Routines

Routines

Most of us don’t think about our routine, we just do it. But routines give us a sense of stability, especially when we are strangers in a strange land. So I might share my routine to give a sense how it may be at once familiar and unfamiliar to you.

I wake up early. The call to prayer is what often brings me out of my sleep. In the darkness, even with the windows closed, the Muslim call to prayer usually starts around 5:30 a.m. Sometimes it begins earlier, I don’t know why, but 5:30 a.m. is dawn; the moment when, in ancient times, the muezzin can distinguish between a white thread and a black thread. The local mosque has a good loudspeaker, Friday sermons are loud and clear, fortunately the morning call to prayer is not so harsh, almost melodic.

As I lie in bed becoming more fully awake, the birds begin their morning routine. Singing, call out to one another. The twittering and chirping moves the wakeup call from manmade to natural. It’s now 5:45 and I cannot sleep anymore so I get up. I set the alarm on my cell phone for 6 a.m. but I rarely need it. I turn on my computer in the semi-darkness and check my email and the overnight sports scores. While we were sleeping North America was still busy. There are usually some emails from MCC Akron or Winnipeg and occasionally some from friends and family.

Another alarm rings. It is Sophia’s new alarm clock the next room over. It is loud and obnoxious but she insists on letting it wake her up instead of me these days. 6:15 is when I go offline, open the bedroom curtains and go to the girls bedrooms, open their curtains and say it’s time to wake up. Then I leave. I have learned not to push lest my daughters turn grumpy.

I go out to the kitchen and turn on the shortwave radio. Either the BBC or VOA. They give me the best morning news updates. I go around an open all the curtains in the house just as the sun is ready to stream its light through the windows. I drink my 14 oz. of water with some vitamins. Boiled water in a large pot from the night before is cooled and ready to put into our water filter.

Time to feed the dogs and cats. There’s been whining and meowing outside the doors since hearing me get up. We feed them a homemade rice/lentil/canned dog food mix. Hard to find food for animals here. I open the door; Spot and Princess Waffles the cats come in meowing in protest (where have you been? I’m hungry) and Peanut the dog darts in, often heading straight for Sophia’s bedroom. I put the mix in their bowls on the back porch and take some for Coca the dog out the other door. Coca is always waiting by the kitchen door, tail wagging, friendly eyes looking up at me. I’m popular amongst the animals, feeding them does that.

I eat a banana and start getting the kitchen ready for breakfast. The girls don’t enjoy cereal in Ethiopia because the milk tastes ‘different’. It’s true. Both the fresh and powdered milk don’t taste light NA milk. So we don’t eat nearly as much cereal as back in NA. The choices are cereal (granola and yogurt), fruit, oatmeal, pancakes, french toast or eggs and toast. I often make either scrambled or overeasy eggs or sometimes an omelette. Abby usually asks for pancakes but I try to limit that to twice a week. I will also clean up the kitchen as I am making breakfast.

Around 6:30 I see faces. Wanda comes into the kitchen to finish making the lunches that the girls worked on the night before. Every half hour the news programs change on the BBC and VOA, I keep track of time that way. At 7 a.m. it is time to start warning the girls to finish up their breakfast and get a move on. At 7:15 they are to be out the door. Their backpacks are filled with books, lunch bags and other ‘little girl stuff’. They trudge out the door and head for the compound gate where one of our guards is ready to escort them down the street (a 5 minute walk) to the SIM Press Compound. There they will climb into the minibus taxis to take them to Bingham Academy. The morning traffic jam will turn a 10 minute drive into a 40 minute one.

Now we have time to finish our breakfasts and get ready for the day. By 8:30 our staff should be arriving. We throw open the office curtains, turn on the computers and get ready to start the business day. MCC business is usually answering email, working on the computer database called PlanWin, calling people or receiving calls and simply going through a checklist of things to do. Sometimes we have to turn on the generator because the power is off. Sometimes we have to work on water issues, either in our compound or our service workers’ compound. Wanda and Yeshiareg deal with the finances and Mekonnen and I deal with the programming.

There are breaks at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Tea and k’olo in the morning, coffee and popcorn in the afternoon. Everyone stops and gathers, a prayer is said and we sit and talk. It is one way to get to know each other better.

Lunch is at noon and the staff usually gets 2 hours to go and get something. We have our share of ‘power lunches’, scheduling meetings with partners around a lunch. If we leave the compound we usually go grocery shopping as well because getting around town is so time consuming. It makes sense to shop.

The girls arrive home around 4 p.m. from school. If they have to stay after school for activities they come home on the late minibus, arriving in the compound around 5:30. A long day for them. Our day ends between 5 and 6 p.m., just as Akron and Winnipeg are waking up. I can always tell who gets into the office when, the email receipts start flowing back to me between 3 and 5 p.m.

Our supper is usually between 6 and 7 p.m. Our housekeeper Yeshi has made supper earlier and we just heat it up. It’s a good time of day to catch up with each other. Sometimes after supper we watch something together, like The Waltons or Planet Earth. The girls need to be in their rooms by 8:30, lights out by 9 p.m. Wanda and I will often watch a Everybody Loves Raymond or M*A*S*H* show (yes, DVD’s are amazing, we brought back whole seasons from our home leave this past summer in NA). Our lights are usually out between 10 and 11. We’ve heard the call to prayer 5 times today. We may have heard also an Orthodox liturgy chanted over their loudspeaker. There’s the braying of donkeys and the sound of thousands of vehicles down at the bottom of the hill. But now, relative to the day, all is quiet. The barking of dogs is heard from the various compounds as they hear the street dogs gather.

The routine will start again tomorrow, a variation on the same theme.