Mully Childrens Family "Basics"

Anne posting 10/26/2010

The Basics

Life at MCF is simple and basic, yet it can be quite unpredictable.  Food comes from the MCF farm which consists of over 800 acres of vegetables.  These acres are tended by hand with workers (mostly women) from the surrounding community.  Their daily labor is difficult but they are grateful for the money that keeps their families from hunger.

We eat separately from the kids.  Our meals are prepared in a small kitchen and consist of tomatoes, kale, potatoes, green beans, cucumbers, and eggplant. 

All these are brought into the kitchen in the morning in crates on the heads of the women from the fields.  Small quantities of chicken, eggs, and beef are supplied from the animals they raise.

Almost every meal is covered with a tomato and onion sauce (Gary appreciates the onions… Anne is less than pleased) wonderfully seasoned with a variety of herbs.   Just about every meal features the major crop on the farms, French green beans.  They, along with just about everything else is fried in corn oil.

The beans are lightly cooked and crunchy like raw beans.  Chapati is a flour type of tortilla that is fried and used as a flat bread.  Ugali is finely ground corn flour that is cooked into a cake about 4” thick and used like rice or pasta with the tomato sauce.  Lentils, rice, pasta, and bread supplement the diet. 

The children (over 750) are fed similar diets.  However, their meals are prepared in a very big communal pot over a wood fire in an open “kitchen”.

Laundry is all washed by hand in 5 gallon buckets and hung on clothes lines. 

As I write this I can see two women hand washing the sheets and towels from 5 recent guests. 

All children over 9 years of age wash their own laundry.  Wash day (Saturday) has every tree branch, clothes line and scrub bush decorated with numerous pieces of clothing.  All of these difficult tasks are accompanied by constant chatter among the women and children and cheerful singing is also frequent. 

Cement floors are washed daily with a large rag by the women bent over at the waste (a doctor says there are a lot of lower back problems, especially with the women who work in the fields).  No one uses a broom.  Instead, they use bunches of weeds about 1 ½ to 2’ long from the fields tied together with a cord or tape on one end for their “brooms”.

One woman cares for the grounds around our living complex with one of these “brooms’’each day.  She sweeps away all the blossoms, dead leaves, etc.  Her broom leaves beautiful artistic circular patterns down the dirt road to the school area. 

There are only a few areas of grass (sprinklers are required to maintain this as there has been no rain here since February until the past week … the beginning of the short rain season).  The rest of the areas are a reddish powder like dirt that clings to our clothing, especially socks and shoes.  We are pleased to have the rains this week to dampen the dust. 

However, the rains mean lots of slippery, sticky mud on shoes, clothing, and throughout the entire facility in classrooms, dormitories, eating and devotion halls, etc.  Everyone works very hard to keep things clean. 

Most of the children wear Skeekers or flip flops instead of shoes.  Mud can easily be rinsed under a faucet from this plastic footwear.  These are usually left in a big pile at the door when entering a classroom.  We often wonder if everyone goes home with the same footwear that they brought. 

Bathing for the older children is done daily in the river, the girls up stream and the boys down below the bridge.  The older students also use the age old tradition of washing their clothing in the river on the rocks when they bathe.  We are told that they make lots of noise as they approach the river to scare away the crocodiles and snakes. 

Bathing of the very young children (some as young as 1 to 2 years) is done by the dorm “mothers” who carry 5 gallon buckets of water to the dorms to do so.  Each dorm for the younger children has 2 mothers and 50 children who sleep two to a bed, one on each end.  Needless to say, the “mothers” are doing a lot of child caring.  We are left wondering how much sleep they get during a night considering the needs of these young orphaned children.

However, they are ably assisted by the other children.  Last night we went to the young children’s devotions, and the youngest were being carried and cared for by their “elders”, often only a year or two older.  We witnessed a girl of about 4 or 5 assisting her “sister”, probably about two, by buckling her sandals with an excellent sense of responsibility, sensitivity, care and advanced fine motor skills.

Keep in mind that while life would be much easier here with washing machines, vacuum sweepers, leaf blowers, etc., this manual labor supplies employment to the many needy people who live in the surrounding communities.  In addition, one hears the birds and the insects rather than electrical appliances.

Support of families within the surrounding communities via employment with MCF is part of the philosophy.  Families with an income are more stable and less likely to create street children.  Thus, MCF works to remove the cause in addition to treating the symptom, homeless and abandoned children. 

 Another “basic” here are the dogs.  There are three litters of pups apparently all fathered by the same male dog who has since died after sowing his seeds.  In the three weeks we have been here, we have seen their size double, and we wonder the size of those paternal genes. 

The dogs serve as protection, and they guard this place well.  We will be awakened during the night as one takes scent of something and runs past our window quickly followed by the barks of the rest of the pack.  One of the pups likes to sleep on the door mat (which the other dogs almost destroyed) and will not move as we come and go from our room.  One often follows us at a distance when we go to teach.  After we begin our lesson, he pushes open the classroom door, enters, and proceeds to fall asleep under our feet.  We step over him in order to use the chalk board.

Speaking of this, chalk is like gold here and every teacher guards his or her piece with a vengeance.

Back to the dogs, it is not uncommon for them to pull laundry from the line.  On other occasions, they will show up with a child’s flip flop or an article of clothing that has been left to dry on a bush by one of the children.

We forgot the watchmen.  These are silent men, most quite tall who only seem to talk when they change shifts with each other.  Each carries a stick about 1 ½ long and an inch in diameter, and in the night, a multi cell flash light.  These men seem very proud and dedicated to their profession.  We are told that they are necessary for protection from any animals, snakes, etc. who roam during the night. Their presence gives us a feeling of security. We have become good but distant friends.  They greet us with a “Good morning” or “Good night”.

One of the consistent perks for us every day is the presence of two young ladies who are constantly available to us.  Both are MCF graduates and have completed college programs.  They hope to find employment in their professions in the near future.  In the meantime, they continue their involvement here at MCF to facilitate us as well as the other guests. 

One of them is always available to help us transport instruments, etc. to the classrooms.  They are also our “go tos” for any of our needs, and they have taught us the art of washing clothes, operation of our cell phone, purchase of minute cards for the same and also how to add more minutes.  In addition, they are an excellent resource for information about MCF and served as our guides during our first few days here.  We would have been lost and not nearly as effective without their presence.

We also enjoy and profit from their lightness about life.  There is continuous laughter and joking that occurs within the four of us as we attempt to wash out of buckets, avoid mud, and deal with the heat. 

 

We also need to mention Rebecca.  She serves as our cook and generally keeps the area where we are clean.  Needless to say, we are constantly rewarding her cooking skills and her smile.

We eat all of our meals in this covered area.  Our quarters are through the door in the back of this picture, simple with a large bedroom/living area, a storage room for our clothes and odds and ends, and a bathroom with a gravity fed shower head (cold water with not real pressure to rinse off)

We are kept quite busy teaching nursery through high school students in addition to conducting a choir and teaching private music lessons. 

Yes, in case you haven’t guessed, this place is somewhat magical, and a true example of the wondrous gifts that God provides for us when one is willing to accept what one is given.