Welcome to Africa, Rick & Heather

After many months of hard work itinerating and preparing to come to Mozambique, Rick and Heather are finally here! They just spent 4 months in Brazil language learning, and their tasks now are:

1. Learning their way around the Nelspruit/Whiteriver area so they know where to go to source items and information (which they and the mission always need) and,

2. Purchasing initial set up items to take to their new home in the Mozambican bush.

3. Of course, there are other tasks as well like getting your internal clock in sync with Africa time and figuring out you speak Portuguese in Mozambique but English in South Africa :P

Though they'll have use of the old Isuzu pick-up, a more reliable vehicle is something Rick and Heather will be fund raising for and selecting the right one is the first step.

Poring over the local auto trader.

Checking out what is available.

The five of us (we're here with our niece, Kim) decided to all crawl into one of these showroom models to see how much space there is inside these double cabs with a full complement of passengers. We were just all nicely tucked in with the doors shut when the guys jumped out to examine the engine. It didn't take us ladies long to decide that 3 adults fit fine in the back seat, but now it was time to get out. Heather tried her door but the child lock was on. Kim tried hers...same thing. We called to the guys to open our doors for us, but with the hood up, they couldn't hear us. So there we sat rather helplessly with our windows up and doors locked! Finally I decided that I, in the middle, was in the best position to scramble over the front seat, get out and set us free. It was rather funny and we felt a bit foolish, but no one else really seemed to notice our antics. Just as well.

These guys' antics never go unnoticed though.

From early morning, these Vervet monkeys shriek and scamper across the roofs at Mercy Air playing tag with each other, scouting for food and making a general nuisance of themselves. Forget sleeping past 6 a.m.. But before today, I'd never caught them snooping at me through the sky light in our room. It's a good thing they're cute.

Although our plans for this week include a visit to Kruger National Park, that's not where the below picture was taken. We were surprised to see these two elephants in an empty city lot near Nelspruit. Eventually we figured they must belong to the circus tent just down the way.


Now that I've whetted your appetite for pictures of African animals, I'll try to post some next week. And I'll try to resist the temptation to photograph, once again, the impressive pot holes on our way home. No promises though.