Just 11 Women in the Middle of Africa

Let me take you through a day in the life of eleven hormonal girls who have lived throughout Kenya for 77 days.

Not only have we literally lived in the African bush for six weeks, or lived in tents and slept on sleeping pads for two and a half months, or cried because we haven't showered in an entire week, or cried because we have nothing clean to wear and want an actual wardrobe, or just cried for no reason, we've done it all together. The relationships that have been built in our little community cannot be explained in words. It is a special bond that we all share. Everyone is so unique and we all come from such different backgrounds. The experiences we have had together will be remembered forever. There are so many times we say “This will be such a great story to tell my gran-kids someday!” I just adore and love every beautiful woman on this team! They are so great.

As you can imagine, some days tension is high and people get feisty. Hormones go crazy bouncing off each other making us girls just have extremely emotional days. Emotions are especially getting high now that there are only three weeks left. It's so bittersweet. We all miss our family but do not want to leave each other, some do not know what their going to do when they get back, there's just a lot on everyone’s minds. Lucky Colton and Neal, ey? Poor, men, they do so great putting up with us! We love them.

Sunday, November 20, yesterday, was rough right from the get go. We were all dreaming sweet in the middle of our slumber when the country song Sunday Best started blaring. Nikki and Neal enjoy waking us up in song, mostly because people get mad and its hysterical. If I have learned anything about my teammates it is that most of them despise country music and everyone loves their sleep. Personally, I love the wake up calls especially to country music! However, I am also the only one who enjoyed “Super Fun Morning Time” at training camp. So after some yelling, complaining, and laughs of success from Nikki and Neal everyone eventually wondered into breakfast.

We had church together and listened to an awesome sermon from Nikki's pastor. The rest of the afternoon consisted of pure laziness. Reading, napping, writing in our journals, some more napping, eating, napping again, maybe listening to some music…. all of which besides eating took place in our beds. I like being lazy but that pattern can only be fulfilling for so long. Emily C., Ashlee, and me came up with the brilliant idea of baking cookies at Mama Margaret's. Part of our genius idea included the strategic plan of having Taylore ask Nikki if we could bake cookies because she would most likely say yes to her. Unfortunately though, Margaret was not home so it was a no go.

Cookie-dough anyone?! A commonality among the team is that we all love to eat baked goods before their baked, cookie-dough, brownie batter, cake batter, you name it. Of course though, our pantry cabinet was near empty. We needed butter, eggs, and sugar. Good thing it was Sunday and nothing was open….. except the few hotels and hospital. There was hope. Emily, Ashley, and me were determined.

We walked to a hotel (a mini restaurant, cafe style place) and asked if we could buy two eggs from them. The poor man was so confused that we wanted eggs, not even cooked, and nothing else.We then wondered over to Mama Chico's, another hotel, and asked if they had butter.
“You want my bottles?”
“No…. buTTer.”
All we got was a confused look.
“BUTTER… BLUE BAND FAT SPREAD.. put it on toast…” Emily yelled.
After a few tries the guy finally figured out what we were saying and pointed to the right thing. He sold us his one and only, used jar of blue band medium fat spread… yum!

Still no sugar. We ventured down to the hospital and waited in line at the cafeteria and bough some sugar, that one was easy. We came back super excited to make cookie-dough. We were crushed when Nikki pointed out to us that all we had was Chapati flour not self-rising flour… are you kidding me?! We sent Taylore and Breanne out on that mission. They came back winded after a good forty-five minutes empty handed. They went to the hospital and hotels and could not find flour anywhere.

Neal just couldn't handle the thought of eleven hormonal, emotional girls craving and so excited for cookie-dough being let down. Him being the servant he is went to the hospital kitchen, with an empty bag of the flour we wanted in hand to be sure they knew what we were asking for.

So two hours, three trips, 400 shillings, six people later, we had the ingredients to make cookie-dough. It was grainy and buttery but delicious. We even cut up a chocolate bar we had and put it in. All the girls sat around the table in our pajamas, with cups of cookie-dough, using our spoons we had been using to eat peanut butter with. We then complained we were thirsty. Poor Neal was just sitting and laughing at us. Some girls were on the verge of tears because of the tension, Emily G. fell out of her chair because she was leaning back on two legs (SIT WITH SIX FEET ON THE GROUND, GOSH! As Papa Rick would say).

It was just a totally ridiculous, pathetic, hilarious, bi-polar day. At least we got our cookie-dough 🙂 I am looking forward to the times that are to come in these last three weeks with these incredible people!