Nikki In Africa... South Africa

Time Flies!

2010-03-01T14:15:00.000+02:00

I can hardly believe that it's March already! The past two months has flown past so so quickly... it's kinda scary when I realize that my first uni assignments are due this week and exams are practically around the corner!

My new job (the one I started in January) is going really well - I'm learning lots and lots everyday, and working very hard :-) You can read about my adventures on my other blog...

Other than that there is nothing really new or interesting in my life, basically just work, study, eat and sleep. My roommate is getting married at the beginning of April, so she has moved out and took her TV with her - I am all alone in a quiet appartment now :-( LOL! They did however give me a whole bag full of books to make up for taking the TV, so I am keeping myself entertained with reading instead of movies... but it's just not quite the same is it?

Till next time!

New Years 2009/ 2010

2010-01-17T22:05:00.001+02:00

I decided I wanted a New Years with a difference and so was born the 'great adventure'! I had read in a magazine earlier the year about kayaking on the Orange River and had wanted to go ever since then, but never had the time or anyone that would go with me, until I randomly mentioned it to my roommate and she said "OK, lets do it!" Wooohooo!

We called the number in the magazine early the next morning and was told that the next trip was over New Years - in 2 weeks- and yes they still had 2 places open!

It was so exciting planning for the trip. Everything we took had to firstly fit into the kayak, but more importantly had to be waterproof and any trash we made we had to take with us. So planning what we were going to eat was fairly important.

The article suggested that we portion the food into ziploc baggies and label them for each day. So we did just that! We didnt have a little gas cooker to take with us, so we planned to cook supper over a fire each night (vacuum packed steaks, vacuum packed veggies in foil and some breadrolls to make grilled garlic rolls!), breakfast just required boiling water (oatso easy and coffee) and lunch was bread/ crackers, cheese and biltong. For snacks we had energy bars, wine gums, crisps and of course more biltong!

The prepacked ziploc baggies

The starting point was in Hopetown, about 120km south of Kimberley - pretty much in the middle of SA. The drive down was about 8hours. And we were booked into a nice guesthouse called 'Frieda's B&B'.

The trip was 4 days, 3 nights on the river - from Dec 31st - Jan 3rd.

Welcome to Hopetown!

Crossing the Orange River

Me and the magazine that inspired the whole trip

Liz and I on the river

Each day we rowed about 15km, just a few hours, and very much within our means fitness wise! I loved the quietness, the beautiful scenery - we even saw a few fish eagles! Gorgeous.

All the kayaks - we were 16 on the trip

Night 1 - Old Years Eve: Making a fire to cook supper.

It POURED with rain the first night - we were standing with tarps over the fire to keep it dry, but we were soaked! After the food was cooked we retired to our tiny tent to eat and with the howling wind shaking the tent we went to bed at about 8pm :-) Happy New Year!

Day 2: Packing the Kayak (aka: trying to get everything to fit again)

A rapid. They look a lot more impressive from inside the kayak!

Hell's Gate. A waterfall/ rapid that we couldnt shoot.

Portaging around Hell's Gate

Everyone said that 'You havnt really kayaked until you've tipped', so I guess I can say "We HAVE kayaked!" Shortly after this portage Liz and I hit a rock and tipped over. It was kinda scary getting the splash cover off and getting out the kayak. Liz headed straight to shore and left me to rescue the kayak and paddles. Swimming across a strong current with a dead weight with another rapid looming was not the easiest but I made it to the eddy and dragged my weary body onto the rocks. Then the tiring job of pumping the water out of the kayak started. Liz and I both had huge bruises on our thighs were the kayak had hit us when we bailed - so we can say with pride "Been there, have the bruises!"

Final Day! Camped out on the same beach as what was on the cover of the Go! Mag

Our kayak and tiny tent

Gavin our fearless guide

4 days later and we are still smiling :-)

This holiday was the best I've ever been on, it was so much fun! LOVED IT! Who wants to join me on the next one?

Moving Forward!

2009-12-18T21:16:00.000+02:00

I've just moved! I now live in a very nice quiet 'suburb' of Sandton (in Johannesburg) called Sunninghill. I'm sharing an apartment with a girl I've known literally all my life and even though Bala can't live with me (1st floor, no pets allowed) Pretoria is still close enough for me to go visit!

In other news: I'm also starting a new job in January ... as a SOUND TECH for an events company in Midrand (about 10km from my new place!) To say I am excited it an understatement!!! That means I'm finishing at the University (Tuks) now in December.

AND finally I'm in my final year at Uni!!! I'll still be studying via correspondence next year (a full-time course load)... I've got some International Politics, English Lit and Philosophy modules left to do (and then I'll graduate! Yay!)

Not sure if I mentioned it, but I also bought a car a few months ago - so now I am well and truly an independent adult... which I've come to realize just means having debt! ;-)

My 2008 Honda Jazz 1.4 dsi

Here are some pics of my new place:

My Room

(all equipped for studying!)

The Kitchen

(we've gotten a washing machine in the meantime and will

be replacing the brown towel with some blinds...soon...)

The Couch

The TV

The Lounge/ Living Area

(we are planning on getting new curtains... soon... )

The Hallway

So there you have it!

An Update

2009-09-20T09:23:00.000+02:00

Since I've started my other blog I haven't really thought to update this blog! (I do apologize)

Winter has come and gone, Spring/ Summer is here and I must say I have been quite busy these past few months: I am still working at Tuks (my 'day job' doing admin at the university), I am still studying towards my degree (BA Linguistics & International Politics... urgh it's slow going) and since my last update I have started freelancing! Yes, my diploma in audio engineering is not going to waste!

The freelancing is quite exciting, it's mostly corporate shows (conferences etc) but it's doing something that I love (sound) and it's a really nice feeling to finally be working on building my career in a professional environment (as opposed to the 'volume control management' I did in the bush bush) :-)

To chronicle my new adventures as a freelance tech I started my other blog (but you have to be on the list to access it - so drop me a line and I'll add you!)

Till next time!

Dassieklip Farm

2009-05-04T20:44:00.000+02:00

I've just had a lovely getaway! I spent the majority of the past week on Dassieklip farm (near Volksrust) where Kobus & Mariaan, friends of my parents live.

View of Dassieklip Farm

Arriving at the farm - Bala with her head out the window! (photo by Ani)

We went there for a break and also to get the wooden chest I'd bought on the drive down from Pemba fixed. It felt like April had more public holidays than workdays (which was really nice) so apart from the 2 days I had to be back in Pretoria for work, Bala and I were at the farm for 7 days! It was loads of fun:

I spent quite a bit of time in the work-shed working on my box: It had to be sanded down completely, which meant doing each side - inside and outside - with 7 different grades of sandpaper! After that was done, the bottom had to be replaced, and 'feet' put on to give it some ground clearance. I probably worked on it for a total of 4 days...

The old stone work-shed

Inside the work-shed

Me sanding the chest

The finished (Smooth and Shiny) chest ...albeit upside-down and back to front in this photo!

The farm is pretty much located where the Free State, KZN and Mpumalanga Provinces meet, so its fairly chilly! It's not a working farm as such, they have 3 horses (Mike, Misha and Jasmine), 2 sheep (Poplap and Meh) and a smattering of cows on the hills (the cows actually belong to the owner of the farm).

Bala meeting the sheep (photo by Ani)

Karlien (the horses' owner) on Mike and her puppy Toffee (photo by Ani)

I also had the opportunity to go riding! I'm still nice and sore, but it was totally worth it :-)

Me riding Mike with Bala running alongside (photo by Ani)

Me and Misha

There are plenty of things/places to explore:

Me sitting on the cliffs (photo by Ani)

Plenty of open veld to ride: Karlien and I riding with Jasmine running with us

Some old-fashioned farm implements were still laying around... (photo by Ani)

At night the stars were so bright! [Southern Cross and Alpha Centauri] (photo by Ani)

My sister (who was there for 3 days with her husband) and I also had some quality sibling time

And of course, we HAD to have a braai! [Sarel, my Dad and Kobus]

Bala also had a blast - she and Toffee became great friends and at times could be seeing chasing each other round and round playing like crazy! Bala also loved barking at the sheep, the cattle and she even had a go at the little filly, Jasmine (although she soon realised it was best not to mess with a horse!) When we went out riding she would run full speed next to us, bounding over the grass. She was usually exhausted by the time it got dark, and I'd find her curled up all alone in the bedroom, fast fast asleep :-)

But now it's back to work. I start my exams soon too, so I guess I have to study at some point :-S

Back in SA...

2009-03-26T17:28:00.003+02:00

I'm back in South Africa (nearly 2 months already!) and I've sorta settled into life in the 'civilized' world! I'm really enjoying it.

I continue to study full-time thru a correspondence university here in Pretoria, called UNISA (University of South Africa) - I am doing a BA (General) with majors in Linguistics and International Politics, and a minor in Portuguese. I've only ever taken one or 2 modules per semester, so now that I have a full course load it's pretty intense. But I'm excited, I should finally graduate June 2010.

I also found a job! I am working for the Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria - I am administrating a Government bursary called Funza Lushaka, which is specifically intended to help Education students. It's a lot of work, and quite challenging - no 2 days are the same!

An aerial view of the Groenkloof Campus where I spend my working days
(the tall buildings are the student residences)

The campus is quite pretty - with lots of green!

The job unfortunately doesn't pay enough for me to rent an apartment nor buy a car, so I am living back with my parents and borrowing a car. It's quite an adjustment after having lived on my own for the past 7 years... but with that said, I'm really happy to be back in SA, its a new season and I'm excited to see how things pan out!

Ilha de Moçambique

2009-01-20T23:39:00.009+02:00

On the way down to South Africa I took the opportunity to stop on Ilha de Moçambique for 2 nights - its a beautiful little island - very run-down, but oh so picturesque! There are not much in terms of museums, but they were busy renovating the São Sebastião Fort, which houses the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, thought to be the oldest European building in the Southern Hemisphere. The island, which is only 3.5km across, used to be an important part in the slave trade, and today there is still a very big difference between the largely uninhabited "Stone Built Town" and the over-populated "Macuti Town" - its like there is an unspoken divide on the island...

Ilha de Moçambique is on the UNESCO's World Heritage List and totally worth the visit!

Here are some photos - click on the thumbnails to get a bigger picture.

Final Dive in Pemba

2009-01-09T18:20:00.000+02:00

Just before I left Pemba, I was sponsored to go for a final dive!

It was easily one of the most beautiful dives I've been on - visibility was fantastic and the bright sunlight streamed in and illuminated the vibrant colors of the coral reef! We saw a Napoleon Wrass, an Octopus hiding under a rock, Scorpion fish, Trumpet Fish and lots more.

It was a great way to say goodbye to Pemba!

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T20:20:00.007+02:00

I welcomed the New Year on the beach out at Maringanha with Jacinto, Katie, Raphael, Ana, Jessie and Rui - and of course my dog Bala had a blast running around chasing crabs!

The sky was clear and the stars bright as we built a fire in the sand

and roasted marshmallows to make 'smores'

and to add the usual African flair to the festivities, the guys cooked pork...

As midnight approached we made sure to keep a close eye on the clock. But when our cellphones displayed 00:00 we realized an important thing: We had totally forgotten to countdown! So we promptly started a countdown - and when we reached '1', the few cheap fireworks Rapha and Ana had bought at a store in town were meant to go off. But they didn't, so we counted down again and finally halfway thru our 3rd countdown they lit up the beach.

We were all laughing quite a bit by then!

It was a fun way to spend New Years and I wish you all a wonderful and prosperous 2009!

A Final Project

2008-12-27T20:24:00.002+02:00

I was doing movie night for the kids one night a few weeks ago and was shocked at what they had. 150 eager eyes were focussed on a small TV and the dodgy DVD player kept skipping and jumping throughout the movie. This really wasn't fair - we are a children's ministry after all! So I decided to tackle it as my final project here. With a very kind donation from South Africa, I was able to install a projector and Media Player in the library, and now ALL the kids can actually see the movie!

It took me about 3 weeks to get the entire DVD collection converted to divX format and loaded onto the Media Player. It was over 100 DVDs! Most of them are bible stories, but there are cartoons (Tom & Jerry) and also a few Disney movies. All in Portuguese of course!

Mark Mozely helped me put up the cage that John Woollet had designed for the projector - but my drill stopped working just as we were about the put in the final two screws on the front. So in true Iris style we improvised and used nails instead. They were really really really long nails, so we only hammered them in halfway - but now it looks kinda ghetto! But at least it's up and works like a dream!

The first time they used it was on Christmas day and the kids loved it!!

Christmas (round 2)

2008-12-25T17:31:00.003+02:00

Merry Christmas (again!) Today went by so quickly, but it was busy busy busy!

It started this morning 9am with handing out of gifts - all the kids got a little gift bag which had been bought from money raised by the children of the Valley Brook Community Church, CT and I helped Jessie hand out the gifts to the Tias, Tios and their kids.

Then we headed down to the church for a live nativity play which was organized and performed by the visitors.

It was great, really well done - they even used a real horse to take Mary to Bethlehem!

After the play, all the Iris kids and missionaries went to the refectory and enjoyed a great chicken lunch. It was family time, and it was really nice.

Then the real fun and games started - feeding all the villagers...

Over the past 3 years our strategy for keeping things organized and calm has evolved into a system that works very well! It has taken some time refining it, but I think we finally have it down!

From the front gate they were let in in groups of 20, holding hands and then via the church they made their way to the refectory - all the while being led hand in hand!

At the entrance to the refectory porch their hands were checked for a purple mark, and if they were un-marked they were let in.

At the door to the refectory they were filed in single file, handed a coke/fanta and a plate of food then directed to a seat.

As soon as they were done eating they joined the 'exit' line, where they were searched for food and plates before being let out. As they exited their palms were marked with a bit of gentian violet and each of the kids got a toy or some candy.

(Gentian Violet is used in wound care, and leaves a nice purple stain which lasts about a day or 2 before it washes off, so it was great to control who had already eaten)

Then they made their way back down to the front gate and went home!

We fed 2500 people today, all in just 2 1/2 hours!

After it was all done, the missionaries got together for a BBQ at John & Margaret's, where we ate and chatted till late!
Mark and Bridget, BBQ Chefs!

And for dessert Jessie baked a cake, and as an homage to the cold American christmas she was missing, I decorated the cake!

Then Jessie, Bala and I went to Maringanha and lay on the beach looking at the stars. It was gorgeous!

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas also!

Christmas Eve!

2008-12-24T21:14:00.008+02:00

Merry Christmas from a HOT Pemba, Moçambique!

Tonight was the annual candlestick fight, or as many in more conservative circles would know it as: "Christmas Eve Candlelight Service".

But I'll stick to 'Annual Candlestick Fight', as it more aptly describes what happens when you give 180 kids a lit candle! But it was loads of fun! (someone also described it as: The Candle Relight Service - well what would you expect?? Haha! Give a child a candle and he will blow it out! - and promptly try to relight it, and then it becomes a game to see who can blow out his neighbors candle...) but it still was fun!

Here I am with Selso, he's the son of our Bible School director. Selso loves taking Bala (my dog) for walks, so he was an instant friend!

Mark and Jen Mozley with Arcelmo, one of our newest kids - he came to live with us 2 days ago!

For Christmas, we all chipped in and gave our laundry lady, Veronica, a chicken, a bag of rice and some clothes, toys and candy for her 5 kids. I drove her out to her house in the village cos it was all a bit much to carry, but I left the camera at home (I'm still kicking myself for that!) She has quite a nice house - here in Mozambique the woman own the house, and they tend to invest in their houses instead of spending their wages on alcohol. So for the past year, Veronica has been putting her income into improving her house - by putting on a decent tin roof and matopi (mud) on the walls. It was really good to see that she has been making such a good investment!

I was tasked with trying to find a chicken - You'd think it would be easy... The first chicken seller I found was in the middle of Natite Market, and he asked me to marry him in the same breath as the price of the chicken. My polite refusal was met with astonishment and immediately he asked me "But why not?!!?" - my answer, "Because I dont want to" was met with another "But why???" Needless to say, I left quickly and went on an expedition to find another chicken seller. I finally found one and bought this chicken, and as I walked away the chicken seller ran after me, and said 'Excuse me, but will you marry me?' And yet again (I just copy pasted): My polite refusal was met with astonishment and immediately he asked me "But why not?!!?" - my answer, "Because I dont want to" was met with another "But why???" Haha, it was pretty funny - 2 proposals in one day! But at least I had the chicken! She lived in our back yard for a day, and Bala had to stay in the house - she liked chasing the chicken!

And this is the bag of rice we bought her:

Until tomorrow, when we have Christmas (round 2)...!

Christmas (round 1)

2008-12-13T21:37:00.001+02:00

We are having 2 christmases this year - the first one was December 13th and ALL our kids got gifts. It took nearly a month to get all the gift bags prepared, and even though I helped a bit, most of the work was done by Jessie and Tanya.

The day itself was quite busy - gift giving started at 4pm and lasted late into the night. I opted to stay at the 'Christmas Room' and get the bags ready to be sent down to the rooms as they were needed. Heidi personally gave each child their gift, and she spent a few minutes with each one as they unpacked their gift bags.

Jessie also got a chance to sit and have some fun with Victor - usually she has to run around organizing things, but there were some helpful visitors, so she got some quality time too!

Each of the gift bags contained a ton of goodies, most of which have been collected over the past 2 years by Iris UK and shipped over in a huge shipping container.

Inside a Girlie Bag: (We packed over 50 of these!)
*Stuffed Toy/ Doll
*Board Game
*Earrings/ Bracelets/ Necklaces/ Rings
*Nail Polish
*Hair bands/ Hair clips/ Hair extensions
*Candy
*Cookies
*Underwear
*2 sets of clothes
*Deodorant
*Toothbrush

Inside a Boyish Bag (we packed over 120 of them!)
*Toy Car/Truck
*Ball
*Board/Card Game
*Baseball cap
*Candy
*Cookies
*Underwear
*2 sets of clothes
*Deodorant
*Toothbrush

On real christmas day there will be a special chicken dinner, and then each of the kids will get another little gift, just something small - and this includes all the village kids who will join us, as well as the kids from Mieze and Noviane. Also, there are plans in the works for a candlelight service for the 24th!

Niassa Outreach - Dec 2007

2008-12-10T20:43:00.000+02:00

So, just over a year ago I went on a 2 week extended outreach to Niassa Province BUT I never blogged about it! So here it is now... just over 356 days later!

This is what I journaled way back then... "Extended outreach totally blew me away. after I had decided that I would take the plunge and go, I heard that there would only be 2 teams: one to Nampula prov, and the other in Cabo Delgado. I really wanted to go to Niassa, so I was disapointed, but I'd comitted to co-leading a team so I would just go. I saw carlos one day about a week before outreach and randomly said that I wanted to go on whichever team he was on. He said,' That would be great, I'm going to Niassa Province" I nearly jumped up and down with joy! I finally had the opportunity to go to Niassa. So exciting - and then I met my team. Co-leading with me was Jarod and Erica, the 2 HG students that to me had stood out the most for their leadership qualities and ability to have FUN. So I was really happy. I didnt really know the others on my team, but I figured that I would get to know them pretty quickly (trauma bonding!). We also had a really good team of Mozambicans going with us, as translators, worship leaders and cooks.

We were:
Carlos Wacha: Fearless Leader

Erica Grimaldi: Co-Leader

Jarod Ely: Co-Leader

Ruth Donaldson: Keeper of the Cash

Ruth Alexander: Assistant to the Cooks

Rosalind Walker

Sharon Ridenour: First Aid/Nurse

Kara Rowley: Midwife (you never know!)

Jessica Wereley

Stephanie Mueller: Assistant to the Cooks

Emilee Johnson

Marisa Gourley

Don Foster

Lopes Mozambique: Our Driver

Johnny: Worship & Translation

Egas: Translator

Lazaro: Worship

Assane: Cook

Antonio Balanca: Cook

Teresa: Cook

and of course me: Token Missionary, co-leader and Sound Person
.

Using the adage that "A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words" I have decided to tell the story of the adventure with photos!

Team Niassa!

We camped in villages...

...and we camped near the mountains

And I slept in my pickup most of the time (until the generator leaked and I had to evacuate!

Many an hour was spent in the back of this camião

And some of the time was spent behind it too!

It was a long and dusty road

As I just said"It was a long and dusty road"...

A desperate effort to keep the dust at bay!

We were there to spread the Good News

Dancing...

Fighting off swarms of flying bugs...

...and Preaching our way across the Province

The outreaches served a dual purpose... Generator = Electricity!

We had the biggest, most airy kitchen in the world!

And our leftovers always went to the kids in the village

The man in the tree we called "Mango Man"... he was one of the Niassa Pastors who travelled with us, and he JUST ate mangos. All the time, breakfast, lunch, supper, snacks. For some reason he had a diarrhea problem...

It wasn't all just work work work - we had some down time too!

The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful

We spent 2 nights at the Iris base in Lichinga

Where we enjoyed CLEAN and airy bathroom facilities for the first time in a while...

We also took some time off to visit Lake Malawi (Lago Niassa)

But for the most part this was the first thing we saw in the morning...

:-) OK people lets do the Can-Can!

So there you have it - a quick look at our outreach. It was amazing, we saw miracles and healings and the team was just such a pleasure to be with! Truly one of the good memories I will treasure from my time here in Mozambique"

Jungle Fever!

2008-12-02T11:58:00.004+02:00

This past week a team from SunWest Christian Fellowship in Alberta, Canada came and they built the most amazing Jungle Gym for our kids! The grand opening was last week friday, and even Heidi took a turn to play!

The kids absolutely love it!

Victor at the Beach

2008-11-24T11:34:00.003+02:00

We had some beach fun at Murrebue the other day with 2 of our kids: Victor and Carlitos - my dad had sent a bright green inflatable tube with me, and we had a blast playing in the water with it. Victor absolutely loved it - he loved diving head first off of it too, so we had to watch him carefully! (Carlitos was scared of the green thing, we put him on it and he screamed! - so he went off and payed in the sand)

Jessie and Victor

It was quite windy, so we had hold on to the tube at all time, else it would have blown away!

We have also recently received some donations of beach play things - some shovels, buckets and a cute little water mill. I built a really cool sand castle - but the kids didnt see the sense in it - they were more interested in using the buckets to fetch water! Finally I dug a 'doorway' thru one of the castle walls and got the boys to pour water into the 'courtyard' and watch how it runs thru the door and out. They enjoyed that!

Victor playing in the sand

And of course, you can never leave a sand castle standing and Carlitos had a fantastic time stomping on the 4 castle turrets. It was great to get out and relax over the weekend!

50 years of being a CITY

2008-10-17T14:45:00.007+02:00

This weekend Pemba celebrates the 50 year anniversary of being a city! They have been promoting the celebrations by driving a HUGE flatbed truck around town blasting out music.

I love the way that the speakers are tied to the back of the truck! :-)

Over this weekend there will be parades in town, and our 4 horses will also join in the fun...

Random Facts:
Pemba was founded by the Portuguese in 1904 - they called it Porto Amélia, but back then it was just a little town! Pemba was renamed in 1975 after Portugal granted Moçambique their independence. Pemba is also home to the 3rd largest (and deepest) natural bay in the world! (and it has been my home for the past 3 years!)

Accounting 101: Payroll

2008-09-05T22:16:00.001+02:00

While our wonderful Swiss accountant is off in Brazil to be married, I have been asked to take care of just one tiny facet of his job: Payroll. Iris Pemba employ over 300 local workers, (NO the missionaries do not get paid!) and I have to make sure that they get their money! We usually pay at the end of the month, but because of some other pressing matters, the data I have to use to prepare the payroll was only given to me this week. So it was a busy busy week! But it all went really well.

I spent nearly 10 hours sitting at a white plastic table, stuffing various combinations of dirty bills into envelopes, and needless to say after a while my brain got really tired! I had some help tho for the last few hours, so I was happy! This month I think the idea is to pay some of the workers who have bank accounts directly thru the bank... which would mean less envelope stuffing for me, BUT all the time sheets and spreadsheets have to be 100%, and the encryption program will be tested for the first time.

Looks like us here in deepest darkest Africa is catching up with technology eh? :-)

Photo Update: Tete Food Distribution

2008-07-15T13:36:00.014+02:00

Here are some photos of my 3 weeks in Tete Province doing food distribution. We were able to distribute food to ±1 300 children in 9 districts.
That is about 26 000 kg corn, 2 600 kg beans and 1 300 litres of oil!

(Jessie, one of my amazing team, wrote an update on her blog on 20 July 2008, have a look!)

The bridge across the Zambezi River dominates the skyline

The Team: Sitoe, Carlito, Jessie, Annelie, Nikki, Pastor Jeronimo, Travis

Pastors Jeronimo's house - Day 1, making the plans for the coming weeks - we were quite spoiled, he has electricity!

Outside Pastor Jeronimo's house in Canangola, on the outskirts of Tete. In the foreground is the 'kitchen' where the food was prepared.

The little market in Canangola just outside Tete where we bought the first few tons of corn

Here we are measuring out the corn to make sure that the bags really contain the amount of latas we are paying for

The prices spiked when we arrived, so we sent in our negotiator to get the price of corn back down to 125mtn (±$5) per lata (20kg)

Sitting on food for 200 kids in Tsangano

Handing out the beans in Moatize

We had to document and photograph each child that received food

But first we had to make sure that the kids were who they said they were and that they really were being looked after by the caretaker... Matching names to faces using the lists of registered orphans in Canangola

We lived out in the mountains near Tsangano for 4 days:

African 'Drive-Thru Take Away' :-) Chicken and Fries sold next to the road - quite delicious actually!

Driving into the 'bush bush' to get to the village

On the way we saw some boys who were dressed as antelope with long horns stretching out from a grotesque face mask. I think we scared them as much as they scared us, because they bounded away into the bush with a machete in each hand.

There is never a shortage of eager hands...

... and heads to help unload the boxes of oil

This was our bathroom

...and here is the view we had while brushing our teeth (it was beautiful)

We were doing distribution in a grass-walled building (the church), and the kids practically destroyed the walls trying to stare at us

Locally made chairs - we sat on these for hours!

Distribution in progress

The multitude of people waiting outside for their names to be called

Some of the kids would scour the ground and pick up all the spilled corn kernels.

Each child receives 1 lata of corn (±20kg)

Each child also received 1 bottle of oil and ±2kg beans

Then they walk up to 10km back to their home with their caretaker

We had a bit of 'fun' driving back to Pemba - we decided to drive back to Pemba via Morrumbala...

After taking the 'shortcut' we encountered the broken ferry across the Shire River... just 30km away from where we would have stopped for the night!

Our other option to cross the river was the Dona Ana Bridge, the longest train bridge in Africa at 3.2km, which stretches across the Zambezi River to Vila de Sena (Which is close to Caia, where we could take the ferry). BUT they have converted this bridge back into a train bridge, so we were stuck on the wrong side of the river, and because of the current refurbishing work on this bridge we could not cross here either - so we had to drive all the way back to Tete - a 9 hour drive!

The train bridge with the deceptive remnants of the planks put down to make it possible for vehicles to cross in the earlier days - apparently the new railway tracks start just out of eyesight...

It was fun, challenging and quite an experience - there are other teams who have gone out in the meantime and are continuing what we started.

Going to Tete Province

2008-06-18T09:48:00.005+02:00

I am going to Tete Province, leaving TOMORROW morning! I will be leading a team of 4, going for 3 weeks to find, feed and document over 7000 orphaned and abandoned children... I only found out yesterday that I was going, so I'm still trying to process the shock. I have never been to this province before, so I do not know what to expect! Kinda scary, but I know that it will be good and that God is in control!

Please pray for the journey - it is about 30 hours drive from Pemba, and I have heard rumors that the roads in Tete are bad!

The team is:
Nikki Wheeler
Travis Frugé
Annelie Basson
Jessie Turner
The driver of our 5ton truck - Sitoe
and his assistant - Carlitos

We will be meeting with the provincial pastor, Pastor Jeronimo, and he will be guiding us to the various villages where the kids are staying, then we will have to find and buy enough food to give each kid a 3 month supply of: Corn, Beans, Oil and Salt.

This is quite a big project (as you can imagine) and there is NO way that we will be able to connect with each of the 7000 kids on this trip, so we will be the initial team, with more teams following later this month to continue what we started! But we aim to feed and document as many kids as possible.

(Image from WikiPedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tete_Province)

Thinking Outside The Box

2008-06-13T20:59:00.004+02:00

What you get when you have:

A projector which for no apparent reason would not focus no matter how much you twist the little focus dial; 4 guys trying to make it work; a random funny comment and a pair of glasses?

... and so the story begins:

Movie nights here at mission school is a night out, literally, a night out. I set up the screen outside one of the student's houses (house 5) and then everyone gathers round and sits under the bright African stars and watches the evening's movie.

Last week everything worked fine - no problems, this week the projector refused to focus at a distance - the largest we could get a picture that was in-focus was maybe 5cm from the lens, and then it was about 5cm x 5cm... not very helpful when you have over 40 people trying to see! A general consensus was that the projector was missing a lens - which inspired the random comment of "We should try a pair of glasses!" - Everyone chuckled, but I figured that we couldn't lose anything by trying, so I held my glasses in front of the projector and it worked! We tried several different prescriptions, but mine was still the best. One of the other ladies had an extra pair that was a tad stronger than mine, but for astigmatism, so I wore them for the duration of the movie and the projector wore mine!

We got some books, carefully positioned the pair of glasses on them, a bit of duct tape and we were all set! The picture was still a bit fuzzy around the edges, but we could see well enough, and most importantly we didn't have to cancel movie night!

I still have NO idea why the projector wouldn't work, nothing weird happened to it between last week's movie and tonight - it just sat in it's bag in a corner of my room. Who knows? But I think that the improvisation of tonight will make me smile for quite a long time still! :-)

Coming Soon... HS8!

2008-05-29T11:33:00.004+02:00

Just a few days to go before HS8 kicks off! Things are a-buzz here in sunny Pemba as the students start trickling in AND to add to all the excitement it is Children's Day on June 1st, so we are gearing up for a busy busy weekend. (Yippee for a public holiday on Monday though!)

I have practically finished preparing all the sound systems - just a few more cables to make - and I also have to move ALL the sound stuff that is currently nicely stored in my house mate's room back to the sound room, seeing as she is coming back this sunday... :-) But all in all it's looking good, and I'm really excited to see what life changing things happen in this school!

Cool Nights

2008-05-21T12:24:00.002+02:00

Back in Pemba and things are cooling down quite a bit! The nights are chilly enough for me to switch off my fan and snuggle up under a thin blanket! Its lovely!!!

At the moment I am busy preparing for the next Harvest School of Missions (HS8), getting all the sound systems upgraded and ready for the many many outreaches we will be doing. I am also 'on staff' for this school, meaning that I will be more involved with the actual running of the school and all the programs that will be offered. It will be a busy time (as usual), but I am looking forward to a brilliant, uplifting and encouraging school - is all kicking off June 2!

My other big job is getting the church system installed, but this is proving to be a bit of a challenge - part of the floor of the church will have to be dug up to lay a pipe with all the cables running to the stage. A fairly straightforward task, but getting hold of the maintenance guy is a like playing cat & mouse! But I hope to have that done before the students arrive...

Slideshow: Road Trip... Pemba to Pretoria

2008-05-01T02:09:00.004+02:00

Here is a short little 'video' of the road from my recent 4-day road trip from Mozambique to South Africa!

(The name labels you see are just more or less where we were when the photo was taken...)

Road Trip!

2008-04-16T05:00:00.002+02:00

That time of year has come again, where I have to renew my 'carnet de passage' - the temporary import permit for my car. To do that, I have to drive down to South Africa...!

I am setting off on this marathon drive early, 5am and will hopefully be arriving in Pretoria (South Africa) late Saturday evening. Please pray for a safe drive, good companionship and laughs, and that all the radar speed guns will miraculously jam just as we pass ;-)

The proposed route is as follows:

Day 1: Pemba - Mocuba

Day 2: Mocuba - Inhassoro

Day 3: Inhassoro - Lindela

Day 4: Lindela - Pretoria

So, as usual I shall let ya'll know how it goes...

Christmas in April...

2008-04-15T14:37:00.007+02:00

Is it still Christmas? Well here in Pemba it apparently is! The last vestiges of the festive season can be seen in the lone christmas tree shaped light hanging across the road near base 1... it's kinda funny seeing as all the other light are fused, just this one is still shining brightly! :-)

Merry Christmas?

Mieze Grand Opening

2008-04-06T17:19:00.000+02:00

Mieze is a little village just 20 minutes out of Pemba, and has been the focus of much of our activity these past 2 years: It started out as just another Iris church, where orphans were looked after by the local pastor, but it has grown into something so much bigger (& better)! So…

This past Sunday was quite a special day for Iris – our very first Children’s Village was opened! It is fully staffed and run by Mozambicans, with only minor oversight from Papa Don, but it’s really the start of the realization of Iris’ vision - to have the majority of the orphans in villages like these - and I was privileged to be part of the grand opening on Sunday April 6!

They have a chicken farm, a goat farm and good, clean, easily accessible water means crops; so in reality they are self-sufficient! The kids who live there are part of one big family, where everyone helps, nothing is just handed to them on a plate.

The day started with a shortened church service, and I think that the award for ‘most energetic dancing while singing’ goes to them,

they were just bouncing up and down, and jumping constantly in the little sauna they call a church. I do not know how they do it; it’s one of the hottest mud buildings I’ve ever been in! But it was good. (You can just just see me in the corner!)

After the service all the people were invited to join them for lunch, a special chicken meal prepared by all the kids and adults, using their very own chickens! Then Papa Don arranged for a truck to take all the kids to the beach after that, so all in all it was a lovely day for them!

Lichinga System Delivery

2008-04-04T16:51:00.002+02:00

I had been trying to arrange a trip out to Lichinga for a while, and after our stay there with the extended outreach in December 07, I was even more excited about getting a sound system out to them. I was putting together a system for them from repaired bits and pieces, BUT most of the stuff was down in South Africa… our pilot had to fly down to SA to meet with the guy who imported his plane, and I took the opportunity to send some broken stuff down to SA, and then brought back a pile of repaired sound systems. I am so grateful for that little Cessna 206!!!

With the system now in Pemba I just had to work out when would be the best time for me to make the trip out to the other side of the country – it’s a 18 hour drive, and with the rainy season some bridges had become bit rickety… I ventured a thought – maybe we could fly there??? When I put the question to the pilot he was more than willing!!

Initially we planned to do a day trip, there and back in one day, but I really wanted to stay for one night at least and go with the Lichinga’ites on an outreach to make sure that they knew how it all fits together.

We had it all planned, date set everything, when we heard that there was a bit of a hassle with renewing the plane’s permit – so we had to postpone the trip for a week. Finally the day dawned and we were off!!

It’s only a 3 hour flight from Pemba to Lichinga by little plane, and it was a smooth ride above the clouds.
We landed at the airport and the guys from the Iris base were there to meet us and help unload the plane.

It was so chilly there! Such a difference especially compared to a hot humid Pemba, and I was glad that I’d brought my thick fleece hoody.

The house they are staying in is really close to the airport, so I walked back to the base with Jesse & Tanya, while Peter waited with the car, for Joe to file the flight plan for the next day.
I did a quick training session with everyone – they had all been to Holy Given in Pemba and had used the systems on outreach, so this was just a little refresher course.

The twins took us to see the actual base they were building on the Iris property (the farmhouse we were staying in was on loan from their neighbour), and it is amazing! It feels like you are in the middle of nowhere, just mountains in the distance as far as the eye can see. It is so easy to forget that there is a bustling city and airport just 10mins down the road.

It was great to catch up with all the Lichinga’ites, but after lunch it was siesta time – we were only heading out at 5pm that afternoon for the outreach, and it would be a later-than-usual night, so everyone got some rest.

A missionary couple that are working with another organisation were letting us use their vehicles to transport the equipment and people – they were very interested to see an Iris outreach in action…

The village was not very far away, just maybe 15mins, but they had been waiting for nearly a year now to see the Jesus film! The village chief was very friendly and the people quite respectful – giving us space to setup, and waiting patiently. --generator-- As usual the music attracted the crowd and just before sunset the pastor started to preach. Because Lichinga is at high altitude, and quite mountainous it gets really cold here at night – so outreach is flipped around: first the preaching and the gospel THEN the movie. Then some more preaching afterwards…

We were in a Yao village, a people who during the slave trading years were used by the Arabs to capture and sell other tribes in the area into slavery. They are a very powerful people, but despised.

The night air got colder and colder, and after a while I wished I had proper shoes on, and not just my flip flops – looking out into the crowd I could only just image how cold the kids were in their threadbare clothes. So when the movie ended it was no surprise that the majority of the crowd disappeared to the warmth of their houses, and only about 30 people stayed to hear the repeated message and altar call. There were a number of salvations, and plans were made to return a few days later and begin discipleship.

I love the way they work here – it’s not about hitting a village and then counting the raised hands so that the next newsletter can sound impressive, it’s really about raising up and discipling people; forming personal relationships and working consistently with them to help the whole community – because once the whole community has been raised up, and taught, THEY go out and take the Good News to the neighbouring villages, and they are the example that is followed. It is really a longer-term vision, but personally, I think it’s more effective.

Back to the farmhouse and a great meal of spicy pasta and a homemade coffee, nutmeg & cinnamon cake that was baked over a coal burner, delicious! They have no running water or electricity there, so we had good fellowship by candlelight!

We set off the next morning as soon as the airport opened at 7am (which meant we were at the plane at 6am). The return flight was just as uneventful; we were home in time for lunch!

Grand Church Opening!

2008-03-27T13:20:00.004+02:00

Goodbye Green & White stripy tent! Hello HUGE new church!

We had the grand opening of the new church building on Easter Sunday, and it was packed with people from all the smaller Comunhão na Colheita churches in the surrounding area.

Lots of singing and dancing by our new larger worship team, and they even wore matching outfits - so it was an exciting time for everyone!!!

It's a nice building, although quite 'cavey/echoey' from a sound engineer (such as myself) point of view, and I now have to find a way to install a decent 'permanent' sound system...

My Little Sister

2008-03-17T17:20:00.005+02:00

This has NO relevance to my life and work in Mozambique as a missionary, but I just wanted ya'll to know: My little sister got married yesterday!!!! She is now Mrs Annelie Vermeulen and I am so proud of her! It was a fantastic day, beautiful ceremony and a stunning reception. I really pray that they will have a long and happy life together! Here are some pics:

Jan & Ani Vermeulen

16 March 2008

Jan, Ani, Me & Gerrit (Jan's Brother)

Peter (Dad), Me, Melodie (Mom), Ani & Jan

Jan & Ani with Pastor Colin McGeer

My little Sister & I

A good way to end my year!

2008-03-06T12:31:00.004+02:00

Today is my last day of being 23, and I think I'm ending it on a good note :-)

This morning at 6am I got a call from the PA of our base director, asking me to fill in for her at 11am because she would not be able to teach the Mozambican student pastors today. I think I must have been sleepy cos I heard myself say 'Sure', what's the topic?

It was to be on Forgiveness, but because our director is fluent in Portuguese there was not translator scheduled... I desperately tried getting hold of anyone who could translate for me, but could find no one, finally I decided to just go ahead and be prepared to speak in Portuguese. Dr E had a little book on Forgiveness that he loaded me, and all my friends encouraged me and gave me the confidence to go for it. (But I was still very nervous!)

It was the very FIRST time that I teach in the bible school - usually the other missionaries have a syllabus they follow, but I had to teach from scratch! I am so grateful for the 3 years I spent in the UK at a ministry where Forgiveness was taught often!!!

When I arrived at the class the other teacher was just finishing up, and for some random reason one of our fluent in Portuguese long term missionaries happened to be in the class, and she was willing to stay and translate for me! I probably could have taught in Portuguese, but having a translator meant I could teach deeper and more meaningfully.

So it went really well, at the end, two of the pastors gave testimony of things that had happened in the past that they were still carrying, and now was the first time that they could forgive the people who wronged them - quite amazing!

I also went rock collecting just before the class, and did a demonstration of how holding onto unforgiveness is like carrying a bucket filled with stones around with you - I kinda forgot a pastor was standing there holding the bucket, and he was getting tired! But I think it got the point across...

Next time I hope that I will have more time to prepare, and then I could prepare a teaching in Portuguese, but until then I am having fun trying to put my newly acquired Portuguese into practice!

Oh and the other thing that happened today: I named a baby!

Our laundry lady had a baby boy last week Wednesday and she still came to work the next day, she was so excited about the birth, but could not tell me what the baby's name was. Then last Monday I asked her again if she had named the baby yet, and she said, "You can choose a name for him". Eeek! But I thought about it, so this morning when she came to do our laundry she asked me and I told her that I named her baby 'Tiago' (translated it is 'James') - she liked it!

So to round off my year: I've named a baby (for the first time) and taught in the bible school (for the first time)!

Nearly back in Pemba

2008-02-25T19:27:00.003+02:00

This is my last night in South Africa, I am packing - trying to fit a myriad of random things in my bag: Glue and patches for Iris' little rubber duck boat, new wiper blades for my car, plastic medicine baggies for the clinic, Portuguese books for the kids' resource centre, all my university books AND all the stuff I usually buy to take with me: Tins of food, pasta sauce, sachets of juice mix, dog food... keeping in mind I only have a total of 30kg/66lb luggage allowance!

But I am really excited to be heading 'home', albeit to a hot and rainy Pemba - it has been nearly 2 months - I miss it so much!

Leaving Portugal

2008-02-17T18:42:00.002+02:00

My time here in Portugal is at an end, and I'm preparing to swap the chilly European winter for a HOT and humid summer in Mozambique!

It has been an incredible time, not just of learning, but also of rest! These 6 weeks in Portugal has been so freeing for me. There has not been the fear of getting mugged as I walk to school everyday, and life is just easier: Shopping for groceries, cooking, public transport, internet... I had forgotten how 'easy' life in a 1st world country can be! But I think that I'm all recharged and ready to take on living in a poor 3rd world nation again!

I have learnt loads and am excited about going to put my language into practice. Of course there is still lots I dont know (it takes longer than just 6 weeks to learn a language), but I have a good foundation now that I can continue to build on.

Life in Pemba should be easier now that I know Portuguese better... at least I hope it is!

2 minutes: In Portuguese!

2008-02-12T00:54:00.000+02:00

So sunday went well - I did 'cheat' a bit and memorize what I wanted to say, and then when I got to the front of the church I just spoke from memory - for 2 whole minutes... but it went really really well! :-) However, after I had finished my spiel the lady asked me a question and I had NO idea what she said - granted she was talking very fast and had a Columbian Portuguese accent (excuses excuses!) So I was kinda embarrassed and put on the spot, but it went OK overall and I chatted to some people afterwards and understood them easily enough and they all said that I spoke really well.

Then my teacher, Eugenia took me to the beach at Guiche, and I could see Cabo da Roca (the most western most point of Europe) and we sat in the gorgeous hot sun for a while [the temperature was over 20C/68F!]. I got home fairly late, but it was a good day - lots of practice speaking Portuguese!

So now I am in my last week of class - It has really been a fantastic time, and I am looking forward to returning to Mozambique to put into practice what I've learnt!

Just 8 Days Left

2008-02-06T03:04:00.000+02:00

So this week has started (it was Carnaval, so we had a long weekend) and I only have 8 days of class left. I am doing some private lessons too, so that is good because the teacher lets me talk about what I do in Moz, and by doing that I'm learning loads of vocabulary that would be more useful in Moz than what we learn in the group lessons: For example, "I went to the doctor and had an electrocardiogram"... Cant quite remember the last time I felt the need to say that! :-)

My teacher has invited me to go to her church this coming Sunday - and today after our lesson (where I told her all about doing flood relief last year) she insisted that she wants to tell her pastor about me, and she wants to ask if I would be able to share a bit of what I do in Moz with the congregation... aaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!! But I will take on this challenge and enjoy it... Will let you know how it goes.

WoW!

2008-01-25T03:17:00.000+02:00

I just received the most amazing news ever... I got a donation, one which allows me to stay for an extra 2 weeks of Language School! I am so excited, did NOT think that it would happen - but just so amazed by God's provision!!!

So now I'll be here in Lisbon until Feb 18! Yay! :-)

Só Sei...

2008-01-18T02:31:00.000+02:00

As Socrates said "Só sei que nada sei", or as it would be in English: "I only know that I know nothing"... That's how I feel trying to learn 'real' Portuguese!!! Coming here, I thought that a month would be enough to brush up on what I thought was fairly good Portuguese: but I've had to go back to the beginning and re-learn pretty much everything! The Portuguese spoken in Mozambique is for all practical reasons, completely different. So it has been a grueling 2 weeks, quite discouraging at times.

It probably would have been easier to first come to Portugal and learn 'clean' Portuguese, and then apply it in Mozambique, than trying to do it the other way round! :-§

So right now I am toying with the idea of staying a bit longer - finances providing that is. I need about €350 ($520) per week to cover rent, school fees, food and transport... My schedule is pretty busy - School uses up most of the day and I do revision at night, so I don't really get to go out much. I do however go exploring around the Lisbon area on the weekends: Last weekend I went to Belém, this weekend I'm going to Sintra.

Please keep praying that I'll get the language soon: I only have 2 more weeks of class scheduled, and it feels like time is running out way too quickly!

New Year, New Country

2008-01-08T02:09:00.000+02:00

So as you all might know, I'm in Lisbon, Portugal at the moment to attend a 4 week intensive language school.

I'm studying at the Oxford School, trying to tweak my Portuguese to a level that will be closer to fluent than what I am now! Some of the other missionaries have done this same course and are now fairly fluent, which I take as a good sign :-)

The cost of the course is in the region of Euro615/US$870, (ouch) which excludes my accommodation (I am renting a room/bed in a big house with 3 really old little ladies). This is actually less expensive than any of the other school's I looked at, so thats really good. And I guess that living with the sisters and trying to decipher their 'Lisbonese' can only help me improve my language skills.

Fortunately there is another girl from the States also living at the house, so I have an amiga to keep me sane! She will be going to Iris Zimpeto in April, and before I arrived at the house I had no idea she was going to be there. So I was happy to see her to say the least, even tho I had been adamant that I wanted to immerse myself in the language, I think now, that it would have been too overwhelming!

The main reason why I'm in Portugal as opposed to a school in Maputo is a safety thing. Also I blend in a bit better in Europe (until I open my mouth), and it's great not having people stop me in the street asking for money and telling me that 'You no love Jesus' when I dont give them anything...

So this is really exciting, I know that by doing this course I will be in a better position to assist Iris Ministries with their work in Mozambique, but it will also be an investment in myself, for the future - who knows where God will send me next?

If for any reason you want to text/sms me, you can reach me on: +351 922 068 311

I will be here in Portugal until Feb 6, 2008 - and then heading back to a gorgeous hot Pemba!

Video: What is Extended Outreach all about?

2007-12-29T02:18:00.000+02:00

This footage was put together from various of my fellow team member's cameras, and I thought it sums up outreach :-) Enjoy!

OK, well, of course outreach is more that just that... :-)

I was on outreach...

2007-12-20T02:21:00.000+02:00

I totally did not get around to letting ya'll know that I was actually leaving to go on the extended outreach - things just got so crazy that I didnt get time to get online - but I'm back now, and preparing to go to Language School in Portugal... I'll write an update soon on how outreach was, but if I had to sum it up in 3 words it would be: IT WAS AMAZING!

So keep a look out for a nice long post with pics and all!

Final Week

2007-12-03T09:54:00.000+02:00

HG is coming to an end, and this week is looking to be SUPER CRAZY busy busy busy. Extended outreaches leave this coming Saturday, and our days are packed solid with preparing for graduation, team building day, outreach and then there are still a myriad of things to be finalized (generators to be fixed, lights to be bought, scuba diving to be done (just kidding)... :-) I was trying to schedule having a meal with one of the students, but this week I'll be surprised if I can even find time to eat :-{

Malaria :-( AGAIN!

2007-11-26T05:36:00.000+02:00

I've just had malaria (AGAIN!!!!) and was in bed for the entire week... But I'm feeling much better, mostly have my energy back but still just taking it slow. Its nasty. Horrible.

Fondue in Pemba

2007-11-11T07:34:00.001+02:00

We had a real swiss cheese fondue last night! My Swiss friend bought it when he was in SA last month, and yesterday was the day the 4 of us decided to try it out! It was so yummy. Obviously we dont have a real fondue set, so we improvised with a stainless steel pot, some tea candles, and a wire spring contraption to keep the pot above the candles.

It worked quite well for the most part, but just before we finished the cheese, the pot sorta slid off the wire and we had to eat the last bit of cheese VERY quickly!

Video: Little Victor!

2007-11-08T00:13:00.000+02:00

He is 17 months old now and he's started walking!!! SO cute!

He also went for a ride on one of our 4 horses - he enjoyed that loads:

Medical Outreach - Montpuez

2007-11-05T10:19:00.000+02:00

This past weekend I went on an overnight/weekend outreach to Montpuez - it was a joint medical outreach so something totally different from the usual outreaches I've been on!

Montpuez is due west from Pemba, and the road is smooth and tarred all the way - although we went into the bush bush down a dirt road for about an hour to get to the village where we were going to stay the night.

The Holy Given students had to ride on the back of an open camiao - at least it didnt rain!

My car is AMAZING, I love it!!! So handy and practial and useful! It has made my life so much easier in terms of carting sound equipment around and setting up in the villages at night I feel more secure about the equipment not being messed with.

I set the sound desk etc up in the back of my truck, so I have a place to sit during the movie and also I can close the doors to prevent the system disapearing!

This is our "high-tech" setup, it works really well! The Mediaplayer has replaced the DVD player we used to use, and the hard drive based system has been invaluble, worth every cent!

All set for outeach!

Unfortunately it RAINED that night, so we only showed about 1 hour of the film before I decided to pack up - we were all soaked by the time the system was in the car, and the whole team was in bed by 7:30pm! It was the first time that I've been in bed before midnight on an outreach, and sleeping for 10 hours was brilliant!

Tent Land - This village has not church building, but the pastor opened his yard for us to camp in

All the cooking is done over a fire - here they are heating the water for coffee in the morning!

Just look what missions has done! These are my friends Eric the Doctor, and Raphael the Accountant!

Saturday dawned slightly cloudy, but it was not going to rain - there were some patches of blue peeking thru the clouds, and by 7am it was starting to get kinda warm.

The Medical Landrover

The Medical team (headed up by Dr Angie), started setting up the brown tent where they treat and pray for anyone who needs medical attention. The problems they encounter range from asthma and scabies to basic wound care, so they are kept really busy! All the kids in the village are also de-wormed, and they stand fairly patiently in line waiting for their turn. Each kid is also prayed over, so it's an awesome ministry opportunity.

Dr Angie de-worming some kids

In the Medical Tent: This little girl has asthma and her fatehr was told by the witchdoctor that there was nothing anyone could do to help her! (Dr Angie was able to help her of course)

We did some more evangelism in the village while the medical outreach was happening, so the sound system was setup again

It was a good outreach - the 2nd night we were in Montpuez town, and there were a number of hecklers and 3 fights broke out while were preaching, but we showed the Jesus film and even though I was sitting with the sound system, I heard from some of the students that there were a number of healings! So good! :-)

My first week on HG staff

2007-10-29T07:01:00.000+02:00

My first week of being on Holy Given staff, and man oh man is it busy! But its so much fun. This is an amazing group of students, they are so eager to get involved and really don't mind going the extra mile.

I did sound training with all the guys again, and they've been doing their own sound for school since the start of HG (its going good), and the outreaches are also going really well. It is quite a task keeping all the systems juggled - there is an overnight outreach every Thursday, returning Friday afternoon, but then 2 teams leaving every Friday morning for weekend outreach. And there is school everyday. And even tho I have 4 systems, I want the guys to practice on the outreach systems, so making sure that an outreach system isn't accidentally setup on a Friday when its meant to go out is a challenge... Good thing they are all color coded: Red (the small Yamaha Stage Pass system) and Yellow, Green & Blue (Mackie SRM450 outreach systems)!

So the systems have been going really well, although on this past weekend's outreach the 'Yellow' system's generator stopped working on the 2nd night, so they borrowed a small one from someone in the village, and this resulted in one of the guys on the team sending me an ominous text message: "We have some work for you..." Oh no! :-§

Well, the generator they had borrowed didn't have a voltage regulator built into it, so one of the plug strips went 'poof' (I'm told there was smoke and sparks!) and the little sound desk [a Yamaha MG10/2] stopped working too. Fortunately when I tested the little sound desk today it still worked, I'm SO relieved, as they are no longer in production so getting a replacement sent up from South Africa would have been next to impossible. The plug strip is a goner tho - good thing I got 5 extra ones in my storeroom! :-)

I am also responsible for the 'Village Feeding'. Heidi's heart is that no one goes hungry, so even tho the village kids are not allowed on the base during the day, they are allowed in for an hour or 2 for lunch. It gets kinda rowdy up in the kitchen/dining room, so the village kids are fed in one of the classrooms are the bottom of the property. My job is to make sure that there is a team of students who do this everyday. I made a schedule and the students have been AMAZING and run with it. No problems!!! (I told you they are a great bunch!)

I'm also trying to find some of the 'lost luggage' - doing it as a favor for Eric who helped me out with sound for the week that I was away - so I go to the airport everyday searching for the bags! The 2 students have been pretty chilled about it, they have been living out of whatever they had in their carry-on for the past 2 weeks! I did try and cheer them up tho, and I told them about a student from the previous school who's lost luggage only turned up the day before he left Pemba! I dont think they appreciated me telling them that! :-p

So it's going really well, God is doing some amazing things in the student's lives, and it's really exciting to be part of it all!

Heading North

2007-10-19T02:01:00.000+02:00

I'm on my way to Pemba after 2 short weeks in South Africa! My exams went well, but I'm glad that they are finally done.
Holy Given started on Tuesday, so I've missed the first few days of school - but I'm sure that I'll get settled in real quick and get to know all the students that I will be working with for the next 9 weeks!

I'm studying really hard. Serious....

2007-10-10T07:26:00.000+02:00

OK, so I'm not really throwing myself into studying as much as I should be - but I have a valid excuse: Raphael and Eric travelled with me to Pretoria to renew their visas, so I just HAD to show them a bit of South Africa! It was their first time in my country, and you know what they say about first impressions...

So I took them to our big mall (Menlyn), I took them to visit an old Dutch fort (Fort Klapperkop) and we went to Pilanesberg National Park, to go look at some animals. It was so much fun to have them here - and I think they liked it too!

A 'Disinfector' used to clean the soldier's uniforms

Here are some photos taken by Raphael at the game reserve: (click on the thumbnails to view the larger versions on Raphael's website)

So this past week has been fun, but the guys left today... I guess now I have no more excuses! I write my first exam on Oct 15, and the second one on the 17th. Then I head back to Pemba to join the staff for the next Holy Given School of Missions [HG7] starting soon.

Outreach in Pemba

2007-09-28T02:18:00.001+02:00

Last night we went on outreach to a place 6 minutes away from my house - I've never been there before - its a village just off the main road, in a fairly muslim area. For some random reason we left the base at 3:30pm... arriving at 3:36pm, and considering that the sun only sets at 5:30pm we had some time to kill! I sat in my car and studied for my upcoming exams while waiting for the sun to set.

Finally its time, and the guys get everything set up real quick, too quick actually cos we had to play the swahili dancing music for about 25mins before it was dark enough to start the film.

Its Ramadaan at the moment, and one of our student pastors came to me and excitedly informed me that he had stationed 6 other pastors around the generator, because there were banditos in the city and they could easliy take off with the generator. I thank him, and then he adds, "...and usually, here in Pemba city, after the movie, the people like to throw rocks at us. But its OK, because God is good!" *gulp* OK.

I had set up the sound desk and media player in the back of my car - it makes it easier to look after it, and also gives me a comfy place to chillout while the movie is going. I usually sit there and study, or if I have a good book I sit and read.

The movie ends and I look around at the crowd to see their reaction - ready to throw the equipment into the back if they got violent, but thankfully nothing happened. It was a very 'hard' area, the people were not very receptive - although I did see one guy wearing a skull cap put up his had for salvation. Awesome!

Rule #1

2007-09-23T09:35:00.000+02:00

So I was eating a bowl of matapa tonight (random green leaves - sorta like spinach, but not quite) and as I was eating I wondered why I just swallowed mouthfuls without chewing.

So I stopped and chewed..*crunch crunch*
Then it dawned on me: Rule #1: SAND will be present in all food!

...And that, is why I never chew the center food! Makes sense when you think about it :-)

Lotsa Typing!

2007-09-22T05:09:00.000+02:00

I'm at a bit of a loose end at the moment - my sound systems are either totally broken and need to go to South Africa, or they are 100% fine! So, unless I spend time in my sound room aimlessly shifting heavy equipment around, I have a bit of time to kill. So I'm helping out in some of the other departments - This past week I've been helping in the accounting office - there was a large backlog of receipts from the petty cash that had to be captured so I spent every morning in an office typing typing typing. It's kinda fun, decipering the portuguese receipts!

Then our bible school has started and the girl who usually runs it has gone on a well deserved break, so one of my other friends has taken over... kinda overwhelming! So for this week I'm helping out there - some of the name badges were wrong (name and photo dont match...) so we had to redo a lot of them. But there are lots of little admin things that need to be done, so I guess I'll be kept busy with that - then its back to the accounting office to start capturing the backlog of receipts from cheques that were issued!

So nothing fun and exciting this week, just work! :-)

A Day at the Beach with the Boys

2007-09-17T02:02:00.002+02:00

Photos by: Raphael Vaney

Saturday was a fully packed day with lots happening - I am glad that I had Sunday off too, to recover from all the 'relaxing' I did!

As usual the day started with pancakes (which were delicious!), then I went to pick up 12 of the Iris boys (aged 10-12) who live in Raphael's dorm. I had offered to drive them to Murrebue - and they were very excited to finally go. The morning had started off rainy, but by 11am the sun was out and the sky a perfect blue.

There were 12 boys, Rapha, Brandon, Eric, 2 dogs (Bala and Jahu) and myself going - so we took 2 cars!

At the beach Rapha played soccer with the boys while Brandon, Eric and I took the dogs for a long walk down the beach, stopping for a chat at a soon-to-open restaurant run by a lovely Italian family.

By the time we got back to the Murrebue restaurant the food had been served and the kids tucked into their chicken meals. I had ordered the battered and fried prawns - mmm mmmm mmmmmm! so good!

After lunch the tide had finally come in, so we could go swim!

- everyone headed into the ocean and we played a totally unorganized game of "volley balll/'piggy-in-the-middle'/throw the ball to anyone you want to" with the boys. It was very energetic to say the least! Raphael and Eric where throwing the boys into the air so that they could do backflips into the water,

The boys also started a small seaweed fight and some of them would sneak up on me and grab my ankles! They loved it - and it was great to see some male missionaries around who could just play with the boys.

So loads of fun, but I was exhausted by the end of the day - when we dropped the kids back at the center they each came to give me a hug and say thank you!

The day didnt end there - I made dinner with my neighbours, and then we watched a movie - so I got to bed quite late, but it was a fun day!

Tsunami...

2007-09-12T09:51:00.000+02:00

We were in the middle of a 'goodbye' Travis party, all just chilling, listening to him play guitar, soaking - when suddenly Musy burst into the room, her face white. I thought that something had happened to her week old baby, Bella. But instead the most unexpected words came out of her mouth: "A tsunami is going to hit Pemba in 2 hours, we have to evacuate NOW!!"

There was a silence, and then suddenly everyone is up, outside. I text my parents to get more info. All 120 of the bible school students had to be told, all our staff. People were already in bed. Very quickly everyone is home, packing the essentials - wondering if its really going to happen, and at the same time not quite grasping the concept of a wave splashing down on our houses.

My housie is in South Africa at the moment, so I text her and asked what I should get out of her room. Finally I have everything in the car, dog included.

By that time the 'HUGE' tsunami had hit the Seychelles, and it had been a whole 15cm higher tide than usual. So we started relaxing at bit, but we still had to evacuate. Some of the Mozambican staff didnt want to leave their houses. The men said "We'll just go to the beach, and when we see the wave coming we'll get our families and go to higher ground" *... yes, great idea...*

All the kids were sent up to the school at the top of the hill, and they even took the drum kit! It was quite noisy to say the least, but finally around 22:50pm when it was clear that nothing of significance was going to happen we finally decided to let everyone go back home.

I wanted to go see what this 15cm wave would look like, and 2 of my friends were keen too. So we headed for the beach, and at 23:39pm (the given time of arrival) we stood looking out to sea. We were sorely disapointed... the tide was out very far (which is usual) and we could not even see where the waves were! So at midnight we decided to head back home.

So some excitement, some scares, but after a good night's sleep we are back at work today!

Round 2...

2007-09-08T11:44:00.000+02:00

Well I think i've just had malaria, I'm getting better by taking the malaria meds, so even tho my test was negative the doc is certain that it was a false negative and that I had malaria...

BUT we caught it pretty early so I'll be 100% in no time! Right now I'm in the 'argh-my-body-hurts-and-even-making-a-cup-of-coffee-exhausts-me' phase, which indicates that it was malaria, but it also means that I'm getting better! :-)

This little Piggy...

2007-09-04T10:05:00.000+02:00

A month or 2 ago we discovered what to me might be the bestest thing about Pemba. A butchery! Tucked away around a corner on the road leading into one of the local village markets stands a small building, a plain store front with only a cardboard sign advertising mineral water - there is no storename, and nothing to indicate that it is a butchery.

Inside the owner, a sweet little portuguese lady, deals with the crowds - she opens at 8:45am and usually by 10 all the good cuts of meat had been sold out.

Yesterday we decide to go buy some meat - she has a selection of beef, goat and chicken. We wanted some good 'primera' beef, or if that was sold out 'segunda' beef would be fine too.

Its cheap too, for 1kg of 'primera' its only $6, for a kilo of 'segunda' its $4.50. (well cheap considering that at the local restaurants a single steak would cost your $12...)

Well we arrived and found the store fairly quiet - we know we are kinda late, but we hope that the good stuff was still available.

"Tem Primera?" (Do you have Primera?)
"Sim"

Oh yeah!! She still has nearly 3kg of primera and we buy it all. We also buy 2kg of ground beef (some for us, some for our neighbor)

Just as we are about to leave, a truck pulls up infront of the store, and the driver comes into the store. In a whisper he asks us, "Do you want some PORK?"

Are you kidding??? Pork was next to impossible to find here in this largely muslim town and recently I had been dreaming about a good pork chop. Of course we wanted some pork! The guys quickly scans the area to see if anyone is watching. The coast is clear, and he holds up half a pig. "Front or Back?" - I pick the front "Chops?" - Oh yeah! "How much do you want?" - Everything!! :-)

People come into the store and quickly the pig carcass is hidden. They leave and the workers start cutting me my chops. The guys uses his body to block the view to the ferocious looking meat saw - If the locals found out that they were cutting pork on the same saw as the beef there would be some serious trouble!

Finally we get our chops (just under 4 kgs) for $3.50 and we head home VERY happy!

Any deaf people here?

2007-08-31T06:04:00.000+02:00

I went on outreach last night, it was a bit of a confusion (as usual) as to where we were going, and we didnt even go to the place where we had originally planned! But it was all good when we arrived at the village - a huge (1000+) crowd turned up to watch the Jesus Film, and they were fairly open to the gospel message. When Heidi got up to preach afterwards she called all the deaf people forward. She asked their family and friends to being them. She asked again and again.

NO ONE came to the front.

Finally one of the village elders came to her and said, "We have no deaf people here, they were ALL healed last time you came!"

WOW!!! :-)

So that was awesome, there were at least 48 believers who had already established a church, and many more were added to their ranks last night. So even in all the confusion and going to the wrong village, it all worked out for good!

The rest of the team stayed the night in Mieze, a village close to Pemba where we regularly do Medical Outreaches, and have a large church and a small orphanage established. I opted to drive the 20mins home and sleep in my own bed, but the visitors wanted to experience a night in the village.

This morning I drove out bright and early to setup the sound for the morning service - I set the speakers up outside the bamboo mud building, one pointing into the church thru the window and the other for the overflow outside. (If I'd set up inside the church we would have been deafend!)

Inside the church they had strung twine across the room, and hung pieces of paper with scripture verses on the lines. They had also picked wildflowers/pretty weeds and hung them too. The church was packed and Heidi had to dedicate 5 little babies, and marry 3 couples.

It was a really good time!

Art Show

2007-08-21T11:54:00.000+02:00

Last night I did something new and fun - I went to an Art Exhibition in downtown Pemba. It was fairly interesting! The artist had about 20, oil on canvas, mostly abstract, very colourful paintings on display in a badly lit basketball court! Afterwards Jessie and I went out for chinese - just the 2 of us, we havnt done that in forever!

Watch out fishies, here I come!!

2007-08-15T04:06:00.000+02:00

... after only 2 years of saving and trying to find the time to do it - I am FINALLY DOING IT!

PADI Open Water Diver

My roommate (Jessie) and I started the course yesterday, and today was our first dive - we'll be doing more over the next few days, but its AWESOME - so beautiful!! I can't think of a more beautiful place than Pemba to get certified... So I'm really enjoying this little 'holiday' I'm having - its great!

... and I'll let ya'll know if I find Nemo :-)

Bye-Bye HG5

2007-08-10T11:49:00.000+02:00

HG5 Graduation on Wednesday had to have been the longest graduation in the history of the known universe... over 5 hours long! And that was just the part in the tent where I had to do sound... But it wasnt all bad, just long. And I was hungry cos I was silly and had only eaten a few cookies for breakfast! But it ended eventually - I delegated the packing up of the system to some of the students and then I left at round 6pm.

Thursday saw me frantically working to tie up all the loose ends for the extended outreaches... I had been prepping the whole week, but now I realized how much still had to be done and there wasnt much time left... So I was up till 3am finishing up stuff (the fact that I had gone out to dinner for Josham's birthday didnt help matters much, but it was his birthday, so I figured I could sacrifice some sleep). One of the things that really stressed me out was the fact that one of the screens we use to show the JESUS film was missing. Just GONE! But I knew it HAD to be somewhere, so I went in search of it - I looked in each and every mission school house, I questioned people, I begged them to let me know if it turns up. Nothing! But I had to send a screen out and so I went to Margaret our sewing lady and asked her to make a white sheet to fit some bamboo poles - a makeshift screen. Not the best, but at least something. Finally at 8pm I get a text - the missing screen had turned up. I was SO relieved! One less thing to stress about.

Heidi had instisted that she wanted to go on an over-night outreach that night (so that was another thing that I had had to organize that day - and I had to find a sound person who could go), which meant that half the equipment needed for one of the extended outreachs wouldnt be in Pemba. But as always a plan was made and the equipment was arranged to come back late Thursday night... and locked away in a room to which I do not have a key. (I didnt arrange for that to happen, it just did)

Then Friday - the BIG day, all 3 teams left for the extended outreaches. I was there at 7am to finalize some things - namely trying to get into the room to which I didnt have a key. I call Neto, my 'assistant', and ask him to please bring the key, and to hurry - they wanted to load the trucks... So Neto eventually arrived. WITHOUT the key. GRRRR, so frustrating!!! But his house wasnt too far away, in the village behind the center - so we hop in the car and I head into the village. The road cannot be called 'good' at all, but it is oh so much fun to drive! We get the key, we get into the room, and we get the equipment needed for the outreach. YAY!

Finally we can load it all onto the back of the 3 open trucks that will soon be heading out across Mozambique - There is so many people, so much stuff!!!

I was amazed that there was even room for the people on the back of the trucks - they were sitting on all the bags, pots and sleeping bags... I'm sure it'll be fun - one place is over 18 hours away! ...hope they brought sun screen :-§

Finally at 10am everything is loaded and they are ready to go - I slip away quietly and head home. I'll take a little nap... 6 hours later I wake up!!! Where did the day go??? :-) But its all good - things will be nice and quiet for the next 2 weeks (i hope) then the teams get back and I'll see if the sound systems survived!

Church in Progress - Photo

2007-08-05T11:20:00.000+02:00

We are building a REAL church building here in Pemba - soon the green and white striped tent will be a thing of the past!

There will even be a room in the back for me to store the sound equipment in - so no more lugging heavy sound systems up a hill... not that I actually do any of the carrying :-)

Victor

2007-08-04T11:09:00.000+02:00

This is Victor Jose - his birth certificate says he is 13months, but developmentally he is more like 7 months. Jessie has him over at our house quite often, so I get to play 'Aunty Nikki' and babysit! He is adorable - sorta starting to crawl, and he has 5 teeth!

He is such a happy baby, and he loves to 'dance' to our nokia cellphone ringtones. His mother died, and his father had him registered as an orphan... not sure how that works, but according to the government little Victor is an orphan, even tho he has a father! Crazy!

Strange Noises

2007-08-04T11:02:00.001+02:00

This morning I was woken up by loud crashing, banging noises. It sounded like someone was breaking down one of our neighbors' door... both Jessie and I rushed to look. We were astonished to see that yes, someone was indeed breaking down our neighbor's front door! But it was all good - Dr Eric, our resident medic was locked inside his house - his lock has broken and he was unable to leave his house! Josham had to come to the rescue. It was so funny!

Yay for Alpha!

2007-08-01T02:18:00.000+02:00

We finally have decent qualified security guards at base 2!!! YEAH!!! It was awesome today to not be mobbed by village kids as I got out of my car. Usually even when I am just quickly downloading emails, the kids will surround the car banging on my windows, the doors, trying to open the car doors, pick at the paintwork, adjust the mirrors. Its horrible! But today it was quiet. Peaceful! AWESOME!

I even had to sign in at the front gate when I arrived - all the usual theives, bandits, village kids and vendors were kept outside in the street, away from our center kids, away from the mission school housing, away from the tools and equipment. It has been a long long loooooong time coming - lets hope these Alpha Guards keep the banditos away at night too! So happy!!!

Its been a while...

2007-07-17T11:47:00.000+02:00

So I realize that I havn't written in ages, and as I think back I can see why. Well - its just really hard to put into words what my daily routine (if you can call routine) life is like. Especially now that Holy Given is here things have sorta settled into a groove - life just goes round and round without too much effort. Although living in Pemba requires effort to start with so what I meant was that it doesnt require too much EXTRA effort!

Some things have happened tho: both good and bad - let's start with the bad...

My car broke down while I was in town one day and I had to be towed back to my house - at first they thought it was dirty fuel, but it turns out to be an electrical problem. Fortunately there are some friendly South African mechanics in Pemba who helped me out free of charge! I was so grateful to have my car up and running again because the next day a good thing happend:

My parents came to visit me! Well, technically they didnt just come to visit me - they were team leaders for Georgian Banov's team and so their time was divided between the team and me. But it was great to have them in Pemba, for them to see where I live and what life is like up here!

Also I ran over a baboon. I was driving back from an overnight outreach early (We dont have many sound systems working at the moment, so I had to get the sound system back in Pemba for it to be used again at another event!) so, I was driving and suddenly a baboon ran out infront of me. I was on a dirt road, which meant that braking wasnt even an option - he went under the car between the wheels, and my mom (she was with me) says that she saw him get up and limp to the side of the road so at least I didnt kill him... oops.

Banditos

2007-06-25T05:04:00.000+02:00

Its taken me a while to proccess it and get to a point where I was OK writing it down - so here goes!

Saturday June 16 was a regular day off, I woke up late and then Jessie and I made pancakes (both American and South African versions) and we went over to 'Mantown' and had breakfast with the guys - then some of our boys offered to wash my car! Plans were made to take one of the boys, Luis, to Murrebue Beach, about 20mins away from Pemba - it was his birthday and it would be a treat for him and a few of his friends.

We set off at noon, and the boys piled out the car, Bala in tow with a soccor ball and much laughter. They ran down to the water and I decided to take a walk down the beach with Bala - Jessie and I talked for a bit, trying to decide if it was safer to leave my car keys in her bag at the restaurant or to take them with me. I took them with me. I also had my phone with me, so I clipped it all together and hooked in on the inside of my trousers. My mp3 player I tucked into my underware. Bala on the rope I set off down the beach. I love walking here - its desrted, and stretches for miles. There were some fishermen out in their little dugout canoes and a few of them had already beached and dragged their boats up the sand dunes.

I had walked for nearly 2km down the beach when I thought it was about time I turned around - Bala was being SO cute, chasing the little crabs - she'd cornered one but it was standing its ground - defending itself with tiny tiny pinchers. (Bala finally gave up)

I had passed many fishermen sitting on their boats while I was walking down the beach - but now they had already left for the village. There were just 2 little boats still out in the water, and they were also heading towards land.

One of the other missionaries, Papa Joel, was also out for a walk - coming towards me - we stopped, said a few words and then I continued on back to the restaurant where Jessie and the boys where playing. I had hardly gone more than 100m when I drew level with the 2 fisherman, and 4 guys started walking down towards the water. They sort of cut infront of me, and they were scared of the dog - so I thought they were the fishermen's buddies - going to help them beach the boats.

Then I saw the knives - long bladed machetes. The ring leader was wearing a red shirt. He pointed to my earphones, I looked up the beach towards the restaurant fro help. No one. So I started screaming. They pushed me down into the water and I struggled. I bit, scratched and kicked for all I was worth. Beside me Bala was barking and (biting I hope). Suddenly they were gone. Running up over the dune and into the bush. In shock I look around me. To the side the 2 fishermen are still at sea, behind me Papa Joelie was running towards me. I glance down at my waistband and I realise they got my car keys and phone. I get up and run. And run and run and run and run. When I am exhausted I double check that they really had stolen my stuff. I discover my mp3 player still tucked in my underware. But they have my car keys. MY CAR. My car, its parked next to the restaurant, no one will be watching it - they'll try to steal my car. I have to get back. I have to run. One the last dregs of adrenaline I start running again. I'm soaked, covered in sand and my trousers were not designed for jogging on the beach.

I see Jessie, she looking confused becuase Bala is running loose, and I'm running... The wind kept snatching my words and blowing them back towards the ocean. Finally she hears me, 'I was mugged, they have my keys', over and over I say this. I run past her to the parking lot. My car is there, no one is around. I just sit down on the sand.

Papa Joel had tried to keep up with me, but I was to fast for him. He tells me that they were kicking me, and hitting me with their knives - I found the bruises later. Bala's nose was bleeding and she was suddenly very aggressive towards Mozambucan men carrying implements - she also wouldn't let me go anywhere without following me.

~ 1 Week Later ~

I am OK now, for the first few days afterwards I didnt want to leave the house, when I tried, the world closed in on me and I would focus on the shadows and all the banditos that could possibly jump out at me. Kids scared me. Men wearing red scared me. So many people prayed for me - and I am so thankful for that!

I went back to Murrebue this past Saturday - this time walking down the same stretch of beach with 5 men and carrying a huge machete of my own. I was OK - but it will still be a while before I walk anywhere near the beach alone... which is a shame cos I used to love walking with Bala on Pemba beach in the evenings before it got dark.

Driving Fun!

2007-06-07T08:56:00.000+02:00

Outreach last night was amazing – well it was a normal outreach after a normal stressy day, but the drive there just made me SO happy! I loaded the sound systems; my 3 helpers jumped in the back and off we went to a place that was 'not to far away'. 40km down the road we turn off onto a dirt track and what a dirt track it was!!! Treacherous sand, a rocky riverbed, 2 hills to climb - 4x4 heaven!!! It was fun – and what made me even happier was the fact that after the outreach I would get to do it all over again!!! J

Children's Day - June 1

2007-06-01T07:34:00.000+02:00

The outreach last night went well, my little Media Player worked wonderfully! Yay, we have finally eliminated DVDs and DVD players from the movie showing process. Goodbye scratched DVDs, goodbye broken dusty DVD players!!! Now I just am praying that the teams will have some respect for these little $1000 pieces of equipment... they look after the projectors really well, so there is hope.

The sound systems are looking better everyday, slowly but surely order is being restored and I think that I could quite possibly be ready for next Tuesday!

In the meantime, its Children's day today and all the kids are going to get presents and a chicken dinner. There will be games and their rooms are being decorated! My roomie was in charge of organizing it all - and its a LOT of work, I think shes been more stressed than me - also she's still in charge of ALL the kids and there are a few who are sick at the moment, and yesterday she had to leave our 4 month old baby, Natalia, at the hospital because she has malaria and they need to put her on an IV with quinine. Jessie was devastated, the hospital is a fairly scary place... not to the standard of a western hospital, so we are just hoping that Baby Natalia will be OK.

Then with Children's Day, there is the hope that the clothes we are giving to the kids fit, that they will like the clothes we give them and that when lunch is served to the 2000 people that are coming to the center today there will not be riots (and that the chicken doesnt run out before the people all received). But it should be a fun day - and its for the kids, so I hope they enjoy it too!

Tomorrow will finally be a day off - after 11 straight days without a break I am sure ready for one!!! We are planning a trip to the beach, Murrebue, and just doing nothing all day!

My thoughts for today...

2007-05-30T01:09:00.000+02:00

I'm back in Pemba, arrived monday night after getting the 1000 tennis balls I was waiting for. It is great to be back home! But things are totally chaotic here. I think I might want to cry. The sound systems are a wreck - I might have 1 working system... but I need 5 before next tuesday when the mission school starts. And the things I need to make it work are BIG things, like generators and speakers - not just little connectors or microphones. I'm so tired of buying new things and just them being messed up within 6 months - I feel like saying 'NO!!!' but I cant, cos then the evangelism wont be as effective/wont happen.

I looked at the sound room where I lock all the systems away. I had it nicely organized into sections, each system seperate. Now everything is just jumbled into one heap, broken and working together. I looked at the toolkits I have made up for the outreach teams - they are all empty, the tools just missing. I feel like just not bothering to replace the toolkits - let them suffer if something breaks when they are 5 hours into the bush in the middle of nowhere. Then maybe they wont steal it. Of course nothing was stolen, its just missing. Do I sound frustrated?

So now I am faced with the enormous task of getting it all sorted before Tuesday evening when the Mission School kicks off with an guest speaker from the States. Oh, and did I mention that I have to have one system working perfectly by tomorrow night so that nothing will go wrong when a film crew that is here at the moment can experience an evening bush outreach...???

Nearly Back in Pemba

2007-05-28T10:15:00.001+02:00

Well here I am, 1 week later and only 5 hours before I get to Pemba!!! I am in Nampula at an internet cafe, wasting time... I have to buy 1000 tennis balls and they´ll only be ready at noon... so I have 3 hours to kill. There is an interesting rock formation mountain thing with a little house ontop of it, so now I´m trying to figure out how to get up there! (hoping to find the info on the internet)

I´ll write a complete update of my journey up to Pemba, it was fairly interesting - made loads of detours, stayed in many places and of course drove a LOT! So keep an eye out for that!

Photo: Where I live: Centre 1

2007-05-18T11:26:00.000+02:00

I came across this photo of Centre 1, my HOME in Pemba! It was taken by Will Hart, one of my fellow missionaries. (See their website)

1: My House where Jessie & I live with our puppy, Bala
2: 5 Appartments: Jacques and Mary, Dr Eric, Betty Johnson & the 2 Pedros' Appartments.
3: My Old House area (used for male Mission School housing)
4: My Old room (used for male Mission School housing)
5: The water tower
6: Mozambican staff housing & Accomodation for our older Mozambican boys (its all behind the baobab tree)
7: The Old church
8: Mantown - Long term missionary accomodation for guys
9: Housing for our Mozambicans Bible School Students
10: Katie & Octavia's House
11: Where Papa Joelie and Josham Live
12: Julio (Our Mozambican Administrator)
13: Norberto's room
14: Where Ania, Shara & Melissa live
15: The 'Elijah House' where Heath & Emie and their kids live
(also in that area, Doctor Angela's House)
16: The Parking area
17: Kent & Andrea
18: Will & Musy (and Baby Joshua)
19: Angela, Teisa & Yonnie
20: Old Administration Offices & Store rooms
21: The Old Kitchen (no longer used) - but this is where they deliver supper to our centre
22: Store Rooms
(The Hand-Pump well is located between 20 & 22)
23: The Generator

So there is where I call HOME!

My Helicopter Ride

2007-05-17T00:24:00.000+02:00

OK so while I am waiting for the anti-malaria tablets to fully envelope my body with its potent anti-malaria mosquito formula I thought that I would tell you about the helicopter ride I had at the beginning of April while I was doing flood relief!

Just to recap the events leading up to the ride: I heard about an area called Malingapansi where apparently they had not received any food aid. This are was completely cut off, and only accessible by canoe, or helicopter. Thru some contacts at the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), a helicopter was arranged to take myself and an official from the Mozambican Disaster Management Agency (INGC) to make an assessment of the area. It would be my FIRST ever trip in a helicopter and I was very excited (and totally flabbergasted that it had actually been arranged and was going to happen!)

So the morning dawned bright and clear... I would know, I was awake. Not by choice believe me, that is just when the village wakes up! Miguel, my translator was going with me - I can speak Portuguese, but I'm not fluent enough to speak to government officials - and it is his first time to ever fly. So he was really excited too.

We had to meet at the 'White House'; a large white tent set up to be the Air Ops command centre, at 9am. It is staffed by South African Air Force personnel, and we sat and waited while they sorted out the paperwork for the flight. Our pilot asked me to point out Malingapansi on the map. Slight problem... I had NO idea where it was. No one actually knows exactly where is was, except the government administrator in Marromeu who had contacted us about the place! There was a slight uproar as the pilot tried to figure out in which direction we should fly!

When Colonel Fringe, the INGC representative arrived he solved the problem quickly: "We will fly to Marromeu and get directions there". Simple as pie!

They called the helicopter 'Augusta', I thought that was weird until I realized that was cos it was an 'Augusta'!

~Augusta MH68 Helicopter~

The rotor blades started spinning and we had lift-off. It felt like I was in a car, except for the fact that I was hovering above the ground. That was until the pilot suddenly made a mad dash for the fueling station just a 100m away, then it stopped feeing like a car and started feeling very much like I thought a helicopter should! After we had re-fueled we headed to Marromeu, skimming along quite close to the water, following the twists of the Zambezi river. We saw hippopotami!! And there were many canoes in the water, the people fishing - they looked up and waved, some jumping up and down excitedly (the people in the canoes wernt jumping up and down... these bouncy people where on sand banks in the middle of the river). We were flying so low, so they could see us wave back at them! :-)

It seriously felt like I was travelling in a car! We arrived in Marromeu, circled and landed in an open field next to the road. Within seconds we had what felt like half the town lining the roads on all sides, and the Deputy administrator arrived on his bicycle 2 minutes later. The Administrator who had told us about Malingapansi was not in town today, but the Deputy was able to give us directions to get there:

"Just go straight towards that tree, and then after a while you will see big flat plains. Go across them. Then you will get to a bend in the river, and you must turn right, then you will see some buildings. That is Malingapansi."

The pilot wasn't impressed to say the least, and he went to fetch a map, hoping that the Deputy would at least be able to point out on the map which grid block Malingapansi was in.

There was some 'oooing and aaaing' as they tried to figure out which way was north, but finally the deputy pointed at a block on the map and said, 'There'. So now we had a general direction that was a bit more specific than the directions we'd been given!

The kids who had dared come closer to 'Augusta' scattered as the blades started moving. We were strapped in and ready to go. After a few minutes in the air we crossed the plains, and finally we saw some buildings. The pilot circled twice trying to find a field big enough to land in, and by the time we had landed the WHOLE village was there! The doors opened and the village chief ran forward. Colonel Fringe asked the vital question, "Is this Malingapansi?". "YES", came the reply.

We had made it - the chief led us down the main road (the only road) towards the brick administration office.

~The Main Road in Malingapansi~

There was a flag pole in front of it, proudly flying the Mozambican flag. I won't go into detail about what our assessment was, You can read about the that here.

By the time the meeting was done, all the chiefs of the 10 other villages had arrived, and all had huge toothless grins, everyone wanting to shake our hands, and each asking "How do you do?" (in Portuguese of course). This was a HUGE honor for them! The meeting over, we were lead back to the helicopter, our entourage of the whole village following us back. The now 'back to nearly normal level' Zambezi River was quite running close to the road, and I imagine that this whole area had been underwater during the worst of the flooding.

The engine on, the crowd scattered, and we lifted off for the last time.

~Lift off from Malingapansi~

The pilots set the course home and we flew high above the earth, the trees specks against the green of the grassy plains. It seemed like the trip back was faster than the flight out, and in no time we could see Caia in the distance (its quite a large town actually!).

~A small part of Caia from the Air~

Back on the ground we got out quickly, the engine still running, and by the time we got to the edge of the runway only a few steps away and turned around, 'Augusta' had disapeared; off to go refuel and go on another mission.

It was fun, quite an experience - Not something that I ever imagined I'd do when I signed up for the Flood Relief, but really cool!

Gettin Better

2007-05-16T11:44:00.000+02:00

Tuesday, May 15, 2007
OK here is an update! I am pretty much recovered now. I woke up 3 days ago and I felt sorta normal... the pain had mostly gone (my skin had been very painful to the touch), the swelling had gone down loads and I could get out of bed without having to rest for 2 minutes first! Everyday since then I have been improving.

I have started swimming at a local gym (since monday), taking it slowly, and I can feel the difference in my energy levels already, which is, after 3 weeks of feeling SO sick, really wonderful.

So, at the rate I'm going I should be well enough to leave early next week for the 40 hours of driving it will take to get back to my house in Pemba!

*****************************************

Friday, May 11, 2007
I am out of hospital now and doing MUCH better. Still pretty sore & tired, and my body is working hard getting all the 'nasty' out of my system, but I can feel that I'm getting better each day. I sure wont be travelling to moz again without anti-malaria tablets!!! You kinda get lax when you've been there for over a year, it stops being an 'exciting safari' and more day to day life - and taking a tablet everyday gets kinda annoying. But from now on I'll take them, everyday!

So for now I am just resting - from the day I start the malaria tablets its takes 2 weeks to fully protect my system, so I am aiming to leave South Africa 2 weeks from now. I probably wont be going back to the flood area - things have quietened down quite a bit and I am told that the sound systems in Pemba are in some need of serious TLC!

In Hospital... AGAIN!

2007-05-06T07:32:00.000+02:00

I was discharged from hospital with a clean(ish) bill of health last tuesday (the malaria parasites were dead), but was readmitted on friday night again. The cerebral malaria had affected my spinal cord which caused numbness and weakness in my arms and a constant horrible headache. This is only the 2nd case like this that my doctor (a specialist in tropical diseases) had seen this year, and apparently its very rare.

The malaria has also caused the red blood cells in the very teeny tiny blood capillaries to clump together and the doc described the red cells as 'sludgy' - this just affects the availability of oxygen to my limbs and brain, causing pain and discomfort.

The neurologist is treating me on Cortisone, and I am feeling so much better today! I have energy and for the first time in 2 weeks I actually am starting to feel better! I have an appetite now, and was contemplating a walking tour of the hospital... but maybe later!

My specialist doctor will see me again on monday (he was off for a well deserved break this weekend) and then between the two of them they will see what else needs to be done.

So I am (hopefully) on the road to recovery and maybe my next post will be an update from my home in Pemba!

Importing my 4x4 (Not!)

2007-04-24T04:06:00.000+02:00

I have interesting news for ya'll, apparently (according to the Mozambican Customs Officials) this is a prime example of a DOUBLE CAB 4x4:

Pray tell, where do you see a second row of doors?

Anyways, they wanted 35% import tax on my "luxury double cab 4x4", either that or I could pay 5% import tax and a 20% bribe to them, thereby 'SAVING' myself 10%...when in fact I should only have pay a 5% import tax on a single cab 4x4. So I've just refused to pay the bribe money, not out of principle, but dang it - I could really use that money for myself!!!

Africa is so CORRUPT!

SO, after much much much hassle and frustration I am not going to import my 4x4 to Mozambique. It will stay a South African registered vehicle and instead I will get a year temporary import permit or 'Carnet de Passage' from the AA.

We only found out about this option in the last few days, but becuase of the conditions of this CDP I may not apply for Residency in Mozambique , which means that I still have to either exit the country every month, or extend my visa every month for 3 months at the local Immigration Office before having to exit the country. A hassle, but an oh so wonderful excuse to have a short break every three months (granted the cost of buying airtickets from Pemba to either South Africa/Kenya/Tanzania/Zimbabwe/Malawi every 3 months aint that great!... plus accomodation, transport and visas... So I usually just come to South Africa and stay at my parents' house)

So hopefully this is where my car saga ends...

Malawi to Pretoria in 4 Days...

2007-04-17T04:47:00.000+02:00

So now we had given out the last of our food and were planning to head back to Dondo to restock, but my visa and car papers were about to expire, so I scheduled a quick trip up to Malawi to 'go around the flag pole' and get everything renewed for another month. Getting from Caia to Malawi should not really be too hard, the map says its only about 90km... that is 90km of dirt roads, potholes, washed away bridges and a 3.7km long train bridge across the Zambezi. The train bridge has been used as a vehicle bridge for the last few years, but recently work has started to repair the bridge and railway... I went to the WFP office to find out the opening times for vehicles crossing the bridge (the UN have made an agreement to allow food aid to be trucked across at certain times) and I was told it opens at 7am, and again at 12noon. All sorted, we will leave Caia at 5:50am and be at the bridge at 7am when it opens.

The next morning, FRIDAY, 06:55 we arrive at the bridge. The guy operating the boom looked at us and said, "Sorry the bridge is closed now, it opens again at 12." Oh no! But its 06:55!!! I pointed this little fact out to him and said the brige should open in 5mins, and he said "no, it CLOSES at 7am!" I am determined to cross the bridge, even if I have to pay the guy. "It is still 5 mins before 7am, we can cross in 5mins, no problem, PLEASE!"... He looks at me and opens the boom! YEAH! I didnt have to pay a bribe or nothing.

The drive across was pretty cool, its a LONG bridge and your wheels straddle the old iron tracks, they have packed planks of wood for you to drive over, it sounds interesting too!

When we get to the other side the boom is locked, but the guy is there and he opens for us. I roll down my window and double check the opening time for going back to Caia. He confirms that it opens at 12noon. He thinks I'm slightly crazy to be going to Malawian border and coming straight back again.

Finally I get to the Moz border and do all the paperwork, then I drive the 4km to the Malawian borderpost and pay all I have to pay, get stamped into the country. I told them I'll be back in 15mins and then I drove 3km to the first town, and there dropped Tor, a Norwegian guy who had been helping with the flood relief in Morrumbala, and who was now going to be hitchhiking thry Malawi. When I returned to the border within 15mins they laughed at me, and proceeded to stamp my car and me out the counrty. I drove the 4km back to the Moz side and redid all the paperwork and paid all the entry fees. Yeah, I was legal for another month! I picked up Miguel (the translator) who had waited at the Moz side for me and we headed back to Caia.

We were just within cellphone reception when my phone rang, it was my father, he had received a message from our Administrator in Maputo, the guy who was dealing with the import of my vehicle - Francisco wanted me to be in Maputo on Monday morning early!

I text the guys in Caia, told them to pack up and be ready to leave for Dondo at 1pm when I got there. Get to the bridge at 11:30am and wait till 12 for them to open it. 12 comes and goes, 12:15... the boom operator wanders to the car and says, "Oh they are still working, we will open in maybe 30mins" GRRRR! 12:45... still nothing happening, then the boom guy wanders over again, carrying some green plastic containers, "Can you give this to the guy at the other side, its his lunch"... Of course no problem, does that mean they're going to open the bridge now? Of course not, silly me, when they say 12noon, its secret code for 1:15pm. I really must remember that!

Finally we get over the bridge, over an hour late. I still have to get to Caia, load the rest of the team and then its a 5 hour drive back to Dondo, and I wasn't keen to drive at night, the road is badly potholed and also when its dark the Mozambicans are attracted to the road like moths to a candle. Loads of foot traffic and only about 1 in 50 bicycles have reflectors, and NON of the pedestrians wear reflective clothing, even when they are walking in the road, in the middle of the road. SCARY. So I dont like driving at night.

We ended up only arriving in Dondo at 7:30pm, so tired!!! It was a long day for me, and if I was to be in Maputo for Monday there was still quite a lot of driving ahead.

SATURDAY morning I load the car and set off for Inhambane, its 8 hours away and appart from the bit before Dondo the road is good. (OK and the bit before Inhambane is bad too). I am driving alone, I had my music and a thermos of strong coffee so I was fine. I stay at a place in Lindela (Quinta de Saint Antonio), a guest house on the main road run by a couple from South Africa - Good clean chalet to myself, with hot running water and a decent bed - they even had sattelite TV and a DVD player with some DVDs. It was amazing!

SUNDAY morning I had a late start, its only about 4 or 5 hours to Maputo. I stopped in the next town to refuel and just as I left the gas station I was still in the town, so I slowed down to 60km/h, after the town ended I didnt see a 100km/h board so I figured it must have been stolen, but there were no houses so I saw no reason to drive slowly. I got to my usual speed of 140km/h and watched the scenery flash by. I was going down a hill and just around the corner, ahead in the road, hidden from view was a police car and 4 cops! They couldnt see me yet, but I could clearly see them from above. Thats when I realised that this was still a 60 zone. I hit the brakes and as I came around the corner I was innocently crawling along at 45km/h. They were in the road radar gun outreached as they painted my car. I could see the disapointment on their faces as they retreated! Score 1 for me, 0 for them. YEAH!

Straight after I passed the cops I was crossed a lagoon which I think is the most beautiful part in all of Mozmabique, the ocean is going into a lagoon (with a low brige across the water) and its very shallow there, so the water is crystal clear and there are dead tree stumps sticking up out of the water. The water is a turquiose light blue, but its clear clear clear, with palm trees lining the shore in the distance. Its a gorgeous view, my favorite. Should remember to stop and take a picture next time...

I arrived in Maputo in good time - I always stay at the Iris Children's center in Zimpeto (They also suffered some damage with the recent bombing when an old military ammunition dump exploded - but no fatalities).

MONDAY - I went to see the customs people early the morning, they wanted to take some photos of my car to work out if it is a single or a double cab... its obviously a single cab but ITS the clearing agents made a mistake when they inspected my car and now its causing a LOT of hassle for me - ITS refuses to change their mistake and the Mozambican officials see this as a perfect opportunity to line their pockets with some extra cash... So they took their photos and discussed and finally said that they will have a final answer for me on Thurday...

I got back to the Zimpeto base and right there and then decided that I might as well go to South Africa. Visions of Dros' 1kg rack of ribs floated before me and I swear I could even smell the bbq basting...

After a quick oil change (my father nearly had a fit when he heard that I hadnt changed the oil yet, and I had driven 14000km, apparently I had to change the oil every 7500km. OOPS!) I set off for Pretoria. I left at 3pm, and I arrived at 10pm. Not bad, hope there were no speed cameras!

Distribution

2007-04-12T05:14:00.000+02:00

Well finally after a week of running around in cirlces we got some food to people in need! There was a village where some people had lost their farms, and a few their houses, but so far they where not on any official lists and the only way we heard about them was thru our church in the area.

5am, dawn has hardly broken and we are on the road to scout out the village where we are going to go do distribution later that day... We got back to the base at about 8am!

First hurdle: Getting a 4 ton truck. I had an agreement with the one that was delivering stone to the construction site where we are building the church, he was to arrive at 8am the next morning. When he didnt show at 8:10 I decided to find another one, but there were none to be found, not at the usual camiao hire area, nor at the ferry. Just then a team from America who had driven up from South Africa arrived and I had to go meet them, so I sent Chris to go find a truck. He found one and it 'quickly' went off to fill up with diesel...haha. After about 30mins I went to find it. It had a flat and was trying to find a spare...

Eventually we make it to the WPF warehouse and load the truck with 4 tons of maize flour and 100kg beans... then the fun began! We were about 30km out of Caia, down a little footpath when we came across a little muddy puddle/stream that we had to cross. I got thru easily but the truck, well it kinda got stuck! We first tried towing him with his old frayed rope, then I remembered I had a good tow rope in my car, it was only goot for up to 5tons, but I thought to give it a try anyways. Well it broke. So then the African way of doing it started. We used the broken tow rope (now sorta fixed), the other broken frayed rope (now fixed) and another rope I had with me and they tied these 3 ropes more than once between my car and the truck. Then we got 50 guys to push while my car pulled. It was quite a sight and with a great heave-ho the truck was un-stuck! It was not moments later, while turning into the drive of the church property that the truck fell prey to the deep sand. We were only about 200 meters from the church so I drove to and fro with my car carrying 1 ton at a time until the truck was empty. Then we had to do the whole towing thing again! Then to top it all off, basically whenever the truck stalled it had to be push-started... or in my case, pull-started, so that was quite fun, interesting to say the least.

While all this driving and towing and pull-starting was happening the pastor was in the church preaching, so when I got there the distribution was ready to start. We personally gave food to about 100 families in the hour and half we were there, but then it was starting to get dark and I wasnt keen to get lost in the myriad of foot paths there were around this area.

We got home at 6pm, a full 13 hour work day for me!

Then today we gave out the last of the food, there were 5 churches that were affected and we sent messangers to 4 of them to let them know to come to Caia to receive food. The 5th church was too far away for people to easily walk, so we went to them. It was a surprise visit, they had not been expecting us so it took quite a while to gather them - so we dropped the food and showed them the portions to give and we left to go do the distribution in Caia 'city'. Some of these 4 churches that were coming to us were still in-accessabile by car, so it was a good thing they came to us.

They started arriving early, but 9am there were already a number of people waiting for the distribution that was due to start in the afternoon. We arrived back from the morning distribution at about 1:30, and immediately started giving out food to these people. It kept us busy till about 4, and each family received about 12kg maize flour, 1 kg beans and 1 litre oil.

We are quite tired now, its exhausting work, but so fulfilling!

What I found in Malingapansi

2007-04-06T01:02:00.000+02:00

Malingapansi District

Assessment Report

This is an isolated area located between tributaries of the Zambezi River. During the floods they were classed as an official refugee center until end of February, after which time the people we relocated to higher ground fairly quickly. Because they were no longer classed as a camp, they were removed from the official lists requiring assistance. The people are living in their houses again, but all the crops have been destroyed and they have been unable to obtain food, except for the bit they have in their yards, or from trees in the area.

The following is an outline report made on April 5, by Nikki Wheeler of Iris Ministries, and a representative of the INGC, Colonel Raimundo Fringe. The assessment was made with the assistance of the South African Air Force, by who provided transport by helicopter to Malingapansi.

Population: 7500 (±1800 families)
Distribution: 10 Villages forming the Malingapansi District:
Sorcace Muligo
Chilolo
Nhaminaze
Nhamangowe
Mazungo
Daude
Nhando
Milombe
Luawe
Ndode

Location: S18 40 .44 | E 036 06 30

Accessibility: By boat and by helicopter only. Roads are impassable.

Flood Damage: 1500 lands containing crops were lost, as well as farming implements. No human casualties.

Previous assistance by INGC:
March 10 – 800kg sugar, 200 mosquito nets
They have never received any maize flour, beans or oil

Food available at present:
Bananas, sweet potato and cassava

Facilities:
Hospital staffed by nurse and medical technician. Emergency care is available in Marromeu, 2 hours away by canoe.

Schools are operational in each of the 10 areas.

Administrative post.

No electricity.

No cellular phone reception.

Requests:
Food: Maizemeal, oil, beans, milk
Equipment: Boat, farming impletments
Seed
Limited water available for drinking, more wells and/or purification (Certeza/PuR)
This district is very isolated, so regular food drops would be un-economical.

Possible Plan of Action:
Hire a BARGE to transport:

37.5 metric tons maize meal
1.8 metric tons oil
1.9 metric ton beans

Distribution from a central point – people will come to collect food in smaller groups, provide own transport.

Costs involved:
Maize meal =5 kg per person = $10 613
Oil = 1Litre per family = $2505
Beans: 1kg per family = $1886
Transport from Beira to Caia = $1500
Barge Hire per day - 3 days = $3000
Other Overheads = $500
Total Cost = $20 000

Total cost per family = ±$11.11

*****
I met with the INGC today, and the director of operations for this area, Mr Tambiri, has decided that because of the unofficial status of this District, they would prefer that Iris Ministries' resources be elsewhere employed. Should we want to pursue this endeavor, we would have to do it without the assistance of the WFP, INGC and other local government organizations. (Which would be very difficult to do.)

This is very sad for me, but I respect their decision and will wait till Monday to receive instructions as to where we will be distributing the 15 metric tons of maize flour, 300KG beans and oil we currently have with us.

Helicopter

2007-04-05T02:40:00.000+02:00

I have a warm bucket bath every morning - They have a little outdoor latrine area with a drain so it doubles as a bathroom, its made out of bricks, and when I stand up straight I think people can see the top of my head. Its quite cold early in the morning, everything comes to life at 5am, and I finally capitulate and get out of bed at 6. Disrobing in the cold outdoors is quite interesting, and I think that if a helicopter flies past they would see everything! But there is something really refreshing about being outside so early, and when it started raining while I was bathing this morning it just made it more interesting! We are being fed SO well, Pastor Phombo's wife is cooking all our meals - we've had chicken stew, fried fish, beans with bush-rat meat (interesting!) grilled chicken and of course rice. They even gave us maize meal, Shima, yesterday! Its first class hospitality, so amazing! The village itself is quite quiet actually, I havn't felt clausterphobic at all - the people have respected our 'space' - and staying in the storeroom is SO much better than living in a tent!

Then in a different world, just down the road there are meetings meetings and more meetings. Running around in a circle becuase NO ONE seems to know anything about the camp where there are apparently 10 000 people! Finally I spoke to Julia, my contact at the WFP, and mentioned that if no one else knows anything, then maybe we could rent a helicopter to go see whats what. She said I should wait till the meetings that afternoon to see what people know. At the first meeting when I raised my question the INGC and a guy from the Mozambican Army said, 'there is NO official camp in that area', so I said, 'well there might be an unofficial camp and if there is then Iris would like to go help them...' There were officials grumbling, they said they would check it out, and then the meeting was over. I pulled the INGC official aside and asked when I would be able to have an answer about Maringapaz. He said, well come to the next meeting you can ask about helicopters there. OK... I quickly drive to the UN House and plug my computer into the electricity. I only have 20mins before the meeting starts and I really need to re-charge my mac! The 20mins over and I have 3 mins to get to the meeting I have a bright idea - Miguel my translator wouldn't be needed for the next meeting because there are many others who cannot speak Portuguese so there will be a general translator! "Miguel, would you mind waiting here with my computer? I will be back in an hour or so..." He was more than willing - incidentally he even had his cellphone and the charger with him, so he was happy to be able to charge it.

When I got to the meeting they were all still standing around outside: WFP, World Vision, Feed the Hungry, Moz Army, INGC... waiting for the representative of 'Air' - he arrived, an affable Frenchman who is actually a Sea Captain... but now in charge of logistics for the 3 helicopters and 1 Caravan plane they have here in Caia.

Each person brought their daily report, 'Barges', 'Road', and finally 'Air'. He rattled off the figures of what had happened that day, then moved on the what was scheduled for the next day. "...World Vision food drops...., INGC scouting..., Arco-Íris..." WHAT? I was on the schedule? WOW. There was some consternation and the Army guy was adamant that there was NO camp in Maringapaz. INGC concurred. But I was on the schedule! I helpfully tried to give the army guy the phone number of the Administrator who had contacted us with the news, but he had his number already. Finally it was decided that even if the Administrator couldnt be reached we would go anyways. They asked me who was going from Iris, so I picked: Myself (naturally) and Miguel (translator). It is apparently only a little chopper, space for pilot plus 3. We will be meeting the administrator in Marromeu, then continuing on to see the actual vilage.

So lets see how it goes!

Caia - Logistics

2007-04-04T00:48:00.000+02:00

We are in Caia, finally made it - we bought 15tons of milled corn in Beira and hired a truck to bring it up to Caia. We thought he had left at 11am, but when we arrived in Caia at 4pm that afternoon he was still in Beira!!! HE had decided to have lunch, take a nap and have a bath... so, we will not be hiring him again! They kindly called me the minute they arrived - at 5am. Not impressed. But we got permission to use the huge storehouses of the World Food Programme to store the food for free, so that is really good.

We are staying at Pastor Phombo's house, Lois and I are sleeping in one of the 2 storerooms, and the guys have pitched the tents in the old church.

There are things to do before we can actaully go hand out the food - first we have to check in with the INGC and see if the place we have chosen needs help, who has been there, what has been done etc. We want to go to Maringapans, a town accessible only by plane/helicopter. But no one here seems to have any info about them! There is a meeting later today where I will try and see if any of the other NGOs have info, else I will ask about the possibility of scheduling a helicopter to take us out there to 'recon' the place! Its all quite exciting really.

I am writing this blog at the UN WFP headquarters - they have electricity and internet!

There is lots to do, but I am learning to slow down and just relax a lot more!

Yesterday I got another speeding fine just outside Caia. 89 in a 60 zone... I got out my car with the 1000mets in my hand. They were still telling me that I was speeding when I cheerfully said 'Please may I have a fine?' They laughed at me took the money and then started writing the receipt... suddenly they closed the book, gave me my license and the 1000mets and said 'go by yourself a coke or something...' WHAT? they were just letting me go. SO that was pretty snazzy!

Shopping

2007-03-31T07:01:00.000+02:00

Day 2 of the shopping spree in Dondo went well and I have very little to report... No fines, only a bit of harassment by the police and I think know Beira inside out now! I decided that the original list was too little - that would only cater for about 200 families )±1000 people), so I upped it all to 1000 of everything, so now we can help 1000 families (±5000 people). I plan to go up to Chupanga next week - there is still one camp open, and the WFP have asked that we continue helping there. We want to work with hem and the INGC, so we dont butt heads and cover people who have already received food that week. Once we give out all we have we'll just have to come to Beira and start shopping again!

So all is well, I spent today just resting - 2 of our volunteer visitors packed 1000 plastic carrier bags with all the stuff I bought: 1 candle, 4 boxes of matches, 1 bar of soap, 1 litre of oil, 1 cup and 1 plate! It took them quite a wahile!

We are also looking at buying another 4 ton truck, in the meantime I'm organizing a 15ton truck to go with us to Chupanga and buy 1000 latas (15tonnes) of corn to distribute there! The owner has given us a fantastic offer: Dondo - Chupanga for 17 000mets (±$650), on the condition we dont want a receipt - SO, this one will be a hand-written receipt! Usually trucks from Beira to Caia cost between $800 - $1000, so this is a great price!

Logistics, logistics... what fun!

Crazy day

2007-03-29T09:29:00.000+02:00

We went shopping today. I have a little list, with only a few things on it:

5 bulk boxes of boxes of matches
10 bulk boxes of candles
1 tonne of beans
30 bulk boxes of oil
1000 plastic plates
1000 plastic cups
20 bulk boxes of soap bars
10 rolls of thick black plastic

All I managed to buy after 5 hours in Beira were the plates, cups and plastic rolls!

And I got another speed fine on the way in... the roads are badly marked, so I was just driving when the policeman jumped out and stopped me. Apparently it was a 60 zone, but I really didnt see any signs! Oh well, its 1000 mets, about $44. They didnt have a receipt book so they gave me the fine and said I should go pay it in town, they'll keep my license until then, so I set off into town. When I finally got to the police station the guy who writes the receipts was out to lunch! *sigh* so we drove to Air Corridor to get a ticket for Jessie who has to go back to Pemba tomorrow, and I parked outside the office. I had just gone inside when I saw a policeman go to the car. It apparently was a no-park zone and I had just received a 3000met fine (over $100) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! My pleads of, 'I'm sorry I've only been parked for 1min I'll move the car and not ever ever ever do it again' got me nowhere.

So I moved the car and when I got back the cop took me to go see the 'big boss'. I had a translator with me and we were halfway up the stairs when I begged again for him to just let us go, but he said 'No the big boss saw me talking to you, he knows you have to pay the fine' *sigh* then the cop says something to Miguel (my translator)... 'if you give him 20 he will let us go' ooh a bribe. mmmm 20 mets (less than $1) vs. 3000mets (over $100)... YEAH for 3rd world corruption. I paid the bribe. My first one ever. It was interesting. And cheaper.

moving on: I had bought the black plastic and the plates & cups when it was time to go home, well nearly - just have to stop at the traffic police again to pay the speeding ticket. We got there and found that the guy who writes the receipts had gone home for the day, AND that apparently you can only pay fines in the morning. SO my license is sleeping there tonight.

It was an interesting day, and I hope tomorrow will be less interesting... I'm getting the hang of the road rules here in Beira - they're kinda wierd, for example, if you are in the circle/roundabout you have to stop to let the people from the side streets in. But not always. And there are potholes to dodge, and the cars in the lane with the pothole will randomly swerve into your lane to dodge the hole, so you have to watch out for that too! Crazy!

Dondo

2007-03-28T07:58:00.000+02:00

I am in Dondo! I drove down with my housie, Jessie... It was fun. 2 girls chillin watching the scenery pass by :-)

We were meant to leave early sunday morning, but Saturday I woke up feeling really really really bad! I think it was food poisoning, so I was in bed for the whole day, sunday I wasnt feeling that great, and so monday I just rested. So we ended up leaving for the 2 day trip early tuesday morning instead.

We stayed in Mocuba overnight, so we did 11 hours yesterday and then 9 hours today... I'm getting tired of driving... Mozambique is so looooong and streched out, and I think the roads are worse in the north than in the south - esp the bit just before Dondo, there is literally nowhere that you can drive without hitting a hole, so in the end I gave up trying and just drove straight, its SO bad for the car!

But anyways - Dondo is great - they have hot running water!!! And a Shoprite (grocery store). So we went shopping and got ingredients for a salad. yummy! There is a bad cholera outbreak in Pemba right now, so we had to be really careful about fresh fruit and veggies, so the salad I had for dinner tonight was especially nice!

I will write an update on the flood relief soon - we are going out tomorrow to go shopping for blankets, candles and other things that are not available in the villages - I'm not sure when we plan to head out, probably in the next few days! But I'll keep you posted.

Sand...

2007-03-22T10:00:00.000+02:00

I am trying to enjoy my time here in Pemba to the full. So far I've spent all my time sorting out my house, dealing with small issues that pop up and planning on my up coming time down by the floods.

My friends and I planned a bonfire on the beach out near our other base in Maranganha, and we set out at 4:30pm to stop by the Dolphin to get takeout (chicken kebabs) before driving the 20mins it took to get to where Travis had been collecting driftwood. He was waiting for us, and after the wood was loaded it was dark. We set off down the sandy 2-track path next to the beach, looking for the perfect spot to park and make a fire. It was only about 5mins later that I spotted the perfect spot. The road veered to the right, and just to the left was a space for the car to park with a sandy patch for the fire! I drove off the road and onto the firm looking 'parking space' Just as I was about to stop the whole car started tipping to the left. The sand was giving way and it really felt like the car was just going to roll over! My stomach was in my throat and I just kept driving, trying to get out of the deep soft sand and onto firm ground. Finally the wheels just started spinning and the car wouldn't move. But at least we weren't rolling, and the guys got out to assess the predicament.

'Reverse back and it will be fine' So I reverse and we are fine, all is good. Now to just get back onto the road. Josham walked forward and checked out the road and decided that it looked like going straight forward wouldn't work, I should rather turn to the right and cross to the road there. I did as he said. The wheels started spinning frantically and I was wedged fast in the sand! We tried everything: we dug the wheels free, we placed sticks under the wheels for traction, we racked our brains trying to get the car out of the sand! Finally Josham gets down on his hands and knees and looks under the car. The car was no longer resting on its 4 wheels, instead the belly of the car was resting on the sand! No wonder we weren't able to drive out!

I had a spade and 2 plastic dinner plates. We started digging! An hour and a half later we had completely cleared the sand out from under the car, we had moved half a mountain of sand and we were totally covered with is: our hair, our clothes, even in our mouths! Our hands and fingers ached from the digging - it truly was a workout.

We packed more sticks under the wheels, we prayed then Josham got behind the wheel and we all pushed from the back. The car started, the engine revved and with a mighty lurch the car moved forward and onto the road!!!

That was SUCH a relief to be free!

We decided to have the fire anyways, I mean we were here now! So we built a big fire and sat around it eating our lukewarm kebabs, and roasting marshmallows to make s'mores (2 cookies filled with a block of chocolate and the roasted marshmallow. Its squished together to form a sandwich. - very yummy). But it was a fun evening, I enjoyed it... I guess I can only learn from this experience!

@ home

2007-03-20T09:43:00.000+02:00

Well I made it back to Pemba in 3 days! It was quite a hectic drive - at least the roads are fairly good so we could cover large distances daily.

Day 1
11 hours: Maputo - Muxungue...
I was cruising along, carefully slowing down to 60km/h at every village, honking at the odd chicken that chose the very moment I passed to run across the road. Near one such village I was slowing down, trying to find the best bush to make a pitstop at, when suddenly I see a policeman waving me down. He sticks the radar gun into the car and says 'you speed, you have to pay fine, 1000 meticais' (approx. $50). *sigh* I had been doing 68 in a 60 zone. SHOCK HORROR! So I had to pay the fine. While paying the fine the officer asked if he could marry me, but I politely declined and went on my way.

We reached Inhassoro where we had planned to stay the night, but it was still early so we decided to head to Muxungue and see what accommodation they had there. We found a really nice 'motel' - 5 wendy houses each with 2 beds and an en-suite bathroom - they even had running water!! The price wasn't too bad so I got one house, but my travelling buddy struck a deal with the owner to stay in his house for cheaper - but he ended up sleeping in the storeroom! I found it fairly amusing.

Day 2
13 hours: Muxungue - Alto Molucue
We crossed the mighty Zambezi today - driving through again Caia was great - the water levels have gone done SO much - all the areas that had previously been accessible only by boat could now be crossed on foot with relative ease. It was shocking to see how deep the water had been though - and all the crops that had been in the valley is totally gone, a few lone corn stalks stuck up here and there as a reminder of what had been.

The road were TERRIBLE, especially between Mocuba and Alto Molucue. Potholes, long dusty detours and more potholes. It was SO bumpy!

When we got to Alto Molucue it was dark already, so we stopped at the local diesel pump and asked the attendant where the best hotel/motel/guesthouse was. He pointed us in the general direction and we headed into the town to find it. But they were full... My ever resourceful travelling buddy asked, ' could we pitch our tents in the yard?' 'Mmm', the lady considered it, and for a very small fee we camped next to the 4x4 in the dusty parking lot! But it was good, was the first time that I used my brand new tent, and it worked very well!

Day 3
9 hours: Alto - Molucue - Pemba
A smooth day's driving, very short! The roads were good and it was WONDERFUL to be home!

Now I'm in Pemba till the 24th, then I'll be heading back down to Dondo (Caia) to help with flood relief. We are expecting 10 containers of food soon and we have to work out the logistics of distributing it amongst the thousands of people still without homes.

...and off I go!

2007-03-16T11:35:00.000+02:00

I am on my way to PEMBA!!! Finally after a 3 month absence I will see my friends, my house and my dog again! I'm SO excited!

My 4x4 is packed to the roof with stuff - bags and bags (and bags and bags) of groceries for me, airplane mechanic tools for our resident plane mechanic, 80kgs of dogfood for my puppy, a bag we have named 'behemoth' for my housie, boxes and boxes of books for our Bible School in Pemba, a generator, 2 large speakers, microphones, and a mixing desk (basically a full sound system) for the Iris base in Chimoio, a keyboard for the Iris base in Dondo, a gate for my house, more bags of groceries for my fellow missionaries, large storage boxes for another missionary, a microwave (for me), 5 LARGE bags of clothes donated for the flood victims, and last but not least: 4 jerry cans of fuel for my truck!

We are leaving at 5am on Saturday morning, and my ETA is either LATE Monday night, or lateish on Tuesday night...

Here is my planned route (for those of you who wish to look it up on a map):

Sat 17 : Maputo - Inhassoro
Sun 18 : Inhassoro, across the Zambezi by ferry - Mocuba
Mon 19: Mocuba - Pemba

Please pray for a safe, hassle-free journey!

On the Road Again

2007-03-13T07:20:00.000+02:00

Finally I am on my way again - my car's import papers are STILL not totally sorted out, but things have progressed a bit in the right direction - so I'm hopeful that I'll get my Mozambican license plates and registration papers this week still.

I have been on the road for the past 2 days, accompanying Betty Johnson (our wonderful can-do-anything missionary) on a trip down to Durban in South Africa - we had to go collect the workbooks/syllabus for our Bible Schools in Mozambique. We loaded 25 A3 size boxes and 5 A2 size boxes filled with thousands of books! My 4x4 was up to the test and carried the extra 3/4 ton very well. Then we left this morning and 10hours later we are at the Iris appartment in Nelspruit, a stone throw from the Mozambican border. Tomorrow we will be sorting the books and re-packing them to be transported to our 3 different bible schools across the country! (Maputo, Dondo & Pemba).

Thursday we head off the Maputo, where I will attempt to speed up the registration process for the truck (my 4x4). I just wanna go HOME! I miss my dog (Bala), and all my friends!!! Its been 3 months now since I was in my little house - everything's probably full of mildew by now... mmm that reminds me, I really must remember to ask my housemate to clean my room for me!.... :-P

I've been trying to get my car imported for over a month now - one of the longest most frustrating experiences in my life - but it will all be worth it in the end - Once I've driven up to Pemba I will drive back down to the Zambezi pretty much straight away, and team lead one of the Relief teams in Dondo, so my 4x4 will have many more miles on the odo by the time I'm finally back up in Pemba for good!

Life's NEVER dull (frustrating yes, dull no) when you're a missionary with Iris!

Video: Flood Relief in Mozambique

2007-03-04T00:57:00.000+02:00

This is a short (4min) video shot in Caia, Mozambique in February 2007. This is the start of the Flood Relief Operation by Iris Ministries. We went out with $4000, of that $1000 was to buy food for the people, the rest was for everything else. Now with more funding that has come in we are able to feed over 50 000 displaced people.

All their crops were destroyed and many lost their houses.

(click the big play button, then click pause. Wait for the red bar to load - this will allow the video to play without interruption)

Of course, if you'd like to donate towards the flood relief effort, then visit the IRIS website nearest you:

Iris USA

Iris Canada

Iris South Africa

Iris UK

Floods

2007-02-23T01:29:00.000+02:00

I have just returned from Caia, one of the areas hit by the floods. I don't think that I've completly processed what I saw there, when I have, I'll re-write this story.

The devestation these people have seen, the utter hopelessness of their situation, their faces expressionless, deviod of emotion even when they were receiving food. Enough only to last a few days.

As I walked through the camp of temporary houses I tried rationalizing in an attempt to stop the tears. Its not that bad, its fine for a family of 6 to live in a 6ft sq grass shack, open to all the elements, without food or even a blanket. Its OK. Its fine for these people to scavange what roots and leaves they can, its OK for them to wonder what they will feed their children. Its OK. No its not OK. And as my reasoning fell to pieces in the dust, my heart broke for them.

I know that they were happy with their lives. Their crops are nearly ready to be harvested, their chickens were scratching in the dust and the radio was happily blaring out music. Neighbors sitting outside the in the shade of a porch, and dinner is prepared over the coal fire. And now, now they have nothing.

We could feed 244 families with the bit of food the 3 of us could buy. Enough for a few days, maybe a week if they stretched it. The blanket, candle, matches and cup was welcomed too. But mainly the food.

On the northern bank of the Zambezi a team from Iris Pemba were giving out food to over a 1000 families.

The Dondo team will do the same on the southern shore when more funds are available.

The road leading to the edge of the River

Donate in the US
Donate in South Africa
(mark the funds for flood relief)

As if she has not suffered enough

Start of Flood Relief

2007-02-13T11:54:00.000+02:00

We are in Maputo now, leaving early Wednesday morning to drive up to Caia where we will be basing our relief effort. We spent the past 2 days buying items to take with us: water, baby formulae, baby bottles, matches, candles, cups, plastic carry bags. It was quite interesting, this is the first time that I drive in Maputo - its scary enough just being a passenger, so braving the chaotic traffic was quite nerve wrecking.

We've packed large black crates/containers with all the water, food etc to make it easier to transport and handle - all the thousands of Rands worth of stuff we bought seemed so little once it was neatly packed into the crates - we are believeing for multiplication!

Melodie (My Mother) packing the baby supplies - we have enought for about 45 mothers (130 kids)

I wish we could take more, but we only have 2 4x4s and right now they are packed to capacity!

Me packing all the plastic cups we have into one container - its only 350 cups, but one per family will at least be something

A container full of soy porridge, its really nutritious.

In total we have 10 such containers and 200 blankets. And the 3 of us going up in 2 vehicles.

I got an update from one of our missionaries in the Central region - she was able to find out from our local pastors just how bad the situation was.

Looks like most of the roads are still usable, so that wont be a problem, but just in Caia 450 homes of Iris Church members have been destroyed, and not jut their homes, but all their crops too. Harvest time is in 2 months and is meant to supply them with food for the rest of the year Now they have nothing. We will be buying corn to give out too - 20kg costs about $4 and is enough to feed a family for a few weeks. Cholera is quite a problem in Morrumbala: this is where I spent 2 weeks last year building a house for the 50 orphans being cared for by Pastor Cebala (see the story here), the sad news is that apparently the church has been destroyed and at the moment we believe that Pastor Cebala's house is severly damaged too. I dont know the state of the house we built, and part of me is too scared to ask.

I dont think that I will have any internet access while I'm up in Caia - I will have cellphone contact though, so if anyone wants to call and encourage us/find out how its going you are welcome to call me! +258 82 550 9842

Please just continue to pray for us as we travel up and camp out next to the flooded Zambezi helping the poor.

FLOODS in Mozambique

2007-02-10T02:52:00.000+02:00

I am leaving for Mozambique tomorrow to go help with the flood relief effort. My 4x4's import papers havnt cleared yet, so I am just going in on a 30day visa and will sort that out later!

Please pray for us!!!

Recent cyclones, heavy rains and flooding, in Mozambique, have so far claimed at least 29 lives and destroyed more than 4,600 houses, 100 classrooms and four health centers. The situation is likely to get much worse and could possibly reach beyond the levels of the flooding of 2000/2001 when 700 people lost their lives and thousands more were left destitute. It is predicted that up to 46,500 people could be affected by the current situation with some already living in temporary accommodation centers.

The Floods of 2000/2001 - photos by Rolland Baker

Iris ministries have almost 400 churches planted along the Zambezi river; all of which are likely to be flooded or washed away if the water level rises to that of the floods of 2000/1. This would affect many of the congregation’s homes and possessions, leaving many destitute.

The Mozambican Army has been ordered to evict some 2,500 people who have refused to leave their homes and livestock despite the looming danger. These poor people are afraid to lose the little that they have and would rather stay to protect their property, risking their lives.

IRIS South Africa are preparing to leave to assist with Aid for the flood victims - We are taking blankets, food, medicine and love to the people already affected by the rising water.

Iris SOUTH AFRICA welcomes any donations toward the ‘flood relief fund’.

We are leaving South Africa on SUNDAY 11 Feb, and will be returning once the initial crisis is over.

You can reach me in Mozambique on +258 82 550 9842

FOR MORE INFO go to: AllAfrica.com

4x4

2007-02-03T06:32:00.000+02:00

I have some WONDERFUL news: I have been amazingly blessed with my own 4x4 (pickup/truck/bakkie)!

It's a Mitsubishi Colt 2.8 TDi, ClubCab, 2002 model!

I am so excited that I will have my own car up in Pemba - WOW, just be so great, so much more freedom, no more beggin for rides! No more chances of being mugged!

The guy that donated the truck makes canopies, so he made an extra sized canopy that will be big enough to carry all the sound equipment needed for outreaches, as well as a few people!

My dad has been amazing these past 6 weeks - helping me with the paperwork to get the car exported and also making adjustments to the car - he designed and made little seats for the back so that I can carry an additional 4-6 people in the back, handles and steps to get in easier, changing the electric sockets so that I can run a small fan and a light from the back (Yay! Now I can sleep in the back on outreaches - NO more tenting!)

My Dad putting the finishing touches on the back

We will be driving up to Pemba leaving this week - it should take about 4 or 5 days - 3000km! My parents are going to come with me for the drive, just so they can see Pemba, where I live, what I do... It will be really exciting!!! I will keep you all updated on the journey!

Here are some pics:

Inside at the front

The back

One of the chairs my dad designed
(the legs can be removed and then they can flip up to make more space!)

Video: Christmas at Zimpeto, Maputo

2007-02-03T06:00:00.000+02:00

Here is a short movie that I made about Christmas at our children's center in Mozambique!

(it might take a little while to load...if you press the big 'play' button, then pause it, you can wait for the red bar to load all the way and then you'll be able to watch it without interruption)

I trust you all had a wonderful Christmas and may 2007 be blessed as you continue to share in my adventures... Lets see what the New Year brings!

Eulogy for an Apple

2007-01-29T08:04:00.000+02:00

It is with great sadness that I bring you this news...

My trusty little Apple iBook G4 has kicked the bucket, bought the farm, bit the dust, faded away, is pushing up daisies (well, its not really bio-degradable...) Fair enough it was getting on in years, having been a faithful companion to Rolland Baker (he got it new), then Shara (Heidi's PA) who used it to near death, then instead of throwing it away it was given to: ME - This was the bestest present I was given in 2006, going from having nothing to having SOMETHING that could go online, write university assignments, blogs and play DVDs.

My 'lil mac was only with me for 8 months, but they were 8 fun-filled months.
I will remember 'lil mac fondly, my very first laptop...

Rest In Peace

6 Weeks of Bliss

2007-01-26T08:39:00.000+02:00

Now I know that it hardly seems fair that I get to have a 6-week holiday and you dont. Well you can have a 6-week holiday too - Just follow these 3 easy steps:

1. Quit your well paying job

2. Start volunteering somewhere (if possible pick an interesting location: one without running water, that is sweltering hot, with a high cost of living, culturally different, medically dangerous and uses a foreign language or two)

3. Do a part time degree while you are in this fun location (which entails flying internationally to write exams twice a year)

...and at the end of the year you will be entitled to a 6-week break.

Easy aint it?

So when I tell you just how AMAZING these past 6 weeks have been then I'm not exaggerating. I have been able to catch up on all the movies that have come and gone, I have been able to sleep LATE and not be woken by the cheery shouting of our kids at 6am. I havn't had to worry about exams and studying. I have had hot showers and I've eaten foods that I cant get in Pemba. But mainly I've done nothing. Its been great.

BUT I'm not a total sloth - There has been the application for a DIRE (ID for Foreign Residents) so that I can reside in Mozambique without having to adhear to the "3-monthly exit the country or else you pay a $50 per day fine" rule; I've been sorting out the paperwork for exporting a large object (more about this in the next post); shopping for items that will improve my life (microwave, tinned foods, kitchen utensils etc) and visiting with family and friends! (And I registered for this semester at university again - I'm a glutton for punishement I know: Linguistics, Classical Culture, Latin & Modern Hebrew... what was I thinking!?!)

I'll be heading back to Mozambique on February 3rd, its only a week away BUT I'm really looking forward to getting home and back to work. I have such an excitement for this year, I can hardly wait to get started on all the projects I've got in my head!

2007

2007-01-08T05:24:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the NEW YEAR!

I have made a little video of Christmas at our Zimpeto Center in Maputo BUT I'm still waiting for permission from SONY/ATV Publishing for permission to use the music with it (seeing they hold the copyright and all that).
PLEASE watch this space - as soon as I get permission I will put up the clip right here! Hopefull they approve it soon...

I hope that you will enjoy accompanying me on my travels this year...

*
Hopefully I'll be visiting Malawi, Sudan, DR Congo and of course I'll be travelling around Mozambique...

*
Our 'Houses' project will be launched this year too - drilling for water and building accomodation for orphans - I'm so excited about this!!!

*
Then I will also be starting a 'sound training program' for the older kids (16-18) at our Zimpeto centre - I will be doing a certificate/diploma level course with them, equipping them with a skill and a qualification that they can use in their futures.

I think I will have an interesting year - I trust you will enjoy every moment of yours!

One Very Interesting Overnight Outreach…

2006-12-11T09:59:00.000+02:00

2pm and we are leaving, only an hour late for our 4-hour journey to Alua, a village in Nampula Province. On the back of the open flatbed truck were 14 mission school students and 8 student pastors.

The 4x4 driving behind us carried a TV crew from GODtv who are doing an in-depth interview with Heidi, and are following her around. Heidi still has a class to teach in Pemba, so she and Shara, her PA, will head out 2 hours later and meet us in Alua, bringing 8 kids, and 4 guest speakers: Asher Interater’s team from Israel and the director of IRIS India, Ravi.

We had just left Pemba, and I was sitting in the front playing with my new camcorder – I was going to film this outreach and make a little documentary thing for people back home – when there was an police checkpoint. The policeman saw my camera and demanded to know where my authorization paper to film was. I don't need one; it’s a small camcorder, for a “home movie”, why do I need authorization? Well they made me get out the truck and wanted to see the footage I had. There was one shot of a pickup truck stuffed with 15 people, and 6 guys hanging off the back. That really upset him. Apparently (according to him) you aren't allowed to film while sitting in a moving vehicle. 2 of our Mozambican leaders were pleading my case, but the cops were really being nasty. “Fine, you all can turn around and go back to Pemba, OR she stays here and goes to the police station with us”. I’m just pretending not to speak/understand ANY Portuguese. They are eyeing my camcorder, so I quickly eject the tape and offer it to the chief guy. (Better that I lose a tape than the camera!) They take it, but are still not happy. Finally after 15mins, I’m not sure what happens, but they accept our apologies, hand back the miniDV tape and let us go. *huge sigh of relief!*

Will (driving the pickup with the film crew in it) was waiting just up ahead out of sight. We fill him in and advise the cameraman sitting in the back not to let the police see the camera.

The next checkpoint is just before the Lurio River, the provincial border between Cabo Delgado and Nampula Provinces. I have driven over this bridge countless time and never had a problem. Today however, they demanded to see all the passports of the foreigners and the ID papers of the nationals. Which hardly anyone has on them. Never in the year I’ve been here have we EVER been asked for documents/passports. They hassled Will about his insurance sticker that was out of date – but legally Will doesn’t need insurance, its optional, and he chose not to renew. It was a long long interrogation. Finally we paid the bribe of $8 and left. We were late enough as it was – and there was lightning in the distance, we don't want to be caught in the rain…

Rain. Lots of it, pouring down and drenching all the people sitting in the back of the open flat bed truck. Soaking the tents, the sleeping bags, the sound system. We stop and buy a big piece of black plastic and everyone huddles under it to stay dry. We hadn’t gone much further when Will flags us down and tells us to stop. Shara’s Landrover had died, the transmission had dropped out – and it’s new, it’s only done 19 000km/11,800miles! The problem however was that she had been driving behind Heidi and Heidi hadn’t noticed that Shara wasn’t behind her anymore… We try to get in touch with her, but Heidi’s phone is weird; it keeps connecting us into her voicemail, so that we actually hear ‘you have 79 new messages’. Heidi’s car is filled with 8 kids, Shara has the guest speakers, some more kids and a student. Finally we get thru to Heidi, she’s only about 5mins past Shara and she heads back. Its late, nearly 7pm and pitch black. The rain has eased up a bit, but could start again at any minute. Finally Heidi calls and says, “OK its too late to get to Alua, just go to the chief of the village you are in now and ask if we can do the outreach there, and camp for the night, We’ll go to Alua first thing in the morning.” Great. We don't want to scare the chief with all the white people at once, so Will and Carlos go see the chief with one of the student pastors from this area. The rest of us stay sitting in the flatbed next to the road. The lightning is spectacular and the cameraman for the film crew sat on the edge of the road trying to capture it when a motorcycle drives past. It’s an off duty policeman and he’d been drinking. And he had a hassle with the camera. Around this time Will comes back with permission for us to stay in the village and just as we head towards the chief’s bamboo mud hut the cop on the motorbike takes our driver’s license and the truck’s papers. We get to the hut and Ibrahimo (the driver) goes to Will and tells him what happened. The cop had taken off to the police station.

Heidi calls again wants us to setup the sound system and just show the last 30mins of the JESUS film. It’s raining so I’m not too keen on that idea. We decide to setup the tents first before the bags and sleeping bags got totally soaked so we had just got all the tents up when Heidi calls again and says that we should rather just go to Alua and stay there, we cannot do the outreach in the rain and at least there is a church building in the other village.

“Pack it up guys!”

The students sighed, “So this was just a practice run?” All the villagers were sitting on their porches watching in fascination as all these white people set up tents and then 10minutes later break them down again. They must have thought we were crazy. So we pack it all up and huddle under the awning of the chief’s hut, trying to stay dry. The motorbike cop had gone to fetch the chief of police, and they confiscated Will’s papers and license too.

Heidi and Shara arrived then, with Shara’s Landrover balanced precariously on the back of a flatbed truck – some random guy had seen they were broken down, stopped to help – when he realized that we help orphans, he said, “Well then I will help you” So he drove his camiao down a ditch so that the back was level with the road, Shara pushed her car onto the back, they used rope to tie the Landrover to the truck, then everyone got back into the Landrover and the guy drove off behind Heidi. They said it was scary; it kept swaying from side to side!

Heidi joined the discussion – the issue of the passports was raised again – then more police arrived carrying AK47s. They wanted to place us under house arrest here in this village because the jail back in Namapa wasn’t big enough to hold all of us. Why exactly they wanted to arrest us was still not clear, but they were having issues with us. Will came to the awning and told us all to pray, not take photos and keep quiet – things were getting tense. The rain was pouring, it was pitch black, and I had been having an interesting conversation with the cameraman for the film crew!

Finally Heidi said, “This is ridiculous, we’re leaving.” And for some reason the cop said, “OK”. Will came running up to us, “Quick. Get in the truck. Get in now before they change their minds. Move it. Double time!”

We (very quickly) load up and go.

Alua isn’t too far away, and we are welcomed by singing and cheering! Its 8:30pm and we are very late, but we made it, and that’s what counts. Everyone helps to unload the camiao and we dump everything inside the church, then we huddle in the building were Heidi has been preaching in the dark for 15mins already. We get the generator out and I try to start it. There was enough gas, but the big question was, “where is the pull cord?” I had let one of the Mozambican staff use it to test some equipment and he had returned it minus the pull-cord, and hadn’t even told me it was missing. It’s a good thing we were out of cell phone range; else I think I would have chewed his ear off over the phone. We use a piece of rope and wind it around the coil; finally we get the generator started and have some light in the church. After the preaching we prayed for people, and Heidi prayed for a guy that was lame, and he got up and walked. Pretty cool!

11pm and we set up our tents, in and around the church building and have a tuna roll for supper. Everyone settles down and by midnight all is quiet.

At 5am the Mozambicans start waking up and making a noise… by 6 it was impossible to sleep - I looked up and saw 7 little black faces pressed against the see-thru mosquito net covering the entrance of my tent. It had been too hot and stuffy to shut the door, but I need to change, so I try to get the door’s zip to cooperate with my sleepy brain, finally shutting out the staring eyes. I change and crawl out my tent, hoping that the water for coffee was already boiling on the wood fire. It was and I make myself a cup of coffee, strong and sweet, and munch on a buttered bread roll for breakfast.

I got the mission students to do sound – its great, so it leaves me free to film. Church starts at 8am and for once I’m not stuck behind the sound desk! There are too many people to fit in the church, so we move the speakers outside instead – its hot in the sun, so most of the crowd find a shady spot and listen from there instead. All the guest speakers preach, and there are a number of healings. A woman comes up to Heidi and says that her daughter is a deaf mute since birth, but she is at home, about 6km/3.72miles away please can someone go fetch her so that she can get prayer??? I offer to take Heidi’s Landrover to pick her up – when I get to the house there was also a cripple guy, so we picked him up too, and also another blind man. Back at the church Heidi prayed for the girl, she is about 12years old, and she said, ‘mama’, her first word. She seemed really bewildered, I guess I’d be too if this was the first time that I ever hear anything! That was awesome!

Heidi had to get into the church, we have to dedicate the building, and she has to officiate 4 weddings (well, actually one wedding for 4 couples). All goes well and the
couples enjoy their kiss at the end… the church building is dedicated, and now its time for lunch.

The film crew want to interview Heidi in the kitchen, so we can’t eat yet, an hour later they are finally done. We’re just about to eat when an Iris pastor comes to Heidi to show her 8 orphans that he has been looking after – he would like to register them with Iris, and he would like us to take them back to Pemba because he cannot afford to support them. They are older children, 13 – 16 years old. Heidi has been going the whole morning now; I think her mind was so tired. I was standing behind her, she turns around and says, “We cant take them to Pemba, what can we do for them?” My suggestion: Buy them goats? This kicks starts her again and she says. “OK, we will buy you 4 goats, some seeds for a garden, and food for the kids. We will register them and support them, but they will stay with you.” The pastor also needs a bicycle, so we head into town to get the bicycle.

Heidi goes shopping - an hour and a half later she returns with all the goodies she’s bought. She likes to shop – we got a bike, 30 capalanas, 50 pairs of flip-flops, a huge bag of rice, a huge bag of beans, buckets, school book, matches, candles… the goats will be bought in the village where they stay.

By the time we get back to the church, lunch is over (we had even fed the community), dishes were done, the camiao was loaded, ready to leave! There is a scramble to get everyone who needs a ride home on the back of the truck, the film crew are loaded, and Heidi’s Landrover is already just dust in the distance. Quickly we go after her – she wants a picture of each kid.

At the pastors house we unload the goodies Heidi had bought, she has a look around the house where they stay, then she dedicates the house as a children’s center, prays for the kids and then we’re off – its 4pm already!

The rain starts almost as soon as we hit the good road, and the students huddle under the black plastic again, some of them wrapped in the rain protectors of the tents. It rained the whole way home, stopping only just outside Pemba. None of the police gave us hassles and it was a fairly smooth journey home. The rain lulled me to sleep, and when I woke up I was so hungry, I realized that all I’d eaten the whole day was a butted bread roll and 2 little mangoes! The film crew was staying at the 5* Pemba Beach Hotel – they have the best buffet there, so I started dreaming of the meats, the veggies… I was ready to drop $20 on some food! But I knew I’d just eat some 2-minute noodles and tuna when I get home.

The sound equipment unloaded, the students dropped off and finally at 8pm I am home.
That was quite an adventure don't you think?

PS The GODtv programme should have been broadcast in 2 parts, on Fridays, Dec 22 and 29 at 10:30am... called 'In Depth with David Aldous', and is an interview with Heidi Baker, focusing on IRIS Pemba - BUT it wasnt - so just keep checking their website www.god.tv.

Pemba Conference!

2006-12-02T08:28:00.000+02:00

A flurry of activity as the flatbed trucks start arriving, depositing their load , then heading out once again. The people had started to arrive! By the start of the conference on Friday night there were at least 2000 people camped out in and around the big-top tent, and also in all the outdoor classrooms.

Pit latrines and shower areas had been franticly dug in the week leading up to the conference, now no matter which direction you looked you would have no trouble locating a latrine - huge white ‘S’ (for women) and ‘H’ (for men) letters were painted on the bamboo walls (and for those that could not read, little stick men and woman were painted too!) There seemed to be some people who had never used a latrine before, so the conference organizers spent 10minutes during announcements clearly explaining the do’s and don’ts of using a latrine. They had also painted huge stick figures on the walls inside each stall, CLEARLY showing the correct and incorrect usage. That just cracked me up!

I had thought that we were going to show the JESUS film the first night, but instead they gave me an old VHS copy of some movie about a guy dying and going to hell and not liking it very much… it was in Portuguese, so not many of the people understood it, and the power cable kept being pulled out of the socket/falling out by itself so then it took time to restart the projector – so we never did see the end of the movie! But the people had fun singing and dancing and for once they weren’t upset when I said I was switching off the system – cos supper was served! Everyone rushed off to go eat and I was left to pack it up by myself (as usual) fortunately there was a guy that had forgotten his phone in the sound room, so I made a deal with him – he helps me, and once its all packed away, I’ll open the room for him to get his phone. It worked, and he somehow got more guys to help out so it went fairly quickly! Then as I was just despairing about getting a ride home (it was 10pm) I saw a Landrover drive past – yay!

The next morning the conference kicked off for real. During the night more people had arrived, and as the day went on more would still come, we were expecting about 3000 people in total from the other districts!

Well after an hour and a half of energetic singing and dancing the people settled down in the dirt and on the grass mats and to listen to the head of our missions school, Lesley Ann Leighton. After the ministry time the band came up again and the crowd went wild – kicking up another dust cloud as they praised the Lord. The bell for lunch rang and quickly the tent was deserted…

Each afternoon for the duration of the conference, Heidi had scheduled 4 workshops to run concurrently – and she had let me know the day before that I had to make happen a sound system for each of the 4 venues…
When I found out about this stretch of my super powers, I had quickly gone to where the mission school was having their class and asked one of the staff to get me 6 volunteers to do sound. Josh went up to the front and said, “I want six guys to put up their hands!”
Most of the guys dutifully raised their hands - not at all knowing what they were getting themselves into – and Josh picked 6. “OK – you’ve all have been assigned to extra work duty this weekend. See Nikki after class. Thanks”- I like his style! I might add that Josh had been a Marine before he had come here! When I met with the guys after the class to outline what I required of them, one of the guys gave a sigh of relief that the assignment had to do with sound – when he had put up his hand he had thought that maybe it was for “clean the latrines” duty!

I was so thankful that I had those 6 guys to help out – the workshops went off without a hitch and I was able to go home for 3 hours each afternoon to take a nap before I had to be back to re-setup the sound system for the evening session!

The evening sessions were amazing – all the people in the surrounding area had come too, and there were loads of people: singing, dancing, cheering, shouting, having fun - but it was loud.

So loud in fact, that I’ve lost the ability to hear some of high frequencies with my left ear. The minute I realized that, I sat behind the sound desk with my fingers plugging my ears. I couldn’t risk more damage. Now 2 weeks after the conference it hasn’t recovered, and I’m not sure if it will. I’m going to get some proper attenuating ear plugs made when I’m next in South Africa to stop my ears from more damage. So that’s sad.

Our high-tech sound setup, 2 Soundcraft Gigracs linked to power the 8 speakers

But the conference was good – I think that the people in the villages, those that live in the bush bush, went home feeling encouraged and not forgotten.

Sunset in Pemba

On the last day of the conference Heidi held a huge wedding ceremony for anyone that wanted to get married – there were 17 couples that said ‘I do’ that day. The message was about ‘Love’ and it was really sweet. Some churches in America had donated rings, and after Heidi led them in their vows our senior pastor went to each couple and they tried out the rings till they found one that fit. Each woman got a ring! Then Heidi said, ‘You may kiss the bride’. It was the FIRST time that I have ever seen a Mozambican publicly display affection, and this was not just one couple, it was 17 couples, all of them kissing. And they kissed for along time! ☺

It was a busy 4 days for me, and after working nearly 45 hours in total, I was fairly happy when it all came to an end!

No more little campfires in the outdoor classrooms, no more people scattered around sleeping where they could find space on the ground, no more laundry hanging on all the fences, no more 4000 mouths to feed 3 times a day. The people had all piled back into the trucks, and by Thursday the base was empty, and quiet.

Back in Pemba

2006-11-16T03:14:00.000+02:00

I am back in Pemba after my quick 10 day visit to South Africa to write 3 exams - it was a nice break: hot running water, pork ribs - need I say more? :-)

I am back just in time for our annual Pemba conference - the place is a beehive of activity getting the big tent chruch expanded to fit in the extra 3000 people that are coming, and then finding them all place to sleep...

Pemba is blossoming - Summer is coming! The big baobabs are are green, and the mercury is rising and rising... its HOT here!

The sound systems are OK - they survived my absence, although the room was a mess with cables and speakers and stands lying around everywhere - I made my annoyance known and the guys came in and tidied, apologising profusely for being too lazy to pack things away properly... *sigh*

The conferennce kicks off tomorrow night with the JESUS film - and of course at least 2 hours of singing and dancing!

Até Logo! (Until Later)

Sad News

2006-11-11T01:49:00.000+02:00

I received some sad news this morning, they said it better than I ever could.

" There are times when we don’t know what to say.
When we feel the emotions, but the words are so few, so,
so empty, or not close enough.

And such is the time now. Baby Lori is home now, in Jesus' arms.
She left us this morning, and, and He took her Home.

She just stopped breathing.

Just yesterday she seemed fine, was her usual darling self,
the laughing, joyous, cute, baby girl we all love so much,
and now, now she is gone and we are left trying to cope. "

You can read her story here: A Little Miracle

I will miss her so much.

Getting to Malawi

2006-11-08T11:57:00.000+02:00

Mozambican immigration were being silly and had decided to take the end of Ramadan as a public holiday – this meant that my passport was still in their possession on Thursday when I was meant to be flying to Malawi with Rolland… We called and even sent someone to the office to ask for my passport – they refused to give it to me before 2:30pm. So frustrating!!!

Eventually I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to go to Lilongwe for the Iris Central Malawi Conference. I walked back to the little plane and took my suitcase out and sat on the front steps waiting for a driver to fetch me. Rolland and his other passenger cleared customs and took off.

I let everyone know that I was going to be in Pemba for the next four days and set about preparing for the next day. Suddenly I got a phone call – arrangements had been made and a Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) plane will come pick me up in Pemba the next morning and take me to Lilongwe. I was astounded. WOW! Someone had sponsored me a flight!!

The next morning bright and early I was at the airport – it was deserted and the few staff that was there must have thought I was slightly crazy, being there so early when there were no scheduled flights for the next 5 hours. It wasn’t too long before I saw the plane land – the guy at the gift shop kindly let me onto the runway and he also called the immigration guy to let him know I was there. He arrived 30 mins later and stamped me out the country. Finally we were off.

The pilot, Dave, had been working with MAF in Mozambique for 10 years! After we took off he let me fly the plane – quite a challenge trying to keep it level and on course! But it was fun – we had to dodge the clouds because MAF regulations require that they not fly thru clouds - I think that made the flight even more interesting! It wasn’t long before I saw the clear blue water of Lake Malawi below us, the next thing I knew Dave had taken the controls and we had landed.

I was really happy to be in Malawi!

(continued...)