Blog #5

It’s now raining and the guys are off doing their own things. I think John is sleeping in the lounge and Matthew is probably over at the house or maybe just doing the things Matthew likes to do. Personally, I’m sat here in my room listening to my Justin Timberlake, admiring the background music but at the same time wishing I had an instrument I could pick up and try to learn as I am in a very productive and pro active mood. It’s Sunday afternoon and I have just finished my ironing. It’s been my first cleaning weekend and I have just neatly folded the small number of items I have just washed away in my draws. I’ve got some time to myself so I thought I’d sit down and quietly sum up the long weekend for my blog in peace.

Friday was the beginning of the last weekend of the month and for all the staff at the mission it was the Prayer and Fasting weekend which meant taking time out from your usual schedule and dedicating it to the Lord. The day didn’t start very well for me and I soon realised it was going to be one of those days. I got up feeling sweaty and tired and head straight for the shower before breakfast. I was really looking forward to a nice refreshing shower so I pulled on the curtain ready to release the water. As I pulled on the shower curtain it tore right across, all the way to the middle. I kept hold of the part of the curtain that had pulled away and thought to myself “what can I do to fix this”. I remembered I had some plasters in my suitcase that I could stick the plastic pieces together to make a full curtain again to shield the water. I let go the curtain to head for the suitcase and the weight of the fallen piece of curtain made the curtain rip even more. I left it, grabbing my plasters as quickly as possible and used them to link together the two pieces again. By this time it was too later to shower and if I did I would be real late for breakfast.

I continued my day with breakfast to try and fix me up for the rest of the day. I made sure I stocked up as the fasting process began after lunch and didn’t close till Sunday morning at breakfast. It was going to be a long weekend and certainly something I am not used to experiencing and participating in. After a nice breakfast I went over to the offices to do some work. I continued to work on the Gap Programme website that was just about complete but we were struggling and trying to work out how we could test and host it temporarily. At this time the recently interviewed and hired IT Technician had arrived for his first day of work that was at least a week prior to when he was properly due to start. So the mission have been having a lot of problems with viruses and with a Cyber Centre to keep active it was important to get the new guy in early to get the ball rolling and get the computers back up to an at least decent state. By this time it was reaching lunch time and I was already hungry and began to worry about the whole prayer and fasting experience. I'm skinny already, but the fact I could loose what weight I had wasn’t the problem. The whole experience seemed slightly over whelming for me and I wasn’t sure if I could comfortably complete the whole weekend. With this on my mind I spoke to Matthew and discussed how he went about the whole process as back home I’m pretty sure he goes about life in more of less the same way I do. After a bit of discussing and explaining I came to the conclusion I would take it easy this month with the whole process because I had two other weekends after this one to take part. One of my worries was due to the fact I was new to this and felt I was being thrown in at the deep end. I felt that if I took in too much too soon it would scare me away from becoming more in touch with things, and that was certainly not what I wanted to gain from my three month experience. I don’t particularly admire myself for being a slacker because over the past two weeks I’ve embraced the new experiences even if I felt slightly apprehensive about what I was getting myself into and didn’t like to let myself down at this stage.

At 11am I met with Tony, who was going to be my mentor over the twelve weeks of my stay. This was my first meeting so it was basically going to be getting to know each other and discussing how I’ve found my stay so far. We spent about 30 minutes discussing what I had done and also spent a little time introducing ourselves telling each other what we do and our interests. Tony is a proper sound guy and I couldn’t have asked for a nicer person as a mentor. He has a really good head on his shoulders, plus he seems really understanding and had some interesting things to tell me about himself and his background. He is works for the COREL scheme which is a loan scheme organized by the mission. He told me he is involved in AID’s and sex awareness around schools and is also in a music group. We discussed and arranged that over the next few weeks I would be able to take some time out with him to see what he does and have the chance the check out his group which sounds interesting. One positive side of it is that they sing in English so I will be able to understand and get a feel for their music.

So after my discussing earlier on the Prayer and Fasting subject, I continued to eat but made my portions smaller. I knew this weekend would be tough but that I still had to take in as much as I could manage. In the afternoon I had a rest, took a nice shower and got myself ready for the evening where the prayer sessions began in the main hall at the IcFEM mission offices.

While showering with a new curtain I had been given, I realised I hadn’t properly sung since I had left home. All the rooms here at the guesthouse are quite closely situated and I would probably be heard by other members staying in and around the compound if I was to rock out a tune. I decided it wouldn’t matter if anyone was to hear, I hadn’t done it in a while and missed it. I confess I couldn’t hit the notes properly and also that I spent too long in the shower but it felt good to be in a more relaxed environment while I prepared for an evening of prayer. The prayer meetings began at 7.30pm and Ann kindly offered us a lift to the offices as it was dark and walking in the dark could be dangerous and also there was the fact that we could slip and look like idiots caked in red mud.

I sat towards the back of the hall which was filled with around 50 odd people. I still hadn’t purchased myself a full Bible but hopefully I would still be able to stay interested and follow what was going on. The service began and luckily there was a translator at the front. The current speaker would speak so much in English then the translator would translate it into Swahili. It was quite interesting and just the amount I needed to be involved in to make me appreciate and learn about what was being preached. We heard testimonies and stories as people spoke from the front. They were interesting and shared with us lots of different peoples experiences. I was sat next to a guy with his little girl on his knee. She was around two and half years old and the most beautiful little girl I had ever seen. She was really dark with big shiny eyes. When I first came into the service I sat down and shook hands with the man beside me and also had the enjoyment of shaking the little girls too. I sat throughout the session with this little girl staring and wanting to touch my hands. I think she was fascinated with the difference in skin colour and was pulling my fingers and stroking my arms. She would occasionally have a wander on her own around the hall then come back to attempt to put her hands in my palms. She stood by me while I was sat down and put her head in my hand as if she was going to sleep. I begun to tickle her chin and she would smile. It was a great feeling to see the fascination in her eyes.
The whole session lasted till around 10pm and I was exhausted and couldn’t wait to get back home for bed. The guys walked back as there was a large group but because I was eager for my bed, I got another lift from Ann.

Saturday I needed to do my washing. I’d collected all my nasty socks and t shirts together in a bag and stashed it in my wardrobe. It had been there for days and because of my sweaty feet from my trainers it was beginning to smell, so I knew it was time to get my head on and give them a good clean. Matthew was doing his washing also so I joined him by the tap just on from my room and mixed some cold water with some washing power and began scrubbing. I left things to soak while I hung out some items to dry on the washing lines provided. I was a bit worried that my t shirts would become stretched and end up being massive on me. I didn’t want to have over sized t shirts for the rest of the trip but definitely didn’t want to smell like a tramp either. I gave everything a good clean and hung it all out. The sun wasn’t very strong today and there were patches of rain, but after a while things began to perk up and our clothing began to dry.

After I collected in my dry clothes it was time to go to a service for the prayer and fasting. The service had been going on all day but I don’t think I could have managed to sit through about 15 hours so I just went for the remaining 6 and I’m glad I did. It was just again the right amount for me to be involved in and I went out to the front and did some singing with the others and watched Dennis play the keyboard. He was pretty good and he is self taught. So after the evening session we walked back in the dark. Luckily we didn’t fall as we used Matthews’ phone as a torch.

Sunday morning we woke and had breakfast and I’m pretty sure John would have been dying to tuck in as his full attempt at the fast was complete. We went to church riding on a Buda-Buda and like always I was so worried about falling off. We got there in one piece though and I only trapped my hands once underneath the cyclists’ seat as I held on for the journey which was great. We came back and decided to watch a movie. We have now got a television in the guesthouse lounge but with no signal, and Matthew has also purchased a DVD player. We tried hooking the DVD player up to the TV but I think the TV is old with not enough slots on the back for the cables to be connected so I just got out the laptop and we watched it on there. We began to watch Shawshank Redemption, but after about 10 minutes we realised it wasn’t very appropriate, so we switched it off and replaced it for RV, a nice friendly PG featuring Robin Williams and JoJo. Despite the predictable gags and the over exaggerated disasters it was quite amusing and what we needed to finish the weekend and relax on this Sunday afternoon.

Once the movie had finished I decided to start my ironing. I pressed my t shirts and trousers and folded them ready to be put in the draws of my room. As I did this I listened to some music while the others began to do their own thing. I didn’t have much to iron and was finished quite quickly so I returned to my room leaving John snoozing sat on the couch.

I'm pretty tired myself but it’s not long till dinner and I don’t want to start a nap to be soon woken again. It’s raining pretty hard and I’ve just opened the door to look outside. It’s hammering down and the guttering and barrels that collect the water are over flowing into the plants and flowers. I think I’m going to sit and watch the rain for a while and may kick out some choruses while the rain can drown out the chance of waking anyone. Take care x