Sunday...a day of lesisure? HA!

Typically, Sunday at the Rift Valley Children’s Village, is an off day for all of the volunteers. 99% of the volunteers take this opportunity to blow this popsicle stand for the day and most of them actually leave Saturday night to receive the full benefit of a day off. Currently I don’t have the funds to take this time off so I “choose” to stay here and spend my day off with the kids, reading in a leisurely manner on India’s veranda etc… Now don’t get me wrong, I am happier than I have been in years and love it here, however being around 55 kids, 7 days a week, week after week, can wear on a poor 48 year old's body and soul. Trust me; I was grateful when I came down with strep throat and 102 degrees of fever last week as I had to stay in bed for the day. For everyone to get a true picture of my “leisurely” Sunday I will run through my day last Sunday.

6:30am wake up – We get to “sleep in” because it is not a school day. HELLO?!!! Sleep in?? 6:30am is not exactly my idea of an ideal wake up time. After I roll out of bed, I go wake up all of the kids in my house and then remembered I had promised to make them French Toast for breakfast. They had never heard of it before so I thought it would be fun while I still have access to a kitchen. First I gather the eggs from the pantry (apparently you don’t need to refrigerate eggs in TZ??) I then “make” the milk from powder where the instructions are in Swahili so I just keep adding powder and water till it looks like a cross between whole and skim milk. I then grate a cinnamon stick (never have done that before!), reach for the Blue Band (TZ’s version of margarine, which by the way they don’t refrigerate either) whip it all together and serve! It was a hit needless to say.

7:15am strip all of the beds, gather all backpacks, shoes and clothes and then dump them over the railing into the grass which is actually mud now due to it being the rainy season. This begins the washing of the clothes etc…which honestly takes hours in buckets of water outside. Each kid washes their sheets, clothes, shoes and backpacks. Once every two weeks they wash their blankets. It is amazing anything lasts very long as they scrub the hell of each article of clothing. No wonder I have holes in all of my clothes!

8:00am After everyone has their clothes/sheets in the buckets to soak, they change clothes and go to church in the Rec hall. I go up the hill to the office to check in with everyone. There is a flurry of activity with Mamas wanting to sign forms and get money for the days off, drivers wanting money for shopping, sick kids everywhere needing to be looked at and the Minister who needs his weekly “donation” for the Sunday service. After an hour and a half in the office, I walk back home to rest and relax for a while. As I slowly approach the house, I start to smell something awful, the closer I get the stronger it gets. In fact it is an overwhelming stench of discusting proportions a cross between rotten meat and carrion. At this point I cover my nose and mouth with my shirt and rush in the house. The kids are doing their chores with their hands over their mouths. I keep screaming “What is it, what is that horrible smell??!!” The cook/housekeeper is nowhere in sight, but as I enter the kitchen, I start dry heaving, the stench is so bad.

Dare I look in the pot on the stove that is boiling? Of course I do and it is apparent that we are having goat stew for dinner. (I use the term “we” loosely as I am not about to eat goat stew) The skin of the goat is still on this nasty ass meat boiling in water not to mention it is ROTTEN! I scream out the door for Catherine (the cook) barely able to catch my breath, the kids at this point are all gagging literally. Catherine runs up the stairs and I tell her to take this nasty meat and throw it away, and I mean AWAY. Over the hill and over the fence. Nowhere near this house. She starts gagging at this point, so I have a feeling she understands my point. Not sure how the meat got in the pot without her noticing the horrible stench, but clearly when you boil rotten meat, it festers and really becomes disgusting.

I then volunteered to cook dinner for the kids. I decided to make something easy like spaghetti and meatballs with red sauce and garlic bread. HA! I have made red sauce from “scratch” before, but I realized that my definition of from scratch and the TZ way of scratch is two totally different things.

I went to the garden and picked a ton of tomatoes, fresh basil and then proceeded to chop up the tomatoes for the sauce. Finally got the sauce on the stove after an hour of slicing and dicing. I started to make breadcrumbs from scratch, so I thought I would toast the bread. Riziki a wonderful 13 year old girl in the house had been helping me and she offered to light the oven. About 10 minutes later I opened up the over and it wasn’t hot, so Catherine came over to light the stove and as she is striking the match she says “ Oh, the gas has been on already” Just as I scream NO! DON’T STRIKE THAT MATCH!!! She does and WHOOOOMMMP! This massive fireball blew out of the oven. Ahhhhhhhhh! It was over in a second, I am asking Riziki and Catherine are they Ok? Are they hurt? Riziki just was standing there with her hand over her mouth in shock. Catherine’s response was “Oh my lord” Luckily everyone was fine, a few lost eyebrows, but not much else. The rest of dinner was pretty uneventful, took forever to cook, but tasted great and the kids loved it.

When the day was over, I hadn’t read a page, nor had I taken a nap, but I had a great day! A few minor catastrophes, nothing major and we all made it through, however relaxing is just about the last adjective I would use to describe it…but fun and fulfilling....definitely!