Itepela

View of the mountain from the Mushamba in the morning

The road to Itepela

Testing for Malaria

HIV test strip. It's negative.

The kids at the school. They to there three times a week to learn to read Portuguese.

I had a great time in Itepela. So much so that I ended up staying the whole week and coming back today instead of coming back on Monday like I was originally supposed to.  It's a beautiful village and I felt so welcome with the family I was staying with.

It got to do lots of things, mainly just living there.  It was great to see what life is like in the middle of no where.  They do not have internet or phone service. There is a land line, but it's not used very often. And the electricity is solar powered and only used when it's needed.

One thing I did was go to the lab with Ariel (the woman in the picture holding the slide) and learn how to test for Malaria. It's actually a rather simple process and most people with a Western education would be able to do it. First you poke the end of a finger to get a few drops of blood onto a slide. Then you put the slide in the sun to dry. Once it's dye you put it in a dye for 10 minutes, then you let the slide dry again. Once the slide is dry the second time, you put it under the microscope and look for Malaria.  The trick is to know what you're looking for and know how to identify it.  Malaria has a round head with a body. The head is very round. Under the microscope you're looking for something that looks like a period with a body on top of it. I saw a few examples and given a day or two I probably could have diagnosed Malaria rather easily.

I also ate a number of things I've never eaten before. Kasave, which is like potato only more fibrous. Sugar cane. Sardines, bones and scales and all.

I learned a lot about life in a village. You eat lots of rice and beans, rice and peas, rice and mutapa. Sometimes you have bread and in season you have veggies.  For someone from America where we eat a variety of foods it is difficult to get used to a simpler diet. But it's really not that bad. One thing to remember is that food here is not something you do for pleasure, you just do it because you have to.

I also went to church on Sunday, which was good. Africa is so funny. Church is supposed to start at 9, and every great once in a while it does. Generally it's more like 10:30 or 11, even later when church finally starts. And all of life is that way, you just go with the flow and if something goes wrong do something else. Getting stressed because plans change or something breaks is just unheard of.

What else did I do in Itepela? Oh we played "Uno" and "Spoons" a lot with the kids. One night we played "Spoons" for an hour and a half. It was a lot of fun.

Ariel, the other American, and I played a lot of games as well.  It's something to do. When you do not have all the crazy things we have in America you find stuff to do. Actually I'm beginning to like games and enjoy them more. I'm learning lots of things about myself and about life in being here.

Cuamba & Muapula

I really enjoyed my trip to Cuamba and Muapula. Cuamba is south of Lichinga, it took about 6 hours to get there. In Cuamba I went with one of the missionaries to the school where she teaches a Bible story every Saturday morning. The kids were so sweet and she told the story of Moses. Then they sang songs and played a game. Later we went to another place and told the same story to the kids there. Again they are all so adorable.

Sunday we went on to a small village called Muapula. It is about 3 hours north of Cuamba and about 3 hours south east of Lichinga. The drives were beautiful and I really enjoyed the whole trip a lot. Muapula was especially beautiful. I was amazed at how dark it was at night. You turn out the lights and cannot even see your hand in front of your face, and it's dead silent too. The first night was rough. I could hear every little noise and could not see a thing, which scared me a lot. But the second night I slept really well and the darkness didn't seem so bad. I knew that I was very safe in the house and decided that I needed to enjoy the dark silence anyway. And I got to see stars too, which was amazing :)

In Muapula we had to heat water in what the South Africans call a donkey. It a big water tank set in a brick base with a spot underneath the water tank for a fire.  You light the fire under the tank and it heats the water. I was appreciative of a hot shower for sure.

The kids we taught the Bible story to in the morning

The kids we taught the Bible story to in the afternoon

I'll let everyone figure out what I'm eating

View near Cuamba

Wood stove

The donkey we heated our water in for a hot shower

View from the top of the rock

View from the rock

Baboon

Mozambique highway

I loved the quiet, peacefulness of Muapula.

Thursday I leave to go to a village called Itipela until Sunday or Monday.

Life in Lichinga

Church

Tim doing Simply the Story in Yau, the tribal language

Looking down the road from the church

Kids playing outside the church, which is the blue and white building

Traeger and Karis playing in Claude's hammok outside the guest house

The George's house

Eragorn is one of our dogs

I took some random pictures around the house today, and a few at church yesterday, and thought I'd put a few on here for everyone to see. I'm enjoying my time here immensely so far. On Thursday I will be leaving with the director, Janice, to go to a couple different towns. She likes to visit the missionaries in their homes at least once every year. We'll be back on Tuesday. Then next Thursday though the next Sunday or Monday (July 1 or 2) I will be in a town called Itipela. I'm not bringing my laptop on either adventure, so I won't have internet access for a while. But I shall bring my camera and take lots of pictures :) I'm really excited to see more of this beautiful country. The next few days I'll just be around home. Yes this feels like home now.

Chiconono

Kallen with the puppies

The view from the mission house

Looking out the window of the mission house

The little green seeds are coffee!!

More beautiful view

I went with the George family out to a village called Chiconono today. It was a beautiful drive again and the view at the place we were at was just amazing. Mozambique is a truly beautiful country :) Unfortunately it was cloudy today, which is unusual during dry season, so it's hard to tell the real height of the mountains. Actually it rained today on the drive home from Chiconono, which Tim and Michele could not remember ever happening in June. Normally by May it does not rain again until November.

Village Preschool

Sorry, I meant to put up another update on Monday, but I've been battling with low internet for a few days. Anyway, Monday morning I went with one of the other many missionaries out to the village where she teaches. I was hesitant to go because I would be the only person who speaks English and my Portuguese is still not so great. I also had to ride on a motorbike to get there which is something I have never done before. But hey, what is this trip all about? I want to experience missionary life and as many different aspects of what a missionary can do as I possibly can. So with that in mind, I decided I needed to go on this little adventure.

It turned out to be absolutely wonderful. I got to play with kids for 3 hours :)  When we got there the kids learned a Bible story (Cain and Able), sang a song, and prayed. Then they did a tracing activity in their workbooks. I realized that with my limited Portuguese and pointing and guiding their hands I could help them which really gave me a sense of accomplishment. It was good to feel like I was helping and making a difference somehow. After they finished the activity it was time to play outside. The kids played a number of games - I joined in on a few of them. After about 30 minutes of "recess" the kids went back inside and did one more activity in their workbooks. Once they were done with that, it was time to go home for the day.

I really enjoyed the time a lot and am thankful that I decided to go. Unfortunately there will not be an opportunity to go back since the missionary I went with is leaving this weekend. But I enjoyed the one time immensely. The greatest thing was that I felt like I had actually done something worthwhile. I didn't just observe and watch, I actually helped the kids and played with them :)

We had a birthday party today at the director's house for a couple of the missionaries. This is a picture of all of the kids that were there.

Mapuje & Lumbiza

Part of Lumbiza

The mountain we drove around

A Pointsetta tree. They're all over around here.

This weekend was rather eventful, at least yesterday was. I went with one of the missionaries out to a town called Limbeza for church. It took almost 2 hours to get there, but the drive was worth it. It was incredibly beautiful and I was exciting to see more parts of Mozambique than just Lichinga. When we got to Lumbiza we had church which consisted of singing for a while, then Nancy (the missionary I was with) talked about John 14. Then one of the guys who was there was interested in becoming a follower of Jesus so they talking with him for almost an hour. I couldn't understand most of it unfortunately, but I prayed for him. He didn't end up making a decision yesterday, but seemed very close to making a decision to follow Christ :)

After church, we had lunch in the pastor's house. Houses are mud huts with a grass roof, like in the top picture. There is no electricity yet, either. For lunch we had Shema and Beans, which is what the people eat. It's really not too bad, just don't eat the Shema by itself. There's a reason they serve it with beans.

Then after lunch there was a funeral, which we attended out of respect to the family we had lunch with. It was a Muslim funeral, which means the women are not allowed to go to the cemetery. When we got there they were ready to take the coffin to the house where the body was. They put the coffin right up to the door of the house, and then covered the door with a sheet. They moved the body into the coffin in such a way that no one could see the body. Once the body was inside they took the coffin back up to a spot beside the main road. A group of men stood around the coffin and said prayers before the men all headed off to the cemetery. They carried the coffin to the cemetery in such a way that every man helped carry it. If you need a mental image, think of crowd surfing where they move the person along above their heads and you have the right idea.

That is the end of funeral for the women. They can either wait around for the men to return or they can just go home. We waited until the men returned and then headed back to Lichinga.

It was a good day, full of new things for me to see and experience. I enjoyed it a lot. More on what I did today later :)

Story Time!!!

So, Tuesday I went with Janice (the SIM director here) to church to do crafts with the women. At least that's what we were supposed to do, but no one showed up. This is something I have discovered about life in Lichinga. You make plans, but don't plan on them actually happening. If they do happen, great, and don't expect them to happen on time. Plans change all the time and quite often you don't even do what you set out to do in the first place, as was the case on Tuesday.

What I really wanted to talk about though was something we noticed on the way to the church. We noticed that a bunch of the houses, and other buildings, had flour sprinkled around the perimeter. Janice wasn't sure what it was and said she had never seen that before. Twice she stopped the car and asked some people along the road why there was flour circling the houses. Both times they replied that they had no idea what it was for. When we got to the church Janice asked the pastor if he know why there was flour around the houses. He told her that it is to protect the house from the spirits. The people will pay the witch doctors up to 2,000 mets (which is quite a lot of money; 27 mets = 1 dollar) to put the four around their house. The reason the people we asked would not tell us what it was for was because it is thought that if you say what the flour is for, then the spirits will know it's only flour and it will no longer protect the house.

It was a huge cultural revelation for me and I was stuck by the fact that they would pay so much money to have a witch doctor put flour around the house. It's such a different world than we have in the US and the spirit realm is very real to them and terrifying. These people really need the love of Christ and the knowledge that God alone can save them from anything, even the spirits.

Yesterday I went horse-back riding :) It was absolutely wonderful, but made me miss my horse back home. It was great to get out of town and bit and see some of the surrounding countryside. It's beautiful. Above are some pictures that I took on the ride.