A day in the life...

From time to time I think it's interesting to give you a taste of our
daily lives, so here is my Friday:

6.30am Wake, read Bible in bed, get up and dressed before breakfast as a
family. Then get Eve to get dressed, clean her teeth, and then do her
hair while Marc reads the Bible to the family.
7.40am I'm just chopping things for lunch when my laundry girl, Musaala,
arrives, so I stop what I'm doing to finish filling the dirty-washing
basket and ask Simon to take it out to her. She'll be able to do the
washing with the 4 big basins of rainwater we managed to collect on
Wednesday night. It's far cleaner than our well water at this time of year.
8.00am The kids and Marc are off to school, and I have finished
preparing lunch ingredients, so I have nearly half an hour of quiet to
journal and pray. I very much appreciate this time of day!
8.30am I make my way over to the translation office, about 50 metres
from my front door. No fighting the traffic, but not much chance of
getting fit either! I already know Philémon won't be in to work, he's
still off with the infection in his leg, and Pastor Samuel phones me to
say that he has to go to Social Services for a family problem.
I catch up on my work emails and finally manage to send my 6-monthly
report to our Projects Manager (the connection wasn't good enough for it
to send yesterday, and today I ended up putting the English and French
versions with separate emails, which was enough to get it off). Then I
begin working on the introduction to the book of Deuteronomy, which
first involves reading the whole book in Monkolé and taking notes on it.
9.20am I hear Musaala on her way out greeting the pastor's wife Hélène
as she arrives to clean our house. She'll do some washing up, sweep the
floors, dust and then clean the bathroom.
10.30am I take a half-hour break, and head over to our house to cook
lunch. I have a quick chat with Marc, who's made me a cup of tea and is
just about to go back to school with the kids, their break having
started earlier than mine.
11.00am Back to work, back to Deuteronomy.
12.30pm Back to the house, to heat up my sauce and eat lunch with my family.
1pm I make bread dough, and leave it to rise during...
2pm Siesta.
3pm Official end of the siesta for our kids, but I've already got up to
knead my dough again, and later to put it into the oven.
Friday's afternoon ended up not being so typical and since "a day in the
life" is supposed to be typical, I'll drop back and tell you about
Thursday's afternoon. I spend most of it doing reading practice with
Eve, giving her a dance lesson (her PE this module is dance so it's me
not Marc teaching it), and doing Spanish with Benjy then Eve. The
internet is actually working - slowly but well enough - so it's good to
get both a lesson and their evaluations done. On afternoons where I am
less taken up by Spanish or housework, I try to get out to do some visits.
We eat at 6, and then it's into the bedtime routine for the kids ...
easier now that our boys are autonomous, and Eve just needs help with
her hair (though she likes me to stay in the bathroom so that she can
chat with me).
On Thursday evening Marc went out to the church prayer meeting - on
foot, brought back afterwards by a church member on a motorbike at
9.30pm - and I spent my evening knitting. I am knitting a skirt for a
crocheted doll I've been making for Eve's birthday next month, and have
also started knitting a jellyfish for a little girl born prematurely
last year who is now coming up to her first birthday.
10pm Bedtime, and if we're lucky we won't be woken by a storm and have
to run round closing windows during the night!