In the states eating is an event. Sometimes I feel like here eating is just eating. Especially when it comes to eating with the girls.
They line up outside the comedor (dining room persay) and file in past the servers. Usually there is one person serving on each pot, one putting spoons in the bowls and one on the moon pies or the water, or kool aid. Depending on the meal.
For breakfast (730) it is usually granola- as in plain with milk, a moon pie and since the girls volunteer house got 12-13 boxes of Oreo crumbs I took a box down that took three days to go through. We had oatmeal for awhile – on the soupy side but I guess we don't have any right now, so it is cereal.
Lunch (1200) is usually rice with manna pack rice mixed in (protein added, calorie packed) and a soup of vegetables- carrots, potatoes and another vegetable I don't know how to spell and sometimes some big shell pasta in it, all in a tomato based soup.
Dinner is rice and beans.(3pm) Sometimes mushy big and sometimes more on the little firm side. Every other day or so we get tortillas. I love the tortillas.
I haven't been eating with the girls at all meals mostly because we run out of bowls. Sometimes I will get a bowl that a girl has finished with but if there is leftover milk or rice I don't like to because if she wants seconds she has to get another bowl from someone else who doesn't. So this morning i FINALLY remembered to go take my bowl. (Swiss cheese brain is exponential here)
I say eating is a chore because typically the girls stand outside for a bit. Come in and get their food. Sit and wait until someone says "Don provecho" or something along those lines and then they can eat. And then about 10 minutes later we ask if they are done. Then we tell them to go outside again. And they are to sit in silence.
Then the wrangling begins…the older girls- the Colegiano (I don't know how to spell it) It's high school girls do the cleaning. There is an order I have yet to figure out- of what meal and day who does what. And they sweep. Then they mop. Then another mops. At dinner they sweep then scrub then mop 2x and there is an inside and an outside. Different girls do inside and different girls do outside. Add in that our mops can never stay down at the Comedor so a girl or two will mosey and shashay down to their house to get a mop…it can be draining. And if you don't stay after them they will waste time and take forever and be late for school.
For a process person like me it is draining. My salvation comes on Wednesday night when we have big group bible study and they eat outside. There isn't time between eating and Bible study to clean so we don't. Hallalujah. Except for the days like yesterday when they cancelled big bible study and we did.
And did i mention that our Comedor leaks really badly when it rains. So then we have to mop/sweep the rain and mud out BEFORE we eat. (at least so it is passable inside)
Thankfully Katherine and I have talked and gotten permission to get a cabinet built to lock up the brooms and mops so they can hopefully STAY. One less excuse to wander off and take longer.
Small things my friends small things.
I long for them to learn and understand how we work as unto the Lord and not man. And want to do a job that is honoring to God. I long for them to care. But as I have said before…teenagers. Small steps.
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