One way to get out of making your bed in the morning (at my age I shouldn't be looking for excuses but it's actually quite annoying to make your bed when it's surrounded by a mosquito net that's tucked into your bed) is to give your bedding away to kids to take to class. That's what happened this morning. As everyone was eating breakfast, I had finished and was going around the table hugging my girls when my oldest girl, Belza asked to use one of my sheets in her Bible class. With some confusion on my part I agreed. Once in our house I gave her my multicolored, crazy striped and poka dotted bed sheet that I had bought in town my first day in Rurrenabaque when I hadn't realized there was more than one option for sheet patterns and she went on her happy way to Bible class to use it for whatever reason. I didn't see it again for four days but decided that I didn't need it any way because it's been so hot.
This past week I discovered a whole different world - the banana grove. Now, this may sound pathetic but I have never seen a banana tree before. They're a pretty good height with thick trunks, big leaves and a single flower at the end of each banana bunch.
The banana grove is where we get the majority of our fruit supply for the mission and I stumbled upon it when I was looking for one of the other SM's who'd taken a group out there to bring some bananas back to the kitchen. I found her and her group of boys sitting under a banana tree, licking papaya juice off of their sticky fingers. I was offered a piece of papaya and I skeptically tried it. Papayas and bananas are the main two fruits that we grow and eat since buying fruit instead of growing them is expensive. I've had papaya a couple times in food and haven't liked it but when I tried that perfectly juicy papaya slice, I changed my mind. I like bananas, I think that mangos are sweet and (now I can actually say that) I like papayas (but nothing can beat that sweet love of God - just because you can't write the first part of the fruit song without finishing the rest of it).
During work assignments this past week, I was walking around the mission with a group of kids picking up trash when I noticed that one of the boys had lit the brush/burn pile on fire. I thought to myself that it wasn't the best idea to light a fire on such a windy day but then again, what do I know about fires? I can never keep a good fire going in the fireplace at home. Not twenty minutes had passed when I stepped outside of my house and saw smoke and ashes swirling all around the mission making the sky hazy and the air thick with smoke. The next thing I noticed was Josh running around and kids pouring out of houses with buckets, making their way towards the base of the smoke. Sometimes I like adrenaline parties and I was in full fire fighter mode within seconds. I grabbed my girls and we raced to the kitchen to grab buckets. Or more like I had to drag my girls out of the house, convince them to take the bucket of water then tell them to run to help put out the fire. I guess the possibility of a fire burning down the mission, losing all your possessions and missing supper didn't seem that important to them. I soon left them behind and carried my food storage container filled with water where the smoke was. The fire had quickly spread thanks to the wind and was dangerously close to the carpenter shop where we keep all of our gasoline. That's where the majority of people were working so I ran between the shop and the fire to throw my bucket when suddenly the winds changed and I was caught up in a cloud of white that made it nearly impossible to see. My throat turned to sandpaper and I emerged coughing, blurry-eyed with tears streaming down my face from the smoke. Facing the flames and haze head on wasn't working so well for me so I changed tactics and started putting water on the opposite side that the wind was blowing. The fire on that side was closest to Miguel's house (the director of Familia Feliz) and the banana grove. If all the bananas went up in flames that would be quite tragic. Miguel's house is brick so I wasn't terribly worried about his. We finally got the flames under control then dowsed in water and finally there were just a few embers burning which we let be..... and definitely shouldn't have because at 2am the embers lit up and started another fire that took some time to get under control - at least that's what I was told. My house was in a dead slumber and didn't wake up when we were called to come help with the fire. I'm a reliable firefighter.
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