You know you're in Africa when...You see a removal truck with two goats on the roof!
No prizes for guessing that Mozambique has been a real shock for us. No running water, so water comes in buckets from two wells that are on the property. The girls house, that we have our bedroom in is about 100m from the boys house and office. The boys have the well with water in it, so there is a lot of to and fro with the buckets. The kids just accept the work with grace and no complaining. The girls are very strong, and their hands and feet are hard from years of this stuff, and put a bloke like me to shame.
Breakfast every day is a food called 'soju'. Kind of like a sweet porridge. Lunch is mostly masa and beans, sometimes a mixture of spinach and peanut butter kind of stuff. And dinner, well masa and beans, or masa and chicken or sometimes fish. The mazoongas (the whites) also supplement our diets with bananas or apples. There are quite a number of mango trees on the property with hundreds of mangos tempting us with their growing fruit. In a few weeks hopefully we'll be making 20 trips to the toilet each day because we're too full of fruit. What a a way to go...
At the moment it is toward the end of the dry (but cooler) season, which means the temperature is around 30 each day. The humidity is kind of high, but I assume it gets much higher. I haven't had trouble breathing yet and they tell me when it's really high, breathing is like sucking soggy oatmeal through a sock. Can't wait for that! Actually, we'll be gone by then, with our aeroplane due to take off on the 28th October.
Speaking of airports... it's a curious experience in this day and age when the plane that you're on, after taxiing to the terminal, actually pulls up right outside the front door and lets you off onto the tarmac... 20 steps and you're inside.
After having our bags checked onto 14 flights, one finally decided not to fly with the rest of the flock... Zoe's bag, of course with the bulk of her clothes and our entire toiletries bag and 2 of our spare freezer packs for Jude's medicine included. Zoe had some clothes in our washbag plus the ones she was wearing. After filling in an 'African' missing bag report, it actually turned up a few days later. Un-opened.
The kids are truly amazing. I hesitate to lable them 'orphans', because in your minds it might downgrade what you think they can do... Many of them lost their parents to sickness. Sobering thought that here is Moz, there aren't many people over their mid 40s. To have grandparents is a rare thing. Many of the kids are from the streets, driven there by uncles and aunts who mistreated them, or couldn't afford them after the parents died. Some had been to other orphanages that were less caring, and they found that they could survive better on the streets. To a point that is.
Lee, who runs the orphanage, House of Blessing, has been fantastic, and manages the 40 odd kids here with grace and wisdom. They all call her mama, and have really brightened under her love. Quite a number of them hadn't ever been hugged or tickled, and didn't know what to do... just standing stiff and not knowing how to hug back. If any of you are cynical about what the 'west' is doing in africa, I know that it's because you don't hear about places like this... quiet people doing a lionhearted job in a tough environment.
Suffice to say that I haven't found my 'calling'.
It may seem incongruous to come to an african orphanage and not feel that we're really here to do stuff with the kids... Put it like this. At 14 and 15, many of these guys have been planting gardens, doing maintenance (like a new roof), digging wells for daily water reqs, and other stuff like that. Their ability to work with few tools and a lot of intuition and cameraderie is way beyond what you'd find in Australia. It seems much more like they're doing their normal stuff with us around. We just kind of try to fit in and hang around. Often in the way. Mostly the source of much mirth and merriment. It's pretty easy to tell, even in another language, when someone is taking the you-know-what out of you.
You quickly get the sense that too many come here with grand and arrogant notions of how to change things, but Africa is Africa. They are actually pretty clever and adaptive, they obviously live with a lot of grief... there has been a funeral procession past the front gates of the orphanage each day... a constant reminder of how difficult much of life is here.
Aaron is in his element. There are quite number of boys around 6-10yo, but the older boys play as easily with the little ones as their peers. Stick fights, climbing trees, digging holes, chasing goats, generally exploring more and more bizarre ways to attract dirt... you can imagine.
Zoe has not quite found her groove. She loves being involved, and the girls don't really tend to play boy kind of games. And the boys are a bit less willing to play with her. The girls tend to sit and chat, and braid each other's hair, and cook and clean and carry water. They play cards a lot which has been good, as Z can get into that with aplomb.
Here's a secret... when singing, not all african girls could make the starting team in the Soweto Girls Choir! ha... but then neither could I... not least for the fact that I'm male...
Spent a few hours yesterday with a guy called Eric, from the Church of Mormon, who's here digging wells, and rolling out a small scale microfinance product. He was fascinating, and intelligent, and not wearing a blue suit. There may be hope for the dark continent after all... ha.
Anyway, we get the feeling that the next 4 weeks are going to be a lot like this week, each day starting with making sure all the tubs are full of water, for flushing and for baths, and then just doing stuff.
There is an orphanage for 30 boys just across the road, run by a fella called John. He's been here 15 years after coming to help his mum, a nurse, pack up her things to return to the US. He came to help her and been here ever since. It's his internet connection we're using. Supremely gratefully of course.
Thanks for sticking to the end of this, another Thomas epic... except of course if you read the first and last paragraphs... well, in your shoes, I may have done the same....
