An Average Day

Rhythm and familiarity have both sneaked their way back into my life……and I’m ok with that. It doesn’t mean that every day is beautiful and fantastic but it does mean that I have an idea of what to expect and that is a beautiful (and rare) in Africa.

This is very much a school setting. Although, [Praise the Lord], we are not in dorm style housing. Melody and I have our own room and bathroom as does any single person here. There are “family units” for families that have more than one room. The room comes with a bed, desk with chair, wardrobe, and another chair. Bedding and a towel are provided and we can get clean linens once a week.

The campus provides all three meals and tea/coffee with a snack twice a day. I have no problems with the food. With any school setting, it does get a tad repetitive but that’s fine with me. An African porridge called uji, bread, sometimes eggs, and maybe a fruit make up most breakfast meals. Lunch and dinner are always rice, sometimes potatoes, and a few other things that rotate around. The only part that I might change is that breakfast is at 7am all seven days of the week.

A quick look at an average day would be:

7:00am - breakfast

7:45 – devotions

8:00 – classes start

10:00 – morning chai break

10:30 – classes resume

12:00 – lunch

2:30 – classes resume

4:00 – afternoon chai

6:00 – dinner

For devotions we gather in a classroom with some of the language helpers. We sing some songs (in Swahili) and read scripture. One person will read in Swahili and also in English. We will also say the Lord’s prayer in Swahili.

Class looks a little different depending the language helper/teacher. Our course is split up into two large binders that each contain 30 lessons. Each lesson presents, new vocabulary, a new grammar concept (or two), and exercises to practice the new information. Once the material is covered, we work through the exercises, which are all oral. On our own time, we have a written homework sheet to do for more practice. After five lessons, we have a test over all the material.

The 2.5 hour break in the afternoon is a huge blessing. So much information is presented that for me personally I often either need time to step away from everything or dive into on my own to attempt to better learn the material. It also offers a great opportunity for a nap.

Evenings are spent similar to the rest of the day. We may gather in one room and fumble through the homework while trying to find various pneumonic devices to commit more information to the permanent memory slot in our brain. Sometimes, we watch a movie on someone’s computer and other times we may just try to sleep if there is no electricity to do anything else.

That’s the practical look at my life in a nutshell. It’ll continue to look like that until the end of May. It’s a fairly simple life when you take away the mental struggles, challenges, and exhaustion of attempting to learn a new language. But it will be a brief chunk of time in the whole scheme of things and at this point I can only imagine what the next phase will bring.