25 October 2011

The day I almost died cutting into Zuccini.


Sunday

We woke up Sunday morning with the light and the chickens on the farm.

We feasted on (semi) tasty black coffee with a heap of sugar in it and rice and beans for breakfast.  When I got here I was SO excited about eating rice and beans.  Now that I eat it for practically every meal, I’m not so excited anymore.

We returned from camping sleepy and exhausted at 10:30 am.  On our way home we stopped at a 3rd grocery store in town, Nono grocery.  We got an ice cream bar that tasted like the milk had gotten warm, separated fat from ice, and then re-frozen.  Not delicious, but we had already paid for it and breakfast wasn’t super great either, so I ate it.

I showered and got ready for church at 11.  The cafeteria at the Children’s Home doubles as their Church too.  Church consisted of a lot of praise, then the “choir” got up (which was pretty much all the girls) and sang some more praise.  Then one of the older girls read Psalms 1:1-2 in Swahili.  People here talk a lot in Swahili, which I’m trying to pick up, but as this is the 4th language I’ve been expected to learn in 4 weeks, I’ve not quite gotten the hang of it yet.

Then there was more praise until about noon and then church was over.  The girls were so beautiful praising the Lord, it was precious.

But my heart broke that they didn’t get any preaching.  Apparently, they used to go to church in town but the pastor preached a bunch on the power of the devil and very demonic things and wasn’t preaching from the Bible, so the orphanage as a whole stopped going.  They’re missing out on good, solid teaching of God’s Word.  They have busses to take the girls into town, but that gets expensive with gas money and they don’t even know if the churches in town preach from the Bible either.

Please pray for a solution to that!

………………………………………………………………………..

After eating beans for breakfast, Julia, Stephanie, and I weren’t exactly excited about another lunch of rice and beans with the girls, so we decided to get creative in the kitchen.

I’m still too terrified to get creative in the kitchen on my own because they have to light a gas burner with a match, and that scares me, so I always use the kitchen with other people.

We decided to cook pasta, sauté zucchini in olive oil garlic and spices, and throw in tomatoes at the end.  Sounded delicious.  The zucchini was bought fresh from the market, and was on the verge of going bad, but it still looked pretty good.  Much better than more fried beans.  I started chopping the zucchini and Julia started the flame and put the olive oil and garlic in the pan.   I got to the second piece of zucchini and it looked a bit funny when I cut into it. 

So I cut a second slice farther into the piece of Zucchini.

And almost died.

Instead of nice, white zucchini insides, there were inch long brown worms crawling through the zucchini making holes.

I screamed, dropped the zucchini, and almost vomited.  Eeeewwww.  I’ve never experienced worms in anything I was about to eat and I wasn’t too thrilled about it. 

Needless to say, Stephanie had to cut into the remaining zucchini and make sure it wasn’t infested before I would continue chopping it up.  I took over mango (dessert!) cutting for her and showed her a much simpler technique for cutting.  Fair trade off.

The remainder of our lunch went off without a hitch.  It was delicious, as previously expected, but I wasn’t really too hungry anymore. 

That afternoon we helped Chris and Kayci pack for America.   They were taking two of the oldest kids with them for a month-long furlough/fundraising adventure.  None of the kids have ever been to America before, so this was a BIG deal for them!  We got old suitcases out of the attic and were attacked by multiple lizards, lizard eggs, and even a bat before we got everything cleaned off.

Not your typical attic clean out.  Poor baby bat!

Julia and Stephanie have been here about a month, so they know when we want to eat with the girls and when we don’t.  Sunday nights are a must-eat!  The matrons make rice pilou (rice with carrots, garlic, ginger, and potatoes) and chicken (which tasted a bit like rubber, but the sauce it was sitting in was fabulous!)

We each sat with a different table full of girls and had a blast! 

After dinner it was time for the girls to show off their stellar dance moves!  There was more praise and worship music, in different groups of girls, accompanied by some dance moves.  The girls were so cute and most of them were already marvelous singers!  Then Julia and Stephanie got up to sing and dance a number.  The girls howled and squealed and erupted with laughter! 

They promised me next Sunday night I could join in on the fun.  I don’t think they realize how abysmal my singing skills are…

We stayed and watched the girls until about 9:30.  The singing continued longer but we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes.  Being exposed to packs of hungry mosquitoes breeds new reflexes to squat and squirm and swat at any kind of bug.

Which is harder to do with a precious 6 year old falling asleep on your lap.

We slept well that night thankful for good food and precious blessings.

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