Another one of those days at Familia Feliz…. sin agua…

    A minute ago, before I opened up my computer to write this, I did the nightly rounds in my bed.  This consists of shining my flashlight carefully over every nook and cranny in my bed.  Yes, my bed is under a mosquito net, but even my tiny knit mosquito net can’t keep out the ant trails it seems.  Tonight I was quite delighted not to find a single ant when I first looked over my bed, but alas… from underneath my computer crawled the dreaded ants of the night. Last week my little family, Erin, Miguel, Juan and I moved.  We are now living in a room up in the main house.  We thought this move would put a little more distance between us and all the jungle creatures we always battle out in the house we’ve been in so far… which to some extent is true.  But along with the upsides of living here… comes hoards and hoards of ants!  This room is infested.  The boys find it amusing, and I find it repulsive. If you peeked in here at random times you might think I am some sort of crazy woman… stomping on ants, slapping them, sweeping them, kicking them, and spraying them profusely with whatever potent spray I can find.  The boys just giggle and enjoy hunting them down and squishing them.

            Today was another one of those days… without water.  Erin is in Santa Cruz for a week working on paperwork for her visa, me and the boys are missing her a lot! Although I’ve been forced to learn how to be creative and resourceful with the unpredictable and undependable water supply here… after it works for a while it still catches me off guard when it decides to quit on us.  This time we didn’t have much warning so we hadn’t even saved up buckets of rain water or anything.  When I walked into the kitchen this morning the first thing I saw was the biggest basin in the kitchen, looking more like a gigantic tower, full of dirty dishes.  O.K. here goes another day… sin agua. Yahoo.  There was discussion in the kitchen about what to do about the dishes.  The consensus was the “arollo” which is the little stream that runs back behind the big house.  It still grosses me out to wash dishes in it because it definitely has the muddy tinge to it… but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.  I grabbed a couple of bowls and sent the boys, with an extra large dosage of soup, down to wash the dishes in the stream.  We had oatmeal, bananas and these interesting bread rings for breakfast. 

            Not having water, at least for me, kinda controls how the day pans out.  I wanted to take a shower… mmm… nope.  I was planning on deep cleaning our bathroom with the boys.  There’s still a lot of mud in the shower because Juan decided it was a good idea to wash his Monster dump truck that was caked with mud… IN our shower.  I was not a happy camper.  Mmmm, not the best time to attempt that without water either.  Well, one thing I refuse to ignore even when the water’s not working, is the toilet.  The boys helped me haul up water from the arollo to flush the toilet.  Unfortunately we have to take a trip to the arollo every time the toilet needs to be flushed when the water’s not working.  O.K. that’s done. Ugh, the boys smell.  I had to get to work on some painting so I let it be for now. 

            After lunch, still no water.  I had tons of laundry to do and so did the boys, and it was getting more and more necessary for them to get clean… so we headed off to the Chorro.  Thank goodness for the Chorro!  It’s about a 5 minute walk down the road from Familia Feliz, basically just a huge pipe running under the road but it waterfalls into a swimming hole.  The kids love playing in the water and I love the clean water in the waterfall.  With all the rain recently the water wasn’t quite as clean as usual, but still it’s an improvement from the stream by our house.  Miguel couldn’t go in the water because of his toe, it’s still healing from being broken and he still has an open wound.  Juan loved swimming and splashing around as always.  I washed clothes and enjoyed the cool water.   Little Miguel was so cute.  Just sitting there on the bank, he found ways to entertain himself.  He picked several huge leaves and constructed a cozy little bed for himself under the shade of overhanging branches.  He laid down and then looked up at my with a grin of satisfaction.  A few minutes later he had found a mud pit and was building mud balls… typical.  After I finished washing clothes and rinsing off myself I scooped up Miguel and sat him on the edge of the pipe, to the right of the waterfall.  The goal was to get him thoroughly clean without getting his foot wet.  It was an adventure.  I got him wet, then helped him scrub a dub dub with soap.  He giggles and twists and turns when I clean his hair, for some reason he finds it ticklish when I touch his head J After getting him thoroughly soap-ified, I picked him up and held him under the waterfall and let the water rinse away all the soap.  He squealed and giggled…. frio! cold! He is such a little bundle of joy!  I felt much better after getting clean.  I am so thankful for the Chorro!  Being here has taught me to be thankful for the little things…because sometimes the little things are what get you through the day. 

            Back at the house we hung up all our clothes on the clothesline.  The boys had extra amounts of energy, bouncing around and enjoying throwing their clothes on the line.  As the finished they skipped over to me, covering me with hugs and kisses and lots of “te amo mucho mommy!” As I walked back towards the house with my little boys hanging all over me, it hit me again… no matter what happens here… whether there’s no water… no gas… no electricity… lack of food…swarms of mosquitoes and unwanted jungle creatures… whatever the present difficulty is… these boys are what get me through.  They’re the reason I’m here.  When I’m feeling really uncomfortable and missing everyone and everything at home… it’s the precious moments throughout the day that my little boys remind me how much I mean to them… and that’s what keeps me going.   My little boys never cease to show me that they love me.  I know I’m here for a reason.  I truly love these two little boys with all my heart... it is heart wrenching for me to even think about leaving my little boys.  I know these next few months are going to be a pretty intense emotional rollercoaster for me… I’m holding onto the one thing that I know, and that is that I have to hold onto God… and trust that he has a plan for my life.  

            ‎"Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don't try to figure everything out on your own. Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he's the one who will keep you on track." Proverbs 3:5