Newcomers in our neighbourhood

We’ve been planning Mr. Swero’s move to a plot nearby for quite some time already. He’s the man with leprosy that I’ve blogged about before who lived very, very far back in the bush on the old farm. Getting to his place was a trek that took several hours. Here is one such trek that I made back in August with Steve, George and a guide. Thankfully, there are no lions in this tall grass. Well, there usually aren't.


This man was only just barely coping on his own since, over time, he has lost all his fingers and toes due to leprosy. A local church and the mission worked together to provide him with monthly food supply, medical treatment, and care for other needs he had.

(Bush-style dressing for a deep foot wound--Socorrista Ernesto and I)

When we realized how far out he lived we knew how difficult it would be to check in on him regularly, so decided together with him to build a new home for him that was closer to the mission.

I think that in his mind the building process was quite slow because even before the doors and windows were ready, he wanted to move in. “I’ll just hang cloth over the windows and a mat in the doorway. It’ll be fine. I'm ready to move now!” So we set a day last week and loaded up all his earthly belongings which consisted of 5 goats, 2 small suitcases, a bucket, some pots, a few bags of ground maize (white corn) and a handful of other small items. The sight of his few humble possessions made me embarrassed about the seeming glut of stuff I have which requires a large shipping container to relocate.


As he got settled into his new home he absolutely beamed with pride. He smiled and smiled and smiled. It was what I consider to be one of those gift-moments for us all.


He is now part of a community with caring neighbours. The widow next door, who receives help from the orphan program, helps him cook and do some of his activities of daily living. He also receives a daily home visit by the socorristas who change his foot dressing and ensure he has an uninterrupted supply of anti-leprosy drugs (which will not repair past damage but will halt disease progression).

Other newcomers who arrived this week were visitors from the U.S.


Here they are in the camp kitchen:

Nat and Salena (above left), who have both served the mission previously (as single missionaries) and “found each other” right here in this very place, have returned for a month-long visit to serve and reconnect with everyone here again.

Tom and Mary (above right), have come up with Ron and Barb Wayner—Mercy Air (they are family of theirs, in fact). They are here for about a week and will be involved in some of the work, home visits, and whatever else pops up during their stay!

Tom entertains neighbourhood kids by showing them digital pictures of themselves. It's quite a novelty and always evokes squeals and peals of laughter!

And last but not least, here is another newcomer to our small neighbourhood.

His name is Magnum and he’s Rick and Heather’s new 8 week old Boerbull/Great Dane cross puppy. I “got to” puppy-sit him once already this week. It was very fun even though there were a few puddles to clean up! He’ll grow into a fine guard dog one day. In the meantime, we all agree that he’s just plain cute.

Well, we all--except our little dog Mushu, that is, who greets Magnum’s friendliness with a curled lip and grouchy snarls. I guess he figures Magnum is annoying with all that bouncy, boundless energy, silly playfulness and adorable-cutie-cuteness that has the humans going all ga-ga. Now, had it been up to Mushu, he would have arranged for a more mature, serious neighbour-dog to help shoulder the responsibility of guarding against (read: barking at) both (few) real and (many, many) imaginary threats. It’s a tough job for one dog to do alone.

Anyway, I better close for now since much work and some fancy packing awaits me! Dwight and I leave here next week to begin our trek to Canada where we’ll be itinerating until our return in July.

As for posts on this blog, they will continue ☺. And even though there will be stories of our travels, wherever they may take us in the next few months, there will always be tales of this our life in Mozambique as well! 

PS: I don’t have a reptile/repulsive insect paragraph in this post, but here’s a link to a great story by a Mercy Air pilot that I’m sure everyone will enjoy.

About bites and feeling badly (or not)

Ok, I have to start off by confessing that I had a small pity party for myself this week. It began with a handful or so of insanely itchy insect bites on my ankles that looked rather nasty and nearly drove me to distraction whenever they'd start itching. To make things worse, I got a blister on one foot from walking too far on our muddy road in my Havaianas. Then, to add to my misery, I stubbed a toe on the other foot! My feet were quite a sight, all decorated with band-aids and red spots. I was not having a very good foot-week at all.

It must be Murphy’s law in my case but whenever I start feeling sorry for myself, I see or have to treat someone else who’s much worse off than I am. Like the time, nearly 10 years ago, when I was very sick with a virus. There was no treatment and I was told that my recovery would be slow and likely interrupted by relapses over the 2 or so years that followed. I felt pretty bad for myself right then. I felt bad, that is, until we were on an outing one day and I saw a young paraplegic mother being pushed around in a wheelchair by her kids who were about the age of mine at the time. Then I felt ashamed and much better all at the same time.

This week was sort of similar in that while I was facing my small troubles, much bigger ones were underway for others. First, Dwight came down with malaria. (Yes we are on prophylaxis, but when you find a capsule like this in your batch, you kind of have to wonder at what’s in the rest of them, no?)


Then, just as he was recovering from malaria, he developed cellulitis accompanied by fever, and the characteristic redness and swelling in his one leg (it was decidedly worse looking than my ankles/feet). Cellulitis isn’t the kind of thing you try to treat at home, even if you’re a nurse. But we don’t have much choice here, so I got to work with some of the great antibiotics and dressing supplies that the Prairie nursing team left with us in June.

And then, as if just to make sure I got the point, a young boy hobbled here with his friend for help the other day.


He’d been bitten by a snake two days previously and had carefully tied not one, but two tourniquets above his ankle to stop the venom from spreading. This practice is outdated since most times, it simply makes things worse. He didn’t know that, of course, and the poor little guy had a fairly swollen, sore foot. My own right then, felt pretty fine by comparison.

As I was thinking about all this, I remembered an incident that we heard about a month ago. Apparently, a guy who was bathing in the river near our property was bitten by a crocodile. Crocs seldom let go of their prey, and this one was no different. The guy was with two friends at the time who held him by the arms and fought to save his life for 2 solid hours. In the end, the croc won. I can’t even fathom such an event as a rescuer, much less as a victim. My troubles right now seem very small indeed.

Other moments of the week:

This is how our morning devotional time looks these days. Usually, we’re a group of 30-40 people, but with the addition of work-for-food program participants, the number of those showing up at morning devotions has mushroomed to almost 100 on some mornings.


The man in the photo below came to work for food this week, but apparently he hadn’t eaten in 3 days so he was too weak from hunger to actually do any work. (Below, Pearson hands him a plate of food). He is not the only one we’ve seen in this condition. In fact, yesterday a very thin crippled widow came to us saying she and her children hadn’t eaten in 5 days. I can’t fathom that either since I can barely skip snacks between meals without feeling famished. (We took the woman home with food for her family and a follow-up assessment will be done to determine how we can best help her.)


The number of guinea fowl for distribution is growing too. I think when there are more than 10 of them together they change from a flock to a rabble! They're kind of noisy. But yeah--I still like 'em.



Last paragraph stuff (aka the bug part--for new readers):


Mud wasps made themselves at home in some sandals on our veranda while we were gone last week. What a mess! Couldn't they have waited a while longer to make sure we weren't coming back??

In closing, I’m happy to report that the little boy’s leg (that was bitten by a snake) is improving, and Dwight is much better too. And my own ankles and feet, well, they're just fine.☺

Tchau for now. And take care.

Crocodile Story

Before I forget...I better tell the croc story that I promised to post this week. Last week, when Dwight was in Mutarara, he met a man who runs a crocodile hatchery. Basically, he harvests croc eggs along the Zambezi River bank, then hatches them out. He feeds the hatchlings high-protein pellets, and when they’re big enough to fend for themselves, he sells them to croc farms in Southern Mozambique and South Africa. (They’re raised for their hides.) Last year he hatched out 19,000 baby crocs!

Besides being a great breeding ground for crocs, the Zambezi River is also a vital source of water for many people. With a scenario like this, as you can well imagine, there can be some serious croc-human problems! So, every now and then, the government has to send in someone to hunt down problem crocs. Apparently, the witchdoctors (traditional faith healers) in the area “own” their own crocs, which they use to fish for them and or carry out “missions”. Before the government sends anyone in to croc hunt, they first meet with the community and tell the witchdoctors to be sure they “call” their crocs in so they’re not mistakenly killed. Only then is the hunter allowed in to the area to do his job. I guess you could say that these are no ordinary crocs!

Tip of the Day: Did you know that if you turn a croc egg upside down, the embryo will die?

And speaking of reptiles—much smaller reptiles, this week we discovered Les (click & scroll down) still lurking in the plant beds by our house. One of the guys was watering around our place the other day when he called me, quite excitedly, to see the chameleon that we rescued from certain stoning about a month back in a local community. This guy had, of course, already wet Les thoroughly because initially he didn’t see him. I’m not sure if his colouring here is a result of feeling threatened or trying to blend in with the leaves below him. Maybe a bit of both.

Who says you shouldn’t look back while running away??

Non-reptile news: There has been some fairly good progress on the house in the last few weeks, though it’s hard to capture it all in a photo. Most of the brick work is done, and the plastering and wiring are now underway. The trusses will be assembled as soon as those skilled to do so have the time (you know there’s too much going on when...).



We decided to help Furede, an employee of many years, to build a stronger retirement home. This week the window and door frames for his home were completed. He sure was pleased!

I’ll finish off with some art work and a sunset. This is the beautiful paint job done in the mission’s primary school by a team that visited from South Africa 2 weeks ago. They did similar work in the nearby preschool that the mission is rehabilitating. I’ll try to get photos of that up next week.

And here’s the most beautiful art work of all. God's.