The New Normal

The further I have gotten into my student missions year, the harder it is for me to write blogs. I think part of that is because life here has become normal to me. Things that used to be shocking and "newsworthy" do not seem to be very relevant anymore. But as I was talking about this dilemma with my mom on the phone, she brought up that there are simply lots of things here that we as student missionaries are used to that are not objectively "normal" and that we were certainly not used to when we arrived last August. I have chosen to dedicate this blog to a few stories and examples that will give you a bit more of a glimpse into life as a missionary at Familia Feliz.

We eat rice every day, and often, multiple times per day. There are so many ways to eat rice: fried rice, rice and beans, rice and lentils, rice and eggs, rice and milk, and the list could go on. Rice is good, and I enjoy eating it. However, our rice at Familia Feliz is special. It is not just white rice. It is white rice with added protein. No matter how many times you rinse your rice, you're bound to find a small worm in it while you're eating. It is crucial to soak your rice and skim the little worms off of the top before cooking it if you want to minimize the amount of worm protein you are consuming. I honestly do not even think about this anymore when I eat rice, but to a newcomer (like I was), it can be pretty shocking. There are also Little Rock’s that come with the beans and rice that you can crunch on during your meal, but that's a topic for another time.

We do not have hot water at Familia Feliz, at least not in the majority of the houses (including mine). But to my own surprise, I genuinely do not think about it very much anymore. My showers are still shorter than they ever were at home, but cold showers almost feel good at the end of a hot and sweaty and dirty day of work in the garden.

However, when it gets "cold", almost nobody showers. For example, this week it got down to 64 degrees one day, and we were all bundled in hoodies and sweatpants and some of the kids had puffy coats on. Everyone talked about how cold it was, and almost nobody took showers for those two days of cool weather because it makes us too cold. Even in the past when it has gotten down to 71 and rainy, showers are put on the back burner for another warmer day. At Familia Feliz it's not gross or abnormal, it's just the way it is.

We randomly lose electricity and water, sometimes for an extended period of time. When this happens, the freezers start melting and leaking water on the floor, and whoever was on cleanup duty from a meal luckily gets out of washing the dishes because there is no water to wash them with. It is important that your phone is charged if you want to use it for a flashlight when the power goes out, because you can't charge it without the power on, and there are no lights to help you see. But other than it's flashlight capabilities, your phone is rather useless because whenever the power and electricity go out, so does the service. We will go entire days without any service because apparently the electricity, water, and phone service are very intertwined. When this happens, everyone waits anxiously for our resident handyman and houseparent, Hermano Juan, to turn on the generator so that we can at least have water to wash our hands and flush the toilet. But the generator doesn't give power to the lights, so we just live in darkness and rely on yelling across campus to each other instead of texting until the power company fixes whatever the issue is. This is a common enough occurrence that it no longer shocks me when I go to wash my hands and no water comes out of the sink. It's just another day without power at Familia Feliz.

One thing that is incredible in Bolivia is the sounds. Beautiful bird sounds and unique frog sounds are the common and continual noise around Familia Feliz. Earlier this week when the power was out, I awoke in the morning and everything was quiet because my fan was not running. As I listened, I could hear roosters crowing in the distance and birds singing their morning songs. It was so beautiful.

Bolivian frogs have cool sounds and rather weird ones as well. One time, I asked one of the Bolivian volunteers if there was some animal dying in the woods because of the groaning sound that was coming from the forest. He informed me that that was actually a frog who was very much alive and was enjoying singing. Too often I tune out some of the beautiful sounds of Bolivia because I am so used to them, but when I stop and listen for a moment in the garden, it is truly music to my ears -- certainly not something one gets to hear every day in the States.

When my family was visiting a little while ago, we all attended our weekly student missionary gathering that we have on Friday nights. Someone had brought a cake to the gathering from town, and we were going to enjoy some slices of it at the meeting. Partway through the meeting, my dad looked down and saw something on the cake. After closer investigation, we discovered it was a large cicada. Nobody was shocked, nobody even made an effort to get it out of the cake, and we all just kept talking like before because that is normal life: there are bugs in our food all the time. However, my family was rather shocked and amused by our indifference. I am certain that cake got fully eaten later, including the part that a cicada was stuck in because bugs are such an integral part of life that we cannot care about them too much if we are going to survive our time in Bolivia.

One of the most drastic things we have become accustomed to is lice. Everyone has lice -- at least everyone with a longer length of hair. That's just how it is. I was walking back from the cafeteria the other day and looked over to see Jayden, one of the the Guerreros house parents, being lice combed by one of his boys. The little boy yelled at me, "Teacher Jayden has lice!". Everyone laughed upon hearing that Jayden had lice. All of the girls remarked that now that his hair is long enough, he knows the pain of having lice in your hair. Lice is a frequent topic of conversation and kids often walk up to us and pull our hair apart in search for lice. The term for a louse in Spanish is "piojo", so we sometimes talk about having a "Piojo Party" where we can get together and have group lice combing sessions. It is no longer something that has a grand stigma to us, as in the US. We have even had arguments on our group messaging chats about the correct grammar for "louse", "lice", or "louses". We quite often share how many we find in our hair each week when we comb or how itchy our heads are. Lice are more of a social event than a disgusting part of life. My lice update this week was that for one of the very first times since coming to Bolivia, I combed my hair and did not find a single louse. I thought that was pretty impressive and commenced to share that with all of my fellow missionaries with lice. But don't worry: I plan to get rid of all of my lice as soon as I get home. However, while I'm in Bolivia, it is just a normal part of life that we all have come to accept, embrace, and laugh about.

Despite the many things that have become normal to me here, there are a few things that I am not sure I will ever get used to. I cannot seem to get used to the smells: the smell of my cat litter box (because Bolivian litter is not scented), the smell of dead, half-eaten rats on my floor that my kittens have proudly eaten, the smell of the compost pile wafting in my window, the smell of the sinks behind the cafeteria that do not have proper plumbing systems, and the smells that you encounter around many corners in town.

The other night, I was walking out to kill ants in the garden and nearly stepped on a baby South American Coral Snake. I called the Guerreros, and one boy came and machete chopped it for me. I still am not enough of an Amazon woman to be willing to kill snakes with machetes personally and I am definitely not used to having to think about deadly, colorful snakes waiting for me to step on them at night.

I also have not gotten used to walking into my bathroom at night and seeing a rat scurry away or being greeted by a wide eyed frog watching me from the wall. Some things I think will just always surprise me. But it is amazing to me how many things do not phase me anymore. I am sure that our transitions back to the states will show us even more things that we had not realized that we had grown accustomed to.

Some things that I never want to take "get used to" are the special times we get with these kids. Since my last blog, we went to town with the Flores house and had so much fun watching a parade, going to a big market, going swimming, and getting ice cream. It was so much fun and the girls were so thoroughly tired out that every one of them fell asleep on the way home.

Then on one day, I came into town and Sophia had brought Santi into town as well. It was so fun to watch his wide eyes as we ate breakfast with him at a restaurant and to hear his excitement about the cows he had seen on the way here.

Then on this last Sunday, I was weeding in the garden alone, enjoying a chance for some solitude, when suddenly three little boys from the Leones house come up. "Teacher what are you doing?" they asked. "I'm weeding." I replied. And they asked if they could help me. They came and weeded, watched me weed while they ate their crackers, and excitedly harvested winged beans and took them to the cafeteria. It was tempting to be bothered at my disrupted solitude, especially since those are the same little boys that I have in the garden for 10 hours every week already. But I was reminded of what a blessing it is that they love the garden, that they want to help me, and that they are learning such valuable life skills. I was also reminded of how sweet they are, sharing their crackers with me and the dog we rescued recently, all while sweetly talking on and on to me about tons of different things. I am so blessed to be here and never want to get used to these blessings. I never want to lose the wonder and awe of these kids, their joy, and God's many blessings here. I pray that they will never become "normal", but that I will live in continual amazement of God and His goodness.