about mud, and getting stuck, and other stuff...

I was going to start off talking about getting stuck in mud but realized I was stuck having almost 0 internet bandwidth first thing this morning. And my Movitel modem is out of time so...we'll see how this goes. Oh the joys of bush life :)

You wouldn't believe that the start to our rainy season was dry as a bone, but it was, for week after week after week. We were all praying and hoping for rain, and watching the sky as only farmers and those in drought times do. Sometimes storm clouds would threaten, and we would count the seconds between flashes of lightning and the clap of thunder so we could judge just how close (or far away) a bit of wetness may be. This went on for quite some time, and all the while, our soil was dry, hot, and hard as concrete. Everything with a hint of green withered, including local residents' maize crops that they so desperately need so they can have food for the year. 

Then, suddenly, things changed and it began to rain. Then it poured. And it poured and poured and poured. In Africa one never dares complain about too much rain since there's so much dry-time, but it really did come down. Our empty, sludgy river bed soon filled and roared to life with muddy waters. We were glad to see our irrigation source full of water again. But of course other dry riverbeds also filled to overflowing, including the one where we had recently built the bridge that burned down just a few months ago. And along with the rushing waters, went our compacted dirt support, leaving us high and, well, not exactly dry but definitely without a bridge. This is the road that leads to the mission's school.

Had things been not quite so over-saturated and soggy, we would not have got stuck trying to ford the river. Thankfully we made it through going and were able to attend the student/parent meeting. But during the meeting we had another massive downpour that made the river swell again, and made the mud softer along the banks, and that led to our getting stuck as we tried to plow through on our return trip. Try as we might, we couldn't get unstuck. The back of the truck was high-centered so we all piled out and it took a bit of digging and stone laying by the front wheels before we could wriggle free...

at least to the other side.

(We were all lugging stones and branches and our feet were sinking in the squishy mud. 

Here Eric and Elizabeth packing more stones...)

We tried and tried our best to free ourselves on this river bank too but the mud was too soft and the incline too steep to make it. Matthew had his Movitel chip in his phone and had reception on it (this place is notorious for poor reception and our Vodacom lines were dead), so he called Rick Neufeld to please come help! Then we waited.

Soon Rick was there and he had a truck-load of shovels, chains, saws, axes, what-have-you, along with several helpers, photographers, a certain little girl who needed to take Flat Tendai pictures or something of that sort, and even Joao who broke from his office duties to come tend to us in our plight. We felt very honoured. :) And yes, out here in the bush we generally want to partake in all possible adventures because that's how we cope. We really do need each other.

Keeping with the mud theme, I came across these photos that are now several months old. I was cleaning the veranda one day and a chunk of mud fell off one of our canvas camping chairs. Except is wasn't just an ordinary chunk of mud. it was a mud wasp nest that had obviously been laboriously and carefully put together. I've watched wasps build these before. The mom (I assume it's the mom) flies to the ground and scoops up as much dirt as you can imagine a wasp's tiny feet can hold, then she moistens it and packs the tiny glob of mud, just like a tiny bricklayer, row upon row.  She makes several chambers and in each one, lays a single larva. Then she finds a special type of spider, collects several of them for each chamber, paralyzes them with her venom (I guess), and places them inside as living food for her young. When she's all done packing the food inside, she seals it up.

I've always been intrigued by these nests, but only recently discovered that the chambers still holding larva are in fact warm. That little body in there generates quite a bit of heat! The empty chambers where the larva have hatched are room temperature. There's an empty one below.

While I was examining my find, I discovered this oddly colored insect on the floor. He was pretty small so I needed the close-up on my camera to really see what it was. It was a wasp larva. One of them had fallen out of his broken nest when it fell from the chair. I was rather sad that I had disturbed a baby (a mom is a mom is a mom...). His forelegs were more or less developed, but not his hind legs or his wings.

Sorry little guy!

We made another interesting find in January. On our way home from picking Eric and Elizabeth up in Beira, we found a fruit stand by the highway selling Jack Fruit (Jaca, as we called it in Brazil). Everyone was curious to taste it so we decided to give it a whirl.

Yes, it's a huge fruit! Turns out it's also full of latex which I dont' recall having to contend with as a child when we ate it. But oi oi oi, was it ever sticky! Worse even than mud. We stuck to the fruit, the knife stuck to our hands, and the rag we tried wiping with stuck to everything. And we remained sticky for hours afterwards while the natural latex just sort of wore away. We figured the trick is probably to grease your hands up well in advance (we did this toward the end but the latex by then was already pretty much everywhere it could go). Oh well, next time. The fruit itself was good though.

Other items of interest....ah yes. Our little Duiker, Punkin. She actually belongs to Dwight and she really does believe he is her mommy. But on mornings where he heads out early and I'm the only one left to beg milk from, she begs (rather cutely) from me.

Once she's had her bottle, she sets about snooping around the house and giving everything in sight the lick test. Typical little one!

Um, no. You've got your own bottle!

 

We just discovered how much she loves Cheerios so she gets some occasionally. Talk about a privileged buck! Sheesh.

I love the night sky, so this is just to share some of Africa's beauty.

The morning sky is beautiful too. Dwight got this one morning on our holiday at the beach in December. I think it was 5 some-odd-o'clock in the morning. *yawn*

In the last few weeks, we've seen some wonderful things coming together. For one, the mission's Cessna has completed the importation process. That is no small task either! Paperwork, permissions, inspections, etc. without end. But it is now done and the Cessna finally flew home after being out of Mozambique for over a year. Here's Tendai to welcome it and Dwight and Andy. (Thanks for the photo, Heather).

The maintenance facility is also making great progress and looking more impressive all the time. What a blessing it will be to have a stocked, drive-in maintenance shop for working on the mission's vehicles rather than having to crawl underneath them in the dirt, or mud. Next month, we will welcome Rick Cogbill back plus those coming with him to continue with the next phase of this good work.

Aaaaaand, the bridge gets rebuilt. It still has a ways to go, but things are going very well. Once these mesh cages filled with stone and cement are up, we will place hardwood logs over top and once again be able to drive over it to get to the school.

For now, the rain has stopped and things are a bit drier. We all needed that break though we do still need rain this year. But at least for now, we can get over to the school to make sure things are running as smoothly as possible.

This has been a long post so I should sign off for now. There is more to tell as there always is, but that will have to wait until next time!

What marked your week?

Several things have marked this week for me. The first one was finding some CD's of "old music" (as our kids would call it) while I was searching for a computer software CD. I decided to pop them in for a listen after so many years. They were Petra's 'Beyond Belief', and 'Unseen Power'. What's funny is that even though my kids consider the music old-fashioned, it was pretty controversial in its day, mostly because of its style. Some people figured listening to Petra was "trying to walk the edge without falling in". After listening to them again though, I have to say that the messages those songs carry still challenge and inspire me. So for me, that is the music of the month. Old or not.

Another thing that marked this week was contact with friends I haven't heard from in a long time. I need to keep moving on the main theme here so will keep this short, but I remember this couple as being an inspiration AND a ton of fun during a year that held certain challenges for me as a teenager.

Okay, onto the party. I think I've mentioned recently that the end of October marks the end of the school year here in Moz. So this is the mission's "School's Finished" party.

The party took place in the open air, in the shade.
The balloons helped make the day feel that much more special.
Special thanks to Francois (Rauch) and the school teachers for all their work not only throughout the year, but also for the work that went into this wonderful celebration.

But first, we had to get there. The school is off back in the bush and this year with the bush fires, the one bridge had burned down. There is a round-about way but it is much longer, so we opted for off-roading through the dry riverbed.

You can see the burned bridge in the photo below.


By the time we got there, a fair sized crowd was already there waiting for things to begin. Here are some of the students waiting patiently.


The sun was shining brightly, and it's HOT this time of year. As the sun moved, we kept having to move the seating arrangement around to get into the shade.

There was a table full of prizes for those with best marks. Even a bicycle! In the end though, no one went home empty handed. Everyone got something.


There was no dry ice show or confetti for the prize winners, but there were plenty of bubbles!


It was nice to see parents and grandparents alike attending the event.

This is my friend Val and with her kids and grandkids. She was in the women's literacy class back a few years when I taught it and although she only speaks local dialect and I only speak Portuguese and English, we somehow manage to communicate the basics. We don't see each other often anymore, but when we do, there's always an immediate connection.

One of the mommies attending the event.
Here, she and her two little ones are headed up to the water pump for a drink to cool off.

After the prize giving ceremony, plasticized ID cards were handed out to all the kids from the sponsorship program. A picture of yourself is an absolute luxury out here, and these that are especially prepared and sent over from Canada for these children are quite the treasure. The card is brightly colored and has a picture of themselves plus an inspirational verse to encourage them.

Handing out the cards. The fun part for me is watching their reactions.

Examining the photo and verse closely.

Yipee!

In the center here is (I believe to be) our smallest preschooler. She used to receive milk at the clinic from the milk program, and now that she attends preschool, she receives nutritious food each day.

Even she takes a loooong look at her beautiful card!

Smiles all around!

The girl in blue below acted quite cool about the whole card thing initially but I noticed that she withdrew to a quieter spot by the wall to examine hers. And then I caught that cute smile that I knew was inside somewhere wanting to come out!

Haha, then she caught me and saw my smile too ;)

The kids gave several very boisterous cheers to all who make it possible for them to go to school, have a lunch program, receive prizes, have a party, etc.

So for all those of you who give, pray, and love these kids from afar,

A HUGE CHEER AND SHOUT OF THANK YOU TO YOU!
Thank you for being an inspiration to so many beautiful lives.

Connectedness

In order to achieve important (for that matter, most) things in life, connections of all sorts have to take place.

Some take a good ear.

And some, a good eye.

Actually, Ernesto and I had an interesting week last week. First, we spent some time doing health checks on school kids. We've been working at getting the new health post organized and functional, and things are going well. There's been one rather big obstacle though--there is no easy way for us to connect with him (a good 20 or so km away from the mission base) and vice versa. So if he or the school staff have trouble of any sort, they have to try to communicate via bush telegraph (aka: sending messages with people on foot).

Recently, with the arrival of Vodacom to our area, we've had better cell phone contact. In other words, we have reception in our yard and there is also reception at the mission's school and clinic. So I asked Ernesto if he still had the cell phone that he bought a year or two ago. "Yes, but the battery swelled after its last charge so it doesn't fit in or work in the phone anymore." I checked it out and sure enough, the battery was bulging. It probably didn't help that his cell phone's brandname was something like "SNARFBLAT". Apparently it was cheap. Anyway, I took it when I left and promised I'd look into getting things working again so we could be in better contact.

I guess I wasn't quick enough because the very next day, he showed up at our house on the mission base. He'd received a letter saying that he was to attend a meeting in Vanduzi (nearest hospital to us) and he wanted to arrange his travel plans.

As Dwight was about to step out of the door to greet him, he noticed a juvenile spitting cobra on the steps between himself and Ernesto. Hearing Dwight saying, "Whoa-a-a...espera, espera! Tem cobra aqui! (Wait, watch out, there's a snake here.)", is what brought me running with my camera. A snake in the yard always generates a fair deal of excitement in these parts.

The young spitting cobra, obviously feeling insecure, spread his hood and eye-balled us menacingly as he back-tracked his way up the steps.

That's him on the left.

Unfortunately this photo is not very clear and I got him with his back turned looking not very threatening at all. No spread hood or beady eyes. We did catch it on video though and I'll post that as soon as I have the bandwidth to do it!

In these parts, a spitting cobra is everyone's enemy. That's because they can either spit their venom with amazing accuracy at their "attacker's" eyes, or bite, if need be.

By the time this guy got to the top step though, Ernesto had his slingshot loaded, taut and ready. A few zinging stones, flying dust, dancing feet, squiggling snake and a fair bit of adrenaline rush later, and the connecting shot that stopped the snake dead in his tracks was fired. This is not the first poisonous snake Ernesto has killed in one of our yards. He's earning quite the reputation for himself!

Ernesto's small collection of perfectly shaped stones, for self protection of course.
He smiled when we called him "David", for short.

Once the hype of the moment was over and we finalized the question about the meeting in Vanduzi, Dwight and I headed to town. I took Ernesto's cell phone (of unheard-of-before-brand-name) and the swollen battery to an electronics shop. The shop owner had never heard of that make of cell phone before either and suggested that if we were looking at replacing the battery, why not just pay a little more and replace the entire phone? It did make sense. And if it meant we'd have better communication with Ernesto and the school staff, it was worth it. Not that I mind having him pop around now and then, especially during snake migration season...

I don't even know if there is such a thing as snake migration season but they're definitely on the move right now, that's for sure. We've found quite a few snake tracks through our yard this week. I've darkened the photos to help the tracks show up a bit better:

One of the shepherds figured this was a Python track.


I'm not sure about that one. Could be.

This track is squiggly, so likely another spitting cobra or maybe a mamba. Just as well I didn't see him.

Anyway, that was some of the excitement in my week.

But before I go, two last photos. This one is of the bridge to the landing strip. The hardwood planks are now being oiled and nailed into place. What a huge project this has been, but it's a wonderful feeling to walk on the bridge and lean over the sides. Carefully though...those side guards aren't solidly in place yet.

Today, a small group of us here from the mission went to the hotel in Garuso (located between where we are and Zimbabwe) for lunch. It was a nice afternoon after a hectic week. I couldn't resist taking a photo of the pink walls, red waxed floor, and white door to one of the suites.

But I better run for now. This post is quite long, and besides, I promised Ernesto I'd try to send a test message on his new phone and phone line. Here's to hoping the message gets through.

Take care, ttyl, and if you live in Africa--keep your eyes peeled for snakes.