Yesterday our team spent the day shadowing women or "mamas" in the village. WHOlives founder and president John Renouard shares his account of the experience.
One of the goals we have for our expedition is to do an immersion experience so we can "feel" what the daily life is like here in rural Africa, instead of simply observing it. We asked if we could do a full 16 hour day immersion starting at 4am, but we were told that it would be too difficult. My competitive spirit wanted to take the challenge but the village Mamas were not giving in. It was a good thing too. The Mamas knew what they were talking about. Almost from birth they have been doing these tasks daily, it was foolish of me to think that we could keep up with them for even part of one day. After about six hours of fetching water, cutting firewood, preparing the meals and caring for the little ones we were done, exhausted, worn out and humbled.
We arrived back at camp and most of us just collapsed and took a short nap, but the day was not yet done. Dinner still needed to be prepared. When they suggested chicken we all lit up -- that sounded great because we have not really had much protein since arriving at the camp. What we didn't expect was that we were still "on the clock" so preparing dinner was on us, which included of course, choosing our meal as you would pick a lobster from the seafood tank.
After finding the perfect "meal" we chased him down and then of course, unless we wanted to eat a live chicken we needed to butcher and clean it. We posted a couple of pictures of our meal after giving his life for our sustenance not realizing that the pictures would be rather graphic to someone not involved in the meal. But amazingly this experience actually gives you more reverence and we now take our meals much less for granted, understanding that food is precious and should not be wasted or taken for granted.
