A Day in the Life of a YWAM Student

6:00 - 7:00 a.m.:   Awake to the alarm clock, as we are now able to sleep through all the roosters, ibises, dogs, and crickets.  Immediately turn on the kettle to heat water for sponge baths and breakfast dishes.  Bathe, get dressed, and pack up breakfast gear.

7:00 - 7:30 a.m.  Walk to dining hall for breakfast, which is usually chai tea and white bread.  The bread is freshest at the beginning of the week, and gets gradually more dried out by the end of the week.  We have learned to bring peanut butter and jelly with us for a more substantial meal.

7:30 - 8:30 a.m.  Return home to do breakfast dishes, and Bible study with the kids.  If time, sweep and mop floors from all the dust that finds its way into every nook and cranny.

8:30 - 10:00 a.m.  Worship and Intercessory Prayer time with the whole campus.  Worship songs are generally 1 to 3 lines long and repeated many times before moving to the next song, which makes the Swahili versions easier to learn!  Prayer is done “Tanzanian Style”, with everyone praying aloud (some louder than others) and all at the same time.  The first time we experienced this, Mei asked, “Can God hear everyone when they are all talking at once?”  We are finding it difficult to concentrate during prayer, not being used to this.

10:00 - 11:00 a.m.  Lecture with our DTS (Discipleship Training School) class.  Our class has 32 students.  Only 4 of us are mzungus (white people).  Annie is a college student who is from Michigan, but has just finished her second year at SPU!  Adam is from Vancouver, Canada.  The other students are from various parts of East Africa, including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda.  We have several Masaii students from the bush, so campus is much more civilized than they are used to.  Most speak at least some English, so our classes are taught dually in English and Swahili.  We are learning a lot of Swahili just with the exposure, even though there is no formal language training!  Jason and I are the oldest students (Mama and Baba Mzee), and the only ones attending as a couple.

11:00 - 11:30 a.m.  Chai tea break.

11:30 - 1:00 p.m. More lecture time. 

1:00 - 1:30 p.m.  Lunch, which is usually rice or ugali (corn meal cooked with water to the consistency of mashed potatoes); with either beans, potato stew, or sukuma wiki (stewed greens).   Occasionally there will be a few chunks of beef in the rice, called pilau.  

1:30 - 3:00 p.m.  Free time.  This is when we do our household chores, such as lunch dishes, laundry, and additional cleaning.  When there is time, we play with the kids, check email (when the internet server isn’t down), etc.  Currently, Jason is working on putting together some simple book shelves in his free time so I can organize us a little better.

3:00 - 5:00 p.m.  Campus work duties, which may include food preparation, kitchen clean up, public bathroom cleaning, weeding and raking, hauling and sorting garbage, among other things.  

5:00 - 6:00 p.m.  Free time.

6:00 - 7:00 p.m.  Dinner, which is similar to lunch.  We still need to figure out how to get to town every week so we can pick up some additional fruit, vegetables, and eggs to supplement.

7:00 - 9:00 p.m.  Lecture or free time, depending on the day of the week.

9:30 p.m.  Bedtime.

The kids also started school on Monday. I think their favorite part of school is keeping their field journals, where they are keeping track of each new critter we see and writing about it.  We learned yesterday about the Agama Lizard, which is bright blue with an orange head.  We have also learned that native Africans don’t like reptiles.  Ethan was carrying another chameleon around today and all the mzungus were very intrigued, but the Africans were disgusted (and amused at the crazy mzungus).  

Jason took Mei’s staples out yesterday.  She did extremely well holding still, so we took her up to the little shop on campus and let her pick a treat.  She picked a lollipop, and was very excited, saying, “I didn’t know they had lollipops in Africa!”  

We just got word that our final piece of luggage is at the airport, so we are hoping it still contains all or most of it's contents:  all the math books (the kids are sooooo disappointed - ha!), Ethan’s Science Lab kit, some of Jason’s clothes, and some over the counter medicines we had stocked up on.  

Thank you all for your emails and notes of encouragement.  We love hearing about what is happening in each of your lives back home!  God bless you!