The start of 2014

Before I post anything about 2014, I should really close 2013 with a few photos of November/December. We spent a considerable amount of the time traveling between Mozambique and South Africa as well as quite a bit of time being in South Africa on business. We also got hung up for awhile checking up on health issues. I hadn't been feeling well for several weeks and my Dr. wasn't happy with the results of some routine tests, so I was sent for not-so-routine tests/procedures to rule out anything terribly nasty. Preliminary results seem to indicate nothing too nasty, likely "just" a respiratory virus. Just a virus that made me sick for about 2 months--right through our annual holiday and Christmas--nasty enough for me.

One of our stops on one of our trips between SA and Moz was at Messina just south of Zimbabwe. We "climbed" a rock. As you can see, I did it in flip flops so probably can't officially be classified as climbing. It's a unique part of the country and is full of Baobabs and rock outcrops. It's also HOT there.

 

   We received a container of mostly medical supplies from Sweden, among the items were some wonderful cupboards. Here the health workers and Tome deliver a cupboard to the one health post. I don't know about them, but I smile when I see this picture because I know it meant we could finally take health records/forms/etc. out of the paper boxes we've used for years and put them in a cupboard. Talk about civilized! 

 

One of the big items to tend to in South Africa (at Mercy Air) was the Cessna's annual maintenance. This doesn't mean just checking under the hood and changing the oil--it  means pulling just about every moving part of the plane off, or open, and looking inside its cavities, examining the wiring, testing this, testing that. I don't even know what all they do but it's a pretty big job. It is absolutely essential though since it's fairly impossible to take a pit stop if something goes wrong when you're 7000 something feet in the air over dense bush.

When the maintenance is done, the plane has to do a test flight or two to make sure everything's working well. Officials from Moz also came through to check the facility and do an aircraft inspection since the Cessna is now Mozambique registered. It was a busy time for the guys, and we were very thankful that everything worked out so we could fly home in time for Christmas.

We stick to as many Christmas traditions as possible out here where there is no snow or other things that are normal signals (for us) that it's Christmas time. And every year, I dutifully pull out one of my old puzzles that I've done and redone many times. This particular scene is a snowy church scene of some place in Germany. Doing this puzzle helped me pass quite a few hours of not-feeling-so-great-but-don't-want to-waste-time-in-bed. But apparently what you define as "bed" depends on whether you're a human or a cat.

To add to our Christmas and New Year's celebrations, we also celebrated the first landing of the Cessna on the mission airstrip. This was the culmination of quite a few years of hard work, money spent, document processing, inspection passing, and so on. So it was truly a joyous event! The plane has already made several "work flights" from this airstrip, one being to take essential supplies to pastors in a remote region north of us.

Moving along here. 2014 so far has been pretty busy and we're not at the end of January yet. There's been gearing up for the beginning of school for the over 300 students in our sponsorship program, making progress on construction projects, preparing budgets for the new year, reports for our AGM in February, etc. And then there's been addressing the crises that seem to pop up regularly.

At lunchtime one day last week, we heard a huge BOOM in the distance. We weren't sure what it was but in short order received a phone call saying there had been an accident between two big trucks on the highway right in front of the mission property. Could we please come quickly! The scene didn't look good, but surprisingly there was only one casualty and he was alive. The health workers who live and work nearby had already made it to the scene and bandaged up the guy's head and checked him over. As quickly as we could, we got him loaded into the mission vehicle (which we have also nicknamed our local ambulance) and took him to hospital.

I'll try to wind things up with one last photo that everyone will be fine with. But this is your heads up that the ones to follow are the "bug section" which I always try to put at the end of my posts so the more sensitive readers can stop scrolling down in time :)

We currently have a group of students from Prairie who are spending a few weeks at the mission ministering to needs and relating cross culturally. Last Sunday after an animated church service, we were all invited to the pastor's home (above) to enjoy a lunch of Massa & Caril (stiff maize porridge that you dip into a stewed chicken sauce). This is served hot off the stove and eaten with the fingers. We north Americans know how to eat with our fingers, but handling piping hot food that way takes a bit of practice and a very light touch. It was delicious though!

BUG SECTION:
It's summer here which means it's very hot, humid and rainy. This weather summons creatures of all varieties and sizes out from hiding (or wherever they were) and into our house. I'm sure they go other places too, but I especially notice the ones that come inside. Especially when they're oversized.

 This first one is a huge centipede. These guys pack a nasty sting, though I've never been on the receiving end. Thank goodness!

 The fork's sole purpose here is for comparison. Just clarifying.

Next is a cute chameleon. This one didn't come inside because they hate being inside, but we often find them in our yard busy hunting and eating insects. Good! :)

The one below came inside and even went so far as to crawl up and get  all snuggled into a fold in our mosquito net.  A scorpion in one's mosquito net is not a nice visual to wake up to. Thankfully he didn't decide to come snuggle in our sheets instead.

 He's semi-lifeless here. I have since discovered 2 others in the house :O

The stick on the wall below is actually a stick bug. It is rather disconcerting to spot a live and moving stick on the wall outside one's bathroom! Although they don't bite people, obviously they can bite and eat their prey (smaller insects...good!). I think this is the largest stick bug we've seen to date. This is a KAOS radio station pen from Fort McMurray, btw, where it's -28C right now.

And then there's the tarantula type spider. Actually, we've spotted several of these, one of which was crawling up a big window in our front room.  I should have taken a photo of it but I was too distracted at the time.

And to everyone's great relief, that's all I will post for now. All the best to you this 2014!

PS: There's lots more news at samministries.org.

Time, and blogging

Ok so, it's been awhile since I blogged here. My apologies to all who thought I had either died or abandoned this site. :) Things have just been extremely busy for us for the past several months. We also now have a new blogging platform (on samministries.org) for news...which leaves this site as more or less just for personal ramblings--which I enjoy, given I have the time to dedicate to that. The second hold up has been issues with blogger--the interface, etc. keeps changing; HTML and Compose views are not consistent and I keep getting error warnings and red banners flashing, telling me publishing may fail. *sigh* Sometimes it seems to be all uphill!

But I will do my best to keep my tales updated. Here's what's happened (in photos and in brief) over the past 2 month. Several visitors have come our way to spend time here helping out and getting acquainted with the local context. Four of these ladies were nurses, so I've had lots of help with the various ongoing health projects and the health workers have enjoyed their input as well.

Jodi (the first to come) changing Marta's dressing. Marta was bitten by a Puff Adder, and her story has impacted us all. You can read the details here The next to arrive were these ladies. They've been a group of hard workers too! Here they are on a home visit with the 101 year old granny (who has since passed away).

While they were here, we took them up "the rock" to see the sun set over this beautiful area. We took a chair on our hike as well (Andy's brilliant idea), so each had a turn trying out a classic pose...

I just like this photo that Jodi took, it's of Simon weighing an orphaned baby who's in our infant milk program. I love how the baby is studying Simon while Simon studies the dial on the scale.

We've also been REAL busy working on translating reading books for the school library, and working on remedial materials for kids who are struggling. This is Fani hard at work.

It's great fun reading with the kids, I wish I had more time to commit to it but there are other things to be done. Like taking photos of kids for their sponsors.

Here, Paulo (teacher) helps get a smile from a shy student. Amid the activity, Dwight and I took an express trip to South Africa to do some business, then we headed right back home again. Here we are in a line up (which was NOT express) at the border post in South Africa. Well, we've seen worse. At least we weren't caught standing outside for 3-4 hours without an umbrella under an emergency foil blanket while it poured rain and stormed.

So far this year, we've had a few real hot days, up to +40C. It has threatened to storm but so far it's blown more than rained. Apparently the wind was too strong for our mission vehicle carport and it collapsed in the middle of the night one night when the wind got violent.

Thankfully our maintenance workshop is under construction. You can see it under construction here. And I can see it's time for an update there too! The airstrip has seen some good progress lately and yesterday, Aviation officials came to do an inspection. It seems that went well so now we await the final "ok" to open.

Oh, and it's orphaned duiker season again (due to it being intense hunting/trapping season). So here we are with our latest addition. Better go dig out those baby bottles again.

With that, I will close. But first, a few random, curious photos taken over the past few months.

At a local gas station, turn off your car, butt out your cigarette, and turn off your cellphone? Something makes me think it may be hard to get compliance on that last point.

This sign at a South African bank warns you that can't smoke or take your gun inside. Cell phones left on must be ok then? Phew. ttyl

One of the nice things

...about going away is getting back home again. And Monday found us preparing to do just that. There was the usual chaos in our little place as we packed boxes with engine parts, door handles, printer cartridges, leadership training books for the upcoming seminar, water pipe connectors, food, medical supplies, etc. and loaded them into the vehicle for the 2 day trip home.

The first official stop of the trip is the South Africa/Mozambique border post where our passports and respective import/export documents are processed and stamped. On a bad day, you get a customs official who wants to search and inspect every inch of your vehicle. This takes hours. On a good day, you just get waved past. Monday turned out to be a good day in that sense.

Once in Mozambique, the real trek begins. It’s smooth sailing along the toll road for about 45 minutes until you hit Maputo, the capital city, and its seriously snarled traffic.

It’s a bit like an obstacle course with bumper-to-bumper traffic all cutting each other off and beeping and slamming on brakes to avoid hitting the next guy. It would be nice if there was a way to by-pass Maputo, but there isn't. You just have to go through it.

Even once you finally get to the other side of the city, traffic stays heavy and slow for quite a ways. It’s a good time to turn on relaxing music although the contrast between the rhythm inside and the rhythm outside can be so stark it's comical.

The entire trip home takes about 18 hours, so we split it into two 9 hour days. As you head to the more rural north, the traffic thins out and the scenery improves dramatically.

And you become aware of the gradual transition from an area of better development to one of less development.

Inhambane Province. I call this spot "Coconut Alley"

In rural areas there are fewer cars, more animals, more people carrying loads on their heads, and no power lines.

Well, no power lines until just now, that is. This power line (below) is just going in on the Rio Save to Inchope stretch of the trip north.

The supply of power will help to fast-track development. Part of this includes better quality health care and education. This isn't happening in our area yet, but we're hopeful it will come our way.

Although the electrification of rural Mozambique has been slow in coming, cell phone coverage has been around for awhile.

And there is stiff competition between the country’s 2 cell phone moguls: MCEL and Vodacom. The nice thing about this is that in their effort to advertise as widely as possible, the companies offer to paint the many small roadside shops (for free, I believe). They have the choice between Vodacom’s red with white lettering, or MCEL’s yellow and green.

Since Vodacom is the newest kid on the block and it has been very actively promoting, it is not unusual to see all of the roadside shops in small towns painted red.

There's a pretty good balance in this town. Some of the shops even seem to have opted for no free paint.

This little shop gets the best of both worlds.

Anyway, our trip home was safe and we’re now getting back into the rhythm of bush life. Yesterday, a friend who is a pilot and civil engineer spent the afternoon with here kindly giving us valuable input on the next steps to take on finishing the air-strip (contouring and leveling).

Left to right, Kevin, Dwight and Urs (a young man from Switzerland serving the mission for a few months.)

And me? I’m busy converting fabric I picked up into curtains and blinds that are a year and a half overdue for our house. But mostly I’m in the process of recovering files and getting my replacement laptop up to speed. It’s rather a pain, and it’s very time consuming. One of the nice things about having to do review and update the files and programs, however, is that I’ve been able to do some necessary editing and streamlining.

Have a good week all.

To move the job along

...a song, is usually what's needed. But can I add that some muscle and a fair bit of effort may be required as well?!

This was a week of hard work for the guys as the logs which were cut and hauled last week had to be put across the bridge (which apparently is 5-ish meters wide rather than my stated "3-4 meters"). Now, these are no ordinary logs. They're huge and very heavy, and there's little in the way of machinery out where we are. (A backhoe is on its way but it's still somewhere on the deep blue ocean between America and Africa.) So how do you move and lift 2000-3000 lbs of log and set them in a precise spot without machinery? Well, you definitely need more than a song!

And in our case, this plan means the well-thought-out use of sheer muscle force and a simple hoist. Oh, and don't forget to add to that temperatures of over 30 Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) plus 80% humidity. Perfect recipe for exhaustion :)

First, the logs are skinned and notched.

And then there's lots of heave-ho,

and manoeuvring to get the logs "just so".

And there's the hoisting, too.

"Are you sure the hoist will lift this log?"
"It will, but we need to get it under the tripod so we can lift it straight up."

So on go the chains, and more heaving...

After 5 days of team work--TA DA! The two main support logs bridge the river's gap.




Now the other logs will roll onto these and be turned into the right position. Still not an easy task but one that is a little less heavy, and dangerous, thankfully.

So, where does this bridge go to? The landing strip (which is needed to facilitate the air transport necessary to touch many needs in remote areas of this wonderful country)!


Here are pictures of yet another big job that moved along last week. Many men, ropes, poles, and muscles were needed to place trusses on the training center walls.

Woot! Looking good!

And last, and probably also least (because of its size anyway), came the job of moving this suitcase of donated gifts and clothing along to children in Mozambique. It may not be as big an effort as construction is, but getting these items to Africa has been tough due to many airlines' new luggage restrictions. Thankfully, visitors on their way from Fort McMurray to Moz are willing to take this job on.

I trust there's more song than sweat involved here!

So long little suitcase.

ttyl

PS: Be sure to check Rick's last blog entry.