Getting ready for the village.....

Unfortunantly, getting ready to head out to the village doesn’t mean just tossing some clothes in a bag and we’re off! In the past, I’ve given myself up to a month before we actually go to the village to get organized and packed. This time I have just two weeks. Our past several months have been full of packing and travelling and transitions, and I’m finding it really hard to get back into that way of thinking. Personally, I’d LOVE to stay in the same place/same house/same routine for like six straight months. But, as we’re leaving for the village in less than two weeks, I don’t have that luxury.

Getting ready for the village involves getting all our clothes and bedding washed and packed. We always bring all our bedding back to Ukarumpa when we leave the village as hand washing sheets and blankets in the river (or now, in my shower base) just doesn’t get them as nice and clean as I would like. So I’ve been washing and airing out lots of village clothes, sheets, towels and blankets. Then they go into our heavy-duty rubbermaid containers to head out to the village.

Then comes planning meals. I don’t do good if I just bring a variety of stuff and figure out later how to use it. I’d be sure to forget some basic ingredients, or not have enough of something. So I sit down and make up a calendar for our entire time out in the village. Then I plan meals for each day. Once I’ve figured out enough meals for our stay, I go back and double and triple check everything to make sure I know exactly how much flour, sugar, margarine, eggs, etc I’m going to need. I have to figure in how many times I’ll be making bread or tortillas, how much milk it will take for cereal and recipes that call for it, etc. I have to estimate how many loaves of banana bread the people in the village are going to ask me to bake for them, etc.

Once I get all the amounts figured out, I go shopping at our store here at Ukarumpa. I then have to get all the stuff boxed up in cardboard boxes and labeled for our flight. I try to make a bunch of pancake mix and granola ahead of time, so I don’t have to spend time doing that in the village (and it saves on how much gas I use out there as well).

Since we have no refrigeration I can’t take any perishable items. (except for eggs, which don’t need refrigeration, and margerine, which can last quite a while without). Because everything has to be flown in to our village on the helicopter (which is rather expensive) I try to dehydrate as much as possible to cut down on weight. The things that are on the list for me to dehydrate this coming week are: cheese (for pizza, burritos, etc), spagetti sauce, pizza sauce, ground beef, italian sausage (which I’ll use on our pizza), beef jerky and probably some fruit roll-ups.

As you can see, just the food prep takes a lot of time.

Thankfully, I don’t have to plan Kaitlyn’s and Nathan’s schoolwork. The school here provides exactly what they will need for our time out. I need to plan some school activities for Justin however, as he will need some things to keep occupied with while K and N are working.

Days can be long out in the village (especially if we are getting a lot of rain), so I want to plan a variety of craft activities the kids can do if we are stuck in the house.

I also need to get over to the school library this week and pick out the allotment of books that the kids are allowed to take out to the village with them. These books will be for reading assignments, as well as leisure reading, and ones we read aloud as a family.

I am also in the process of sewing curtains for our downstairs storage room in the village. I need to make some for the translation office room as well, but there is no way I have time to complete that before this village stay.

I’m definitely feeling a bit stressed as I look at my “To Do” list for village planning. I have now just 12 days till we leave for the village, and really only about 10 to get packed, as we have to have all our stuff out to avaition at least a day before our flight. So I guess it’s time to stop blogging and get back to planning and packing!