished up, which means its time to start homework. The younger kid that don't have much have gone to bed by this point, and there's anywhere from 5-15 kids that stick around that need help with English, math, chemistry, physics, history, and/or geography. The only thing I refuse to help with is biology, which I never liked and I quickly discovered is impossible to translate for.
10:00pm Usually this is when I will get time to myself to check email, listen to BBC news on the radio, brainstorm for the water supply and well, update the blog, or just crash and get some much needed sleep to get back up and try it all again tomorrow.
Holy crap, how do you get enough to EAT, TJ?! I remember what it was like being at a meal with you around here... :)
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