Going Home

Finally, after months of travel, this week on Monday we got to head home.

Departing Kruger International Airport (KIA), South Africa.

On our way home, we fly right over Skukuza Rest Camp in Kruger Park (below) en route to Vilanculos, Mozambique where we clear customs.

The view of the Mozambique coast at Vilanculos is always breathtakingly beautiful with its bright sand, clear blue water and low tides.


This airport is quite small with only 2 immigration and 2 customs officers. So if too many people arrive at the same time, things get pretty hectic. Murphy’s law was in full effect on Monday, I guess, because three commercial flights arrived at the same time we did. It took several hours to get our passports stamped, customs/aircraft documents cleared, the plane refueled and back in the air for the last 1 hr. 40 min. flight to Chimoio.

Oh yeah. I had this open when we were at 9,000 ft (where the air is "thin") then sealed it to land.

Talk about flat!

When I see stuff like this, I have to marvel that our bodies handle pressure changes as well as they do. I'm sure thankful I don't look this flat once we land!

And that made me think about the whole pressure thing. There’s a lot to be said about our resilience when faced with pressures of different kinds, and most often, it's only once we're through it that we realize we "made" it and didn't end up too flat for all of it. We truly are wonderfully made!

It was smooth sailing on the home stretch so Dwight had a chance skim the news headlines (remember, we’re flying—not driving)...

while I got stuck into my next lesson in statistics.


And now, even with all the chaos of just having arrived home, unpacking our suitcases, unpacking and reorganizing stuff we left stored away,

...organizing goods left by others (medicine, used clothes, etc.--and oh, look what we have here on my bulletin board--better keep my eyes open for surprises :P),

and even with me being sick for a day in between…It’s still good to be home!

And now that I'm home, I have a “to do” list that’s about a foot long which includes final prep on my Preventive Health Manual for the intensive seminar next week, visiting: orphan homes, the school, the local hospital director, (a bunch of other stuff,) and taking photos of all the recent developments here. I’ll do my best to post them by next week.

But that’s next week. Right now, it’s Saturday. And since I’m still officially recovering from the flu (or (relapsing) malaria…one really never knows for sure which is which here but that's a whole other blog entry), I’m going to grab a 2nd cup of coffee, put my feet up and relax.

OR, maybe I'll sort through those cases of donated medicine on the veranda that I can barely wait to get my hands on!

Oh, and Mushu says "hi".

Give me a break!

We decided that after about 4 months of a fairly relentless 7-day-week furlough schedule of travelling, speaking, promoting, etc. (no, furloughs are not missionary “holidays”), and before we plunge head-long back into our roles in Mozambique, that this would be the best time to escape for a few days’ break. Besides, we wanted to do something special for our 28th wedding anniversary.

After considering a few different options, we decided Kruger Park was calling our names. Ah yes, the sights and sounds of roaming animals and red sunsets was very appealing, so we set about booking online. Unfortunately though, the park was full. Kruger tends to be a busy park at the best of times, but it’s also high season now as school is out (I think just about everywhere in the world), so, sadly, our booking attempt was turned down. We even decided to try a day-trip a few days later but were turned away at the gate. Too many people. “Give me a break!” I thought. I bet the animals were thinking the same thing.

At the place we eventually found

So we decided to go for somewhere “near Kruger” and were delighted to find a place that is situated in a smaller park that borders Kruger (along the Crocodile River) and that boasts a few animals of its own. On our way in, we spotted some hippos loafing, snorting, and wading, as all hippos do, along the river’s edge.


This spot was about a 20 minute walk from where our room was, but we could still hear their thunderous snorts quite clearly. It’s rather like a lion’s roar (in depth and volume) in that it is much deeper and louder than you can imagine, and it tends to vibrate the very inner core of your being. A hippo can be a huge, nasty beast (I believe they come 2nd only to the croc in terms of fatal attacks on humans), so I was grateful for the fences that separated us from them. But even so, I like them—from a distance—and was thrilled that the hours of our time away were punctuated by frequent snorts from the nearby hippo pod!

Animals within this smaller park are free to roam everywhere, and that includes yards, fuel stations and the like. We were on a walk one day, busily chattering to each other, when we suddenly notice a few large male kudu just a few meters from where we were. They stood and stared at us as we stared back at them. I think in their minds they were processing, “Okay, so, what now?” and so were we. I fumbled with my camera case and managed to get a few not-so-great shots of them after they’d figured out that what they should do now is “walk away” nonchalantly.


A small herd of warthogs wandered through the place while we were there, so I took a few snaps of Mr. Pig for you to see up close. Gotta love that hair.







Dwight beckons Mr. Pig to "come hither". Mr. Pig maintains a safe distance.


I had to get a picture of some of these paintings of Great Tuskers that hung on the walls (traditionally classified as an elephant that carries ivory of 100 pounds (45 kilograms) in ONE tusk. Bull elephants with huge tusks are a target for poachers, and therefore are monitored (even named) in most parks. This painting is of “João”, one of the original Magnificent Seven who roamed Kruger in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s and who was named after a Mozambican park labourer.

It was a nice break away, but it was short as we still had last minute things to get and organize before heading to Mozambique. One of the items we needed to get was a small (power) generator.

This is a particularly economical unit that uses gasoline to put out 12 volts, which is then converted to 220 volts. Wattage output is determined by draw (for those of you who are electrically inclined...basically it means that the less power you use, the less fuel the engine consumes.) And it’s quiet, so that’s an added bonus.

From the sounds of things, our need for this little machine could be much more urgent that we realized since the province where our mission is located has experienced a “break” in diesel supply (aka: there’s an (unexplained) critical fuel shortage). This has brought things in the area to a virtual standstill. For the mission, limited diesel = limited driving and limited hours of power since the main generator uses diesel. Let’s hope this “break” is a short one as well!

Ron and Barb (Mercy Air) return today from their week of work on the mission. This means that our house is now empty again and ready for our return. We leave tomorrow morning, and thus closes the “Furlough 2009” chapter in our lives!

Dwight and a Swiss guest at Mercy Air S.A. put the Cessna away after Dwight took it for a test run and general systems check. Regular "checks" are always good to do on planes :P

I better run for now. Time to pack again.

TTYL (so long as we have fuel for internet, that is)

Going Home

5:30 a.m.

July 1, 2009

If you think it looks like we’re going nowhere fast in this picture—right from square one which was the Northwest airlines check-in counter at the Edmonton International Airport--you’d be right. That’s because our carrier, Delta, recently merged with Northwest Airlines and our ticket issuance and seating arrangement fell through the cracks somewhere in the shift. When we tried to check in (above: Dad Lagore and our kids, Russ and Amanda, wait patiently with us), Dwight was told that our tickets had not been “re-issued” (what with all that merging and all) but it had to be done before they’d let us on the flight. He was instructed to contact Delta and request the re-issuance. At 5:30 in the morning. I know certain places in the world where this would definitely NOT work!

But lo and behold, when he called, Delta was on the job and we got the tickets re-issued and carried on with our marathon trip! I’m happy to say that we got nearly everything packed we needed to (save those bulky walkers…we’ll work on those next time), and through security without any hitches.


A 2-hour flight got us to Minneapolis and the next one, to Atlanta, Georgia. For me, going any place in the southern U.S. is a treat because:

1. The South (Texas, to be exact) was one of my childhood homes and going back always conjures up fond memories.
2. They have nice, stiflingly warm weather.
3. You randomly get called you “honey” and “sweetie” by people you don’t know at all. Obviously the terms are used loosely, but still, it always makes me smile.
4. They drink wonderfully REAL iced tea made from scratch.


From Atlanta onward, our seats were supposedly not booked together. I had visions of us “pssssst”-ing, waving and motioning across the width or length of the Boeing 777, over the heads of countless curious passengers, in an effort to communicate basic essentials to one another like “I can’t find my passport!” or “I have the toothpaste…you wanna come get it or shall I try and toss it?” (Haha, just kidding.) This is a 15-hour flight (thanks to the jet stream, it’s 2 hours less going than the 17 hour flight coming), which is a long time to sit in a confined space and nod off with total strangers on either side! Thankfully, the lady behind the Delta counter was able to put us together in the bulk row seating. The draw back was that we sat beside a squawking 8-month-old baby, but I had earplugs and we got a few sweet smiles out of her, so it was okay.

By the time we got out of the Jo-burg airport with our luggage and a vehicle, it was around 9 p.m. and close to 0-degrees-Celsius-freezing-cold. It’s winter here and there is no central heating, so there’s little escape from the chill. It had been awhile since we’d had real food so we found a place still open and when we were done, we happily crawled into beds, wonderfully heated by electric mattress pads, for a good long sleep.

Your first clue that you’re back in Africa is when a restaurant looks like this on the inside:



And the traffic is all driving madly on the wrong side of the street. And there are power failures at the most inopportune times. And you can smell the smoke of uncontrolled field grass fires outside.

Ah yes, Canada is a good place to call home. But Africa is our home as well.

We head to Mozambique in about a week’s time. I expect busy times are in store for us once we get there, but it will be nice back in our little house in the bush once again.

Fitting It All In

It’s hard to believe that our furlough is nearly over and it’s now time to flip the Africa/Canada switch in our brains back to “Africa” mode, pack up and head back! Although we’re really not looking forward to saying goodbye to our family ☹ we are looking forward to getting back “home”. It’s kind of funny because when you think about it, we’re leaving one home to head for another. That’s one of the benefits of having grown up and lived in several places on the globe…some or other home is never too far away!

One of the big tasks that remains is packing our suitcases. For someone who’s had to pack and move many, many times over the past 40 years, you’d think packing would be 2nd nature to me by now. But it’s not. I really dislike packing. It always feels like I’m trying to fit the whole world into a suitcase and we all know that doesn’t work!

For example, besides the normal stuff we need to pack (clothes and shoes, books, cameras, laptops, medicine—being a nurse, I’m big on that one, favorite spice mixes, my math course, and so on), we have some other items we’d REALLY like to take back as well.

Such as…


A suitcase full of lovely baby clothes that someone donated. These would make quite a few Mozambican moms smile and clap loudly with delight.

And medical supplies...


Oh my, how I love medical supplies! Wherever I go I have a personal first aid kit that is sort of a mini-hospital-on-the-go. The above supplies will be like gold in Moz so are vying for prime space in our suitcases.

School supplies plus these ID cards for the over 200 children in the mission’s grade school. They love these cards because for most, it’s the only photo they have of themselves.

12 volt water sanitation device that converts salt water into a chlorine solution which is then used to disinfect contaminated water. We’ll make sure this goes in the suitcases for sure…can’t see this set up making it through the passenger security check point!

And last but not least,

Walkers and canes, enough for 3 people. And we have 3 crippled women right now in the orphan/widow program who could really use these. Obviously these won’t fit in our suitcases. I half-seriously suggested that we could “use” them on the return flights. You know, push them. Through the airports. Loaded down with our carry on luggage. I had to smile at the thought. Now THAT would be worth a photo.

Yes, the next few days could be very interesting with us trying to fit this all in our suitcases. A bit like trying to fit in all the visits we'd hoped we could while here. We managed to do a lot, but some we'll have to do on our next trip home.

And so wraps up my last blog post from Canada for now. The next post will be from South Africa. Wow. Where did the time go??

A few other photos:

Dwight with his great niece. It was too cute a photo to pass up (taken by Kristen).

Our kids, whom we are loathe to leave behind. Sadly, I think our suitcases are too full to fit them in. ☹

As I write this, the PCAAT (Prairie) nursing team is in Beira and will soon be boarding their flight home. We pray for safe travels for them. Their final update has been sent out, so click here if you’d like to read it.

TTYL

We're Buffalo?

Or at least, as Dwight said in his motivational speech to walkers at the Global Care A Thon this morning, we should be like them. I can’t think of many ways that I want to be like a buffalo though. Really I can’t. They’re just not THAT beautiful and they can be quite cranky. And besides, I’m just not that into standing around chewing on grass.

But I guess Dwight was referring to one particular instance (click here to watch) in which a herd of buffalo displayed amazing and very uncharacteristic behaviour when they faced their worst fear--a pride of lions--to save the life of one of their young. 

Phew…it had nothing to do with their looks, being cranky or eating too many greens. It had to do with (in point form--my favourite):

Facing their fears (or whatever).
Doing something they didn’t necessarily “want” (or feel safe) to in order to...
Help (and give hope to) someone else.

The cool thing is that this very morning we witnessed just this type of behaviour when a whole lot of people gave up their Saturday morning sleep-in-and-kick-back-awhile-time to come and participate in a walk to raise funds for feeding hungry children. Here are shots of the event.

This is where walkers started the 8 km hike. You can't see it very well, but the sign states that this is its 34th annual walk! 

Flags of Mozambique, Romania and India: destination countries where funds raised will be sent.

Eight kilometers is a fairly long walk. Good thing the sun was shining!

Willing walkers :)

Distance markers with a reminder.

At the end of the walk, all the walkers gathered under this big tent to hear some singing, greetings from representatives of the recipient entities, and a word of encouragement.

Dwight sharing the buffalo story and a challenge.

It took a lot of planning, cooperation, work and yes, getting up early for the walk. But knowing that these efforts help, for our part, to feed more than 200 school kids in Mozambique a full meal once a day…for an entire year. Well, what can I say? It’s amazing!

The buffalo would be proud ☺

PS: Check out the Prairie Team's updates blog at www.mozambiqueupdates.blogspot.com

No Excuses

There are some times in life when excuses just don’t cut it. One of those times happened to me this week. We were going through airport security (to catch our flight to Manitoba) and after coming through the scanner, my purse was taken off the conveyor belt to be searched. Immediately, I remembered that in my barely-awake-haste to get ready at 4:30 that morning I’d forgotten to pack my little folding travel scissors in my suitcase instead. My excuse mattered very little right now. I groaned and kicked myself.

I hate that pending-guilty feeling you get when they rifle through your personal effects (for what seems an inordinate amount of time) in search of some long-forgotten item that could be used to wreak havoc--given it were in the possession of someone with wrong motives. But my motives were not in question. It was those little scissors on the other hand, the ones that had gone just about everywhere in life with me, that were. And they were about to be confiscated, regardless. No excuses.


In Mozambique this week:

The Prairie team continues with their activities and cross-cultural experience. A professional photographer from Prairie is there this week taking photos, and having a bit of fun as well. Heather is gleaning as many photography tips (which I’m anxious to learn once I get back) as she can while he’s there. Here’s some of the stuff she posted this week.

Taking pictures.

Caring for sick people in the clinic.

Helping a local family with the work of harvesting and preparation for storage of grain.

Enjoying some smiles.

A 2 month old baby weighing less than 2 kg was brought to the mission for help.


The downside this week was the passing of Fred, who suffered the complications of a recent compound hip fracture. He was a long-time friend and prior employee whose quiet spirit, good sense of humour and hard work brought joy not only to our lives but to all who came to stay at the mission. We will miss Fred, but we rejoice in knowing that his joy and peace are now complete.




One of the upsides of the week is that spring has finally sprung, even in Manitoba, and fruit trees are all in beautiful bloom. After about 5 days here, we head back to Edmonton to wrap up our last few remaining weeks in Canada. Here’s hoping we can pack the remaining work into the remaining time.

And here’s also hoping that maybe, just maybe, I’ll make it through airport security without the kerfuffle of being searched again.

PS: Check out Dwight's latest blog post.

PPS: I do understand and appreciate the need for airport security :)

All things strange

I read something in a blog this week that made me think about the Prairie group who is in Mozambique right now. Actually, I not only thought of the current team engaging in an other-worldish, cross-cultural experience, but I thought of everyone—ourselves included—who has experienced a reality so different from his/her own.

The blog post I’m referring to essentially highlighted the (often) stark contrast between health care in developed nations compared to that in developing nations. (I’ll add the link to the blog post at the end of this one for those of you who are interested in reading it.) The statement was made by a surgeon in Africa, and this is the one that hit home for me, "we live in a very strange place. we work with very strange things. we are strange people."

How very true that is for us too, and for the many who have come to visit and work in the Mozambican bush context. The world as we know it in North America, really only is—here. I thought of the Prairie group who, I know because it happens to all who come, is experiencing that same dawning reality. They’re in a strange place, working with strange things and the people are pretty different too!

Apparently, shortly after their arrival, news came of a nearby emergency. Fred, an elderly gentleman who had worked for us for many years, had fallen, fractured his hip and lay on the bare ground in need of help. Where we are, there is no 911 to call in a critical situation. If you need help, you have to find your own way, so Fred sent someone to the mission to get help. I marvel at the timing of it, since two of the team members were Emergency Medical Technicians and the nursing instructor has many years of Emergency Room experience.

Strange experience #1

Applying Canadian health care practice in a bush setting far from home is a challenge to one’s creativity!

I imagine the team was wishing for their ambulance stretchers here, but with a few tree poles and strips of cloth, they found a solution.




Fred was taken to hospital, x-rayed, treated conservatively (ankle-to-waist cast without surgery) and discharged home. He has none of the easy chairs, beds or sophisticated equipment that most have in order to better cope with this level of immobility, so more creativity is in order. Creativity, and love, that is.

Strange experience #2


Holding preventive health classes with women in a local church with mud block walls and a mud floor. The mat they're standing on is also their "bench" for sitting on...nothing to lean on and nowhere to dangle the legs from. That's always a little hard for me to do for more than a few minutes at a time.

Strange experience #3


Orientation being given, by the local hospital’s administrator, to nursing students regarding Mobile Immunization Clinic forms, the process, etc. There are throngs of women and children, and the entire event takes place outdoors under the shade of mango trees. These immunization events are certainly nothing like the ones “back home”! The team will accompany the mobile clinic to 3 separate remote locations.

Strange (or maybe not so strange) experience #4


Playing wild and crazy games with school kids. Actually, that just looks like fun!

For us, back home in Canada: Besides the usual activities that come with being here, like travelling and speaking (and that encompasses A LOT), renewing licenses, etc., we’ve also been meeting with people who are interested in coming to visit, or on short term missions trips, to our part of Mozambique. It’s great to see such interest, and of those who come, few return without feeling that they’ve been both challenged and, in some way, changed for the better. So I guess there’s something to be said for going to a strange place and working with strange things and different people. But if you come, don’t forget to bring your creativity. And bring your love, too!

TTYL

PS: Credit goes to Heather for all the photos. Thanks Heather! Keep your eye on her blog as well this week for an update on the Prairie team's visit and other news.)

(Click here for the link to the blog post I mentioned above. Please note that this is a factual medical blog and the details and descriptions it contains may not be suitable for sensitive readers.)