a day in the life...

well, it's Saturday here in Benin. this week has been great! i have had several people ask this week what a typical day looks like for me in Benin. well, nothing is typical and no two days are ever the same. so it's hard to describe accurately what a typical day is like here. i thought it might be fun to document an entire day for you. take you through what i do from when i wake til when i go to sleep. i promise to leave all gross details out of the story. (let's just say my stomach has finally realized i'm in Africa...) so grab a cup of coffee. or, if you want to make me really jealous, an ice cold Diet Coke. sit back. read. and enjoy.

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Friday. April 13th.

i woke up this morning around 9am. the first thing i thought was, it is so hot. i sleep with one standing fan on in my room each night and the two windows open in my room. but when there is not much of a breeze outside, i feel like i am suffocating sometimes under my bright green mosquito net. katinka was already awake. she is leaving today to spend the next week with some friends she has in the city closest to our town, Porto Novo. she had done some laundry and was hanging it out on our back porch to dry. one of the first things on my mind when i wake up is taking a shower. i take a shower each night before i go to bed, but it's pretty sweltering through the night, so a shower is necessary immediately in the morning as well. the guesthouse (or bureau as we call it) that we stay at is also the office for the NGO. mathias works here and there is a big open room with a table and a few couches. there is also a computer that the kids use for schoolwork. since the bureau is between the kids schools and the orphanage, a lot of them stop by here on their breaks or before walking home. most mornings there are high school students who stop by. this is one of my favorite things! today, seraphin and louise came by to finish working on a project they needed to turn in for school. they used the computer while katinka and i loaded up everything before heading to the orphanage. i uploaded pictures for Arbre de Vie to their Facebook page and went through the storage area behind the bureau to find some flip flops for yemissi. after packing up everything in my backpack and filling up two 1.5 liter bottles of water, we headed to the orphanage around 12:30.

the brick makers had been hard at work all morning. just this week, everything has started for the construction of a new dorm for the children. currently, all the girls share one room and all the boys share another room. there is hardly enough room for all the kids in these rooms, let alone all of their clothes, shoes and other belongings. this new dorm is going to be amazing!! but unlike in the US, you can't just order however many bricks you need and have them delivered. nope. you order tons and tons of sand. then bags and bags of concrete. then the brick makers come and mix that all with water and make thousands of bricks.

jon and ashley were already at the orphanage. meeting and discussing some very important decisions that needed to be made in relation to the new dorm. 

it was lunchtime and it was my favorite! love me some rice.

(rosaline with lunch)

cosmo was sick earlier this week. high fever. headache. throwing up. jon gave him some medicine and after a few days of him feeling yucky, it melted my heart when he came running up to me screaming "TATA!!!!!!!!!!" when i got to the centre. he had his arms wrapped around my legs before i was completely off the moto.

(so glad to see that smile)

after lunch, everything was cleaned up and katinka and i played spoons with the kids. they LOVE this game. it gets pretty rowdy. and everyone is definitely competitive. but it is so fun to cram 14 people around one tiny table in the sweltering heat and play together!

the brick makers use quite a bit of water to make the bricks. when the water barrels get emptied, the children are responsible for going up and filling the barrels back up from a water reservoir that is by the garden. they did this 4 times throughout the entire afternoon.

(yemissi. philomene. adjoke. matihilde) 

(viviane is such a hard worker.)

(matihilde filling up the barrel.)

(these two are never too far away from the action!)

(yemissi)

(yemissi and adjoke)

(hubertine)

(looking down at the centre from the garden.)

since the younger kids are out of school this week, we have been doing activities with them each afternoon. i brought some crayons and paper from the bureau with me and after a few rounds of spoons and when they finished filling up the water barrels, we packed up the games and they worked on coloring pictures for letters they are sending to their sponsors. 

the children who were already finished with their drawings, talked their Papa Jon into playing Crazy Eights with them! 

(hubertine. yemissi. alice behind jon.)

(alice laughing at her Papa.)

while the kids were coloring and playing, ashley was meeting with the cooks about this next week's food program. they review the menu for every meal. the cost for each product. and anything else involving the program.

(ashley and mama amide)

(making cran-cran for dinner.)

as you can imagine, it is pretty impossible for the children to find anytime alone. although they love it that way! it is difficult for the older children to find a quiet place to study. this is louis at the only free table in the gazebo, studying before going back to school for the afternoon. the table next to him was full of the children coloring. and the other table beside him was full of the children playing Crazy Eights.

a storm starting moving in during the late afternoon. it cooled down. the breeze picked up. katinka left the centre for her journey to Porto Novo. and i worked on a few projects i am doing for Arbre de Vie. earlier this week i did physical exams on each child. i'm putting together a document with all the information for Jon and Ashley to have easily accessible when needed for the children. the brick makers kept working. some children took a nap. jon met with mathias to go over some building project issues. some children played Go Fish. it was a nice afternoon!

(the little kids thought they were so big coloring like the big kids.)

(all the motos lined up under one of the only shade trees on the property.)

around 6pm, ashley and i loaded up a handful of kids and headed off to Mama Jacquelyn's house. she is a cook at the orphanage. the Mamas are responsible for the cooking and care of the children. they live with them at the orphanage. they rotate weekends off. and they each get a night away from the centre each week. this weekend was Mama Jacquelyn's weekend off and a few of the girls were going to stay at her house with her. so we took ashley's car with Mama Jacquelyn, the girls and a few other kids who wanted to tag along. it was about a 45 minute drive to her village. the kids sang. and laughed. ashley and i talked. it was a nice time and it was neat to see where Mama Jacquelyn lives and to meet her sweet children.

(loaded up the car.)

(everyone crammed in!)

(micho was excited to be part of the trip.)

(if we kept driving on this dirt road it would take us to nigeria. 

don't worry. we didn't go to nigeria.)

(some kids playing futbol near Mama Jacquelyn's home.)

by the time we made it back to the orphanage it was dark and past 8pm. we all ate. and played a few games. the generator was on, so the lights were on and the kids piled in the Mama's room to watch a cassette film on a small TV they have in there. around 9:30 i loaded everything up and drove the moto to the bureau by myself for the first time! since katinka is away, this was my first time driving solo at night and i did great! not even one minor freak out. took a shower and the electricity stayed on the whole time. sent a few emails. called my mom for her birthday! talked to my parents for awhile. did my devotions. took my malaria pill. took my melatonin. fell fast asleep around midnight. 

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there you have it! 

Friday, April 13th.

it was a good one.