The conversation went something like this:
“I have to talk fast … I only have a few minutes. I need money. Things are great. I love the people I’m with. We’re not in the bush right now and I get to take a shower EVERY day.”
The call was from my daughter, who spent the summer on a mission trip to Botswana, Africa. It wasn’t a trip that most of us dream about, but she had always wanted to go. She went with a well-known group that puts together these trips for teenagers. She returned with great stories, no parasites (we don’t think), and an enormous appreciation for things we take for grant ed.
Like showers. The group she was with spent three weeks in “the bush” … which means they were in a teeny tiny village with one-room huts and not much else … then had a week off … then three more weeks in a different village. In the first village, there was one water faucet in the center of town.
There were no bathroom facilities. Nope, no toilets. No sinks to lean over and brush their teeth. And no showers. My daughter had been warned to take baby wipes, and these little lifesavers served as her primary means of staying clean. She said that in one stretch she didn’t have a real bath for twelve days.
The good part was that neither did anyone else, so everybody pretty much smelled awful together. And the villagers, who they thought smelled terrible when they first got there, began to not seem so odiferous.
That didn’t mean, of course, that they didn’t long for a shower. They stayed at a hotel during their week off and rediscovered the wonder of water falling over their heads and washing away weeks of dirt. Heavenly.
Other things she greatly missed were fast food, soft drinks, Froot Loops, and her soft bed. Oh, and Pop Tarts. She specifically requested that I have Pop Tarts waiting for her when she returned.
The teenagers slept in sleeping bags and tents … not big army tents like I had envisioned, but little two-man tents. Except they were sleeping three or four or five to a tent, depending on the week. But she says she didn’t mind that part so much because it got down to forty degrees at night and more bodies means more heat. We think of Africa as always being this hot arid place, and it was during the day. But it was cold as the dickens at night.
The “I’m out of money” part is just an expected thing from teenagers. You can send them down the street and they will run out of money. She had been told she really didn’t need to bring much because there wouldn’t be many opportunities to spend it. That’s the other thing about teenagers … if there is something to be bought, they will find it.
She came home with so much stuff, you wouldn’t believe it. It wasn’t until she had unpacked it all that I realized that all the stuff she had taken over there was missing. Like all her clothes.
“I traded it all.” Turns out AfrAicanis … and teenagers … will trade anything for anything.
There is the absolutely amazing three-foot-tall hand carved giraffe. The cost? A WalMart sleeping bag with a broken zipper and $5.
Then there’s the incredible mahogany chess set. I think she traded her CD player for that. The intricate soapstone sculpture cost her a skirt and $2. A pair of tennis shoes were traded for hand carved bowls and utensils.
Every day I hear a few more amazing stories about this incredible continent and its people. I’m in awe to think these stories are coming from this typical, yet remarkable, teenager who is my daughter.
