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.

Just Do It. (Nike has a point.)

There is a time for thinking and planning, but there is also a time for seeing an idea to completion. Even if it's a bit of a stretch.

This week, we're happy that my niece and her husband "just did it". After some thinking about it and planning, they finally came to visit us. From the bustling metropolis of Seattle, U.S.A. to the rural bush in Mozambique. In more than one way, this is a stretch!

Landing in Beira (after several long distance flights)

Boarding the Cessna to go "more rural"

Dwight, Royden and Ruth
(I tried to get myself in the shot but didn't quite pull it off.)

Closer to our destination

It's been a great week getting caught up and showing them around. One of our stops was to visit the mission school. Since Royden is an award winning photographer, illustrator and animator, and Ruth is a registered nurse, we used the opportunity to encourage the kids to follow their example--stay in school, have a plan (a dream) for their lives, then "do it".

Drawing a giraffe for the first class.
I bet he's never had to draw on a cement plastered blackboard before!

Drawing a smiling cartoon child's face for the 2nd class.

No one bored here!

One of the boys took the "do it" challenge quite seriously and copied Royden's giraffe drawing on the back of his notebook. Now that's what we like to see :)


After all the class visiting and drawing, it's lunch time.

Helping Pastor Tome dish up food

Mmmmm

Today, we visited a church in the Nhanhata area which is not too far from our home. The pastor of this church is studying with the mission's leadership program. It was quite the event, even for us who have been here for many years...

The joyful drumming, shaker shaking and hand clapping was pretty loud
inside this humble bush church. (The shakers above are made by filling about 5 tin cans with seeds, puncturing the tops and bottoms, then sliding them onto a stick.)

We each gave a greeting and then Dwight shared a word of encouragement with the congregation--that God is always with us to help and enable us. We are never alone.

This church, like most churches out here, is crudely built out of poles, plastic and grass. But they have a dream for a better structure one day. Here's the building plan all approved, authorized, and stamped. (As all matters official must be out here.)


Nice thing is, not only do they have a plan, but they're already busy making the necessary bricks out of mud. They're all ready to be baked and once that's done, construction can get underway.

That was pretty nice to see too.

And after all that singing, clapping, and visiting, it was lunch time.

We were honored and offered a good meal of food typical to this area: stiffly cooked maize meal served with stewed chicken. Eaten not exactly Seattle-style, but rather with one's fingers.

That was a stretch too, but we did it :)

It’s Complicated

Many parallels can be drawn between a motor and the human body. For one thing, they're pretty complex. For another, they both need some fixing from time to time. This can be greatly reduced if things are maintained on a regular basis though. Turns out preventive medicine works for cars as well as people.

I hoped this parallel would come in handy again this week since I offered to help interpret for the mechanics’ course. I know terms like “gear, oil, and bearing” in Portuguese. How much more complicated could things get, right? And if they did, I could always resort to some detailed descriptions, hand motioning, and diagram drawing.

Todd Green, Ed Hyslip, and the mechanics' class

English to Portuguese is one thing, but to Portuguese that is understood in the local context is sometimes a big step further. The labeling of one diagram that snagged us for a while was this:


“Ok guys, the top diagram is of a Plain (“simples”, in Portuguese) Bearing. The second one...(realizing I knew no Portuguese word for "flange"), well, is more complicated.” I was kind of serious, kind of joking. They blinked, shuffled their feet, and waited for me to continue. So I took a deep breath and carried on. It took a fair bit of describing, motioning with the hands, and explaining, but in the end we came up with a term that made sense to them.

This was another fun concept...


All in all things went quite well.

Then there was the practical component.

We always lots of "practical components" because we depend on so many machines daily to get our work done, like our power generator, grinding mill, truck, vehicles, backhoe, etc. And it seems that with machines, if it's working, it's breaking. That's just the nature of machines.

The mission's maize grinding mill.
Situated where it is, this machine saves women from walking countless miles just
to grind their maize so they can cook it each day.

One of the big projects of the week for the mechanics was our old generator. It is fairly spent and is now used as back-up to a newer one. The plan was to rebuild it.

First, we had to get it out of its shed. That took a bit of maneuvering with the backhoe, some chains, and some tension. :)

Once it was safely in the open car port, the guys got to work pulling it apart.

Stripped to the core.

Now that it's in hundreds of pieces, the verdict is that it's so worn that the remainder of its days should pretty much be committed to rest. Prevention has its place but in time, wear and tear take their toll don't they? It's the nature of things. Now we need to think of a Plan B back-up.


A few quick shots of the week:

Ed had a chance to visit the mission school to say a quick hello and goodbye before wrapping up his time up here.

I came across this while marking exams from the health course this week. It made me smile. It seems the exam's structure was a bit complicated and needs to be simplified. (Btw, I love that this guy was unwilling to settle and just circle whatever). I want to give him points for this.

Blankets we picked up this week for the young burn victims who’ve been coming to the clinic for dressing changes. (They were burned while sleeping too close to the fire on these cold winter nights). Looking forward to seeing the smiles these blankets will bring!

And last of all, the tail of a Rough Scaled Plated Lizard seeking refuge from passers-by.

The End

Progress

Dwight and I were enjoying a 10 minute expresso at the end of our day (and week) yesterday at what I think is the only gas station in Chimoio that sells them. They're probably the best in town, too. Anyway, as we sat and sipped from the small paper cups I noticed some cute, fluffy birds nearby. They were busy flitting and hopping around, pecking at this and that speck on the ground. Tasty morsels, I'm sure. And I couldn't help but marvel at how they live their lives pretty much oblivious to the human world around them. Politics, progress, international crisis--even the latest electronic gadgets--have little effect on them. All's well so long as their nest and food are in order. It's just that simple.

I've been using a Nokia cellphone for the last little while and took some of this week's photos with its whopping 2.0 megapixel camera. (Note to self: only use the Nokia for daylight outdoor shots.) If I recall correctly, our first digital camera took 2.0 megapixel pictures. We thought we were on the cutting edge of technology back then. Now, 2.0 megapixels barely cuts it. That's progress, I guess.

Anyway, onto the week's events--some of which were captured with 2.0 megapixels.

This is Monday-ish morning and an elderly lady in one of the mission programs receives a new set of crutches. Her old ones were too short and one of the handles was just a straight piece of wood. That would be ok for someone not entirely dependent on crutches, but for someone who needs them for everything but sleeping...ergonomic hand grips are important. She lost one of her legs to a landmine incident.

The crutches came from Barb. She needed them at some point in the past, but not anymore.
Don't you love those moments?

I snapped this quick shot while picking Celestino up to go do burn dressings on a very likable elderly gentleman. This is the line-up for vaccinations just outside the health post. The health department vaccinated for 2 days until supplies ran out.

This is one of many visits to this old man's home. It always amazes me how when we change his dressings, he never even so much as winces. I'm guessing he's been through a lot. His name is Robert. When I asked him, "Robert...Mugabe?" He smiled and said, "Oh no, I was born LONG before he was!" Thankfully, his burn wounds are recovering very well. Sadly, I won't get to see him many more times.

This was Friday (wee jump in time). Dwight and I were headed to town and received a call that someone urgently needed to get to the hospital. The lady we helped was very sick, indeed. We fixed a bed for her so she could lie down in the back. It took awhile for the family to gather her things and get her ready. While we waited, I took a few photos.

Facing north on the Tete corridor.

When we dropped the patient off at the nearest hospital, the director asked if we wouldn't mind transporting 2 other patients since we were on our way to Chimoio anyway. "Our only ambulance is broken at the moment." he said apologetically. And so we loaded up a pregnant woman in labor (who was toxic--pre-eclamptic), and a woman struggling with an asthma attack. Thankfully we were able to deliver them safely to the Chimoio hospital for further care.

The container with a tractor and backhoe arrived this week (from the U.S.) It's been en route for several months now, so this was a very happy moment! (It was also captured on my 10 megapixel Lumix :) Yes, progress is good.)

First, the tractor and some small stuff got unloaded.

Then the backhoe.
Looking at it made Heather and I reminisce about the Dr. Seuss book "Are You My Mother?"

It took Ron a bit of work to get this thing out. It was in there pretty tight!

We were all relieved when it was completely out. No mishaps, no injuries. Yay!

On the inside looking out.

Mercy Air has had a team here this week. Besides helping unload the container, they've been busy working on the Mercy Air house.

Here they are hard at work :)
(Ok, they WERE hard at work just before we got there!)

The training center got its first few lines of roof tiles put on the other day. In my mind I can see the running of classes inside those rooms already! Classes that will prepare young people for a better future, classes to help young mothers prepare for a safer delivery, classes that better equip church leaders for leading their people, classes to help equip school teachers, etc.

Yes, progress is good, indeed.