Volunteer Musings
It’s community night, which means free time away from the kids from 4:00 until bedtime. Rain is pounding on the tin roof of the house. Thunders rumbles in the distance. It’s too loud to talk unless you enjoy yelling in somebody’s ear. Water drips in a puddle on the floor where the roof is not quite up to snuff, but you can’t see the puddle because the house is dark, lit only by the gentle light of laptops and flashlights. I look around and wonder at the adjustments and progress (?) my fellow volunteers and I have made. Two of our ladies are using this time to the greatest advantage and are working out in the darkness of the living room/kitchen. Another volunteer just finished trying out a new braid in another’s hair, and another one reads. It’s obvious that I’m blogging while getting dive-bombed by insects attracted to the light of my laptop. Don’t worry about us. We do have “real” entertainment. We were going to watch our community show of Arrested Development via Netflix, but then the power and internet went out as the rain started coming down. This is at least the fourth time in three days that we’ve lost power. It’s okay though because we have time to kill. We’re waiting for the running water to be turned on so we can do the dinner dishes. We have running water three times a day, hit or miss. During these intervals of running water, we rush to do the dishes and to fill up drinking, bathing, and washing vessels. And so, as water comes down in sheets of rain all around us, we sit (or exercise) and wait for water to come out of the tap.
Update: The water didn’t come on until late last night, and the electricity never did return. We washed the dishes by the light of headlamps and with pila water, water from our outdoor laundry basin.
