A day in the life of Cynthia

Thank you for all your comments about the boys. I thought I would tell you what a typical day for me is like. With that being said, there is no typical day as life is always bringing new challenges with every knock on our door. But I have found a kind of rhythm to it, so here it is: I wake up at 5:45 am (which is an insane time to get up and no one should have to do it) but I am usually already starting to wake up since my whole neighborhood thinks life should get going by 5 am. My neighbor runs a breakfast program out of her house and women start coming to pick up their breakfast and chat at 5. (They meet right under our bedroom window). I wake Solan up at 6 and get him out the door by 6:25. Sometimes Aidan is up so we hang out and have breakfast together. Aidan goes off to school around 8:30. Either Bart or I walk him to school. His school is a few minutes away. He has 42 children in his class, while Solan has 8. We will move Adian to Solan's school when he is in first grade.

On Tuesday and Thursday I go to work at a health clinic. It is a 10 minute walk from my house. I do all sorts of things there from checking patients in, taking vitals, and preparing medical supplies. Cotton balls do not exist in Peru. I have to cut cotton and roll it into tiny balls. That has been a task that teaches me humility. On Thursdays we go out into the community and do home visits. We visit patients who just had a baby, are sick, or haven't been to the doctor in awhile. We also check water tanks for the dengue causing mosquito. There was an outbreak here last year and it can be fatal.

(Patients waiting to be seen at the clinic.)

On Monday and Wednesday afternoons I work with 2 Italian nuns. We are teaching adult literacy and basic math skills. Most of my neighbors have a second grade education. The class has been going well and it is amazing to see these women start to read. Sadly, though, many have dropped out. I think it is hard for these moms to be consistent and commit to learning when their lives can often be so chaotic.

(Moms learning to write at our literacy class-notice the baby with the pink hat. Nicole fell asleep on a bucket of toys.)

Those two jobs are my routine. Besides that lots of other things fill my day. I attend monthly meetings for a Club de Madres or Mother's Club. I found out how few moms can read or write when I was asked to be the secretary. Recently our club was in a food fair and we made a typical Peruvian dish, guinea pig on a grain called quinua. We didn't win although everyone walking by said our dish was the best looking. Who could disagree when they leave the head, with those beady little guinea pig eyes, on the platter?

(My neighbor, Segunda and I at the food fair.)

Back to my daily routine. Aidan gets out of school at noon. Bart, Aidan, and I eat lunch together. Things get quiet around here after that as most families take a siesta. Solan comes home around 3. Depending who is around, Bart or I help Solan with homework and get dinner going. We seem a little strange to our neighbors since we eat dinner at 6. Most families eat a large lunch and then have a small snack before going to bed.

My time is also spent visiting neighbors, having a weekly prayer meeting with our fellow Comboni lay missionaries, shopping, cleaning, and washing. The other day I had to pay Solan's school fees and our phone bill-the whole process took 3 hours. Much of our time is spent on buses. We live a few kilometers from the center of town but due to traffic and long bus routes it takes 1/2 an hour to 45 minutes to go to different places like the mall or downtown. Most my food comes from the local market. We can buy 2 pounds of strawberries for 70 cents. A head of lettuce is 30 cents, 2 pounds of mangos are $1. I head out to the mall where there is a large grocery store for things like peanut butter, tortillas, cheese, granola, yogurt, and milk. Prices are a little bit higher than the States for those items.

One delight of Bart and I is to watch old t.v. series. Pirated dvd's are huge here so we have worked our way through the Lost series, the Office, and Ugly Betty. I fall into bed around 10 pm very exhausted.

What has been nice is about family life in Peru is the amount of time we get to spend with our children. We eat most meals together and Bart is usually around when Solan gets home from school to play a game of soccer or work on a project together. There are a lot of things that are not easy about living in Peru, but we count our family time as one of our blessings.

Some challenges are the lack of support. We live very far from the other lay missionaries and the priest. There are no other ex-pats in the area except for Italian nuns. I miss having daily contact with friends. Especially in an environment in which I need to process all that I see and experience. Thank God for skype! It is hard to be surrounded by such poverty. It is burdensome on the soul to see malnourished children, mothers that live with domestic violence, children that are left to fend for themselves. We live in front of a garbage hill and often at night I see small children rummaging through it, looking for food or things like paper and metal which they can sell.

We came here to accompany, not to fix all the world's problems or end hunger. But being a witness to such injustice is devastating. And I am the one with a hot meal every night. Please continue to pray for us, for our community, and for social inequality.

Beauty of Peru



Okay, well maybe not the Peruvian hairless dog.