Karamá

Steph's left - but God's still working with me, and doing a wonderful job as ever. Just spent 2 weeks in Karamá to protect their water supply - here's a typical day...

6am - wake up to the sound of loud whooping and giggling from the teenagers next door.

6.30 – get up, get dressed, cover myself in insect repellent and plan the work and teaching for the day.

7.30 – breakfast, usually involving 3 different sorts of carbohydrate and little else.

8am – brief bible passage and prayer, I describe the work we’re going to do and start doing it

8.30 – everyone else finally stops drinking chicha, and we work – digging holes, cutting wood, mixing cement…

12.30 – lunch – everyone together eating round a big table with leaves spread out as a tablecloth. A huge pile of yucca, platano and papachina vanishes amazingly quickly.

1pm – more chicha.

1.30 - I again try to initiate a return to work

2pm - everyone else finally arrives

5pm - stop work for a class on how to wash your hands / why nobody likes latrines / how diseases are spread / etc

6pm go and wash in the river, come back and do my bible study by candlelight

7pm - dinner

8pm – play the guitar and teach / learn new songs with the kids and teenagers

9pm – bed

It was amazing living with this community – they are all one big family of about 50 people (one man with 3 wives, 25 years’ worth of children, and a few grandchildren) and they are so friendly and hardworking (once they’ve emptied the chicha bucket). Several of them are Christians and it was such an encouragement and blessing to be part of a Sunday service in their village.

We spent the first week protecting the spring, and the second building the tank – next week we’ll be casting latrine slabs and then after a month will return to take of the formwork and plaster the tank. Planning the daily work and re-thinking after various minor crises was quite fun – and rewarding when we did finish!

We had a LOT of rain – and the ground was very muddy. I spent most of the week covered in mud and/or soaking wet - it got pretty cold in some of the storms as well so I really appreciated the roofed buildings and hot soups at lunch.

It was great to be able to not only survive, but really love being there, and accomplish the work I’d set out to do. Being there on my own really made me focus more on God and trust that he had everything in hand. And sure enough – he did.