One Very Interesting Overnight Outreach…

2pm and we are leaving, only an hour late for our 4-hour journey to Alua, a village in Nampula Province. On the back of the open flatbed truck were 14 mission school students and 8 student pastors.


The 4x4 driving behind us carried a TV crew from GODtv who are doing an in-depth interview with Heidi, and are following her around. Heidi still has a class to teach in Pemba, so she and Shara, her PA, will head out 2 hours later and meet us in Alua, bringing 8 kids, and 4 guest speakers: Asher Interater’s team from Israel and the director of IRIS India, Ravi.

We had just left Pemba, and I was sitting in the front playing with my new camcorder – I was going to film this outreach and make a little documentary thing for people back home – when there was an police checkpoint. The policeman saw my camera and demanded to know where my authorization paper to film was. I don't need one; it’s a small camcorder, for a “home movie”, why do I need authorization? Well they made me get out the truck and wanted to see the footage I had. There was one shot of a pickup truck stuffed with 15 people, and 6 guys hanging off the back. That really upset him. Apparently (according to him) you aren't allowed to film while sitting in a moving vehicle. 2 of our Mozambican leaders were pleading my case, but the cops were really being nasty. “Fine, you all can turn around and go back to Pemba, OR she stays here and goes to the police station with us”. I’m just pretending not to speak/understand ANY Portuguese. They are eyeing my camcorder, so I quickly eject the tape and offer it to the chief guy. (Better that I lose a tape than the camera!) They take it, but are still not happy. Finally after 15mins, I’m not sure what happens, but they accept our apologies, hand back the miniDV tape and let us go. *huge sigh of relief!*

Will (driving the pickup with the film crew in it) was waiting just up ahead out of sight. We fill him in and advise the cameraman sitting in the back not to let the police see the camera.


The next checkpoint is just before the Lurio River, the provincial border between Cabo Delgado and Nampula Provinces. I have driven over this bridge countless time and never had a problem. Today however, they demanded to see all the passports of the foreigners and the ID papers of the nationals. Which hardly anyone has on them. Never in the year I’ve been here have we EVER been asked for documents/passports. They hassled Will about his insurance sticker that was out of date – but legally Will doesn’t need insurance, its optional, and he chose not to renew. It was a long long interrogation. Finally we paid the bribe of $8 and left. We were late enough as it was – and there was lightning in the distance, we don't want to be caught in the rain…

Rain. Lots of it, pouring down and drenching all the people sitting in the back of the open flat bed truck. Soaking the tents, the sleeping bags, the sound system. We stop and buy a big piece of black plastic and everyone huddles under it to stay dry. We hadn’t gone much further when Will flags us down and tells us to stop. Shara’s Landrover had died, the transmission had dropped out – and it’s new, it’s only done 19 000km/11,800miles! The problem however was that she had been driving behind Heidi and Heidi hadn’t noticed that Shara wasn’t behind her anymore… We try to get in touch with her, but Heidi’s phone is weird; it keeps connecting us into her voicemail, so that we actually hear ‘you have 79 new messages’. Heidi’s car is filled with 8 kids, Shara has the guest speakers, some more kids and a student. Finally we get thru to Heidi, she’s only about 5mins past Shara and she heads back. Its late, nearly 7pm and pitch black. The rain has eased up a bit, but could start again at any minute. Finally Heidi calls and says, “OK its too late to get to Alua, just go to the chief of the village you are in now and ask if we can do the outreach there, and camp for the night, We’ll go to Alua first thing in the morning.” Great. We don't want to scare the chief with all the white people at once, so Will and Carlos go see the chief with one of the student pastors from this area. The rest of us stay sitting in the flatbed next to the road. The lightning is spectacular and the cameraman for the film crew sat on the edge of the road trying to capture it when a motorcycle drives past. It’s an off duty policeman and he’d been drinking. And he had a hassle with the camera. Around this time Will comes back with permission for us to stay in the village and just as we head towards the chief’s bamboo mud hut the cop on the motorbike takes our driver’s license and the truck’s papers. We get to the hut and Ibrahimo (the driver) goes to Will and tells him what happened. The cop had taken off to the police station.

Heidi calls again wants us to setup the sound system and just show the last 30mins of the JESUS film. It’s raining so I’m not too keen on that idea. We decide to setup the tents first before the bags and sleeping bags got totally soaked so we had just got all the tents up when Heidi calls again and says that we should rather just go to Alua and stay there, we cannot do the outreach in the rain and at least there is a church building in the other village.

“Pack it up guys!”

The students sighed, “So this was just a practice run?” All the villagers were sitting on their porches watching in fascination as all these white people set up tents and then 10minutes later break them down again. They must have thought we were crazy. So we pack it all up and huddle under the awning of the chief’s hut, trying to stay dry. The motorbike cop had gone to fetch the chief of police, and they confiscated Will’s papers and license too.

Heidi and Shara arrived then, with Shara’s Landrover balanced precariously on the back of a flatbed truck – some random guy had seen they were broken down, stopped to help – when he realized that we help orphans, he said, “Well then I will help you” So he drove his camiao down a ditch so that the back was level with the road, Shara pushed her car onto the back, they used rope to tie the Landrover to the truck, then everyone got back into the Landrover and the guy drove off behind Heidi. They said it was scary; it kept swaying from side to side!


Heidi joined the discussion – the issue of the passports was raised again – then more police arrived carrying AK47s. They wanted to place us under house arrest here in this village because the jail back in Namapa wasn’t big enough to hold all of us. Why exactly they wanted to arrest us was still not clear, but they were having issues with us. Will came to the awning and told us all to pray, not take photos and keep quiet – things were getting tense. The rain was pouring, it was pitch black, and I had been having an interesting conversation with the cameraman for the film crew!

Finally Heidi said, “This is ridiculous, we’re leaving.” And for some reason the cop said, “OK”. Will came running up to us, “Quick. Get in the truck. Get in now before they change their minds. Move it. Double time!”

We (very quickly) load up and go.

Alua isn’t too far away, and we are welcomed by singing and cheering! Its 8:30pm and we are very late, but we made it, and that’s what counts. Everyone helps to unload the camiao and we dump everything inside the church, then we huddle in the building were Heidi has been preaching in the dark for 15mins already. We get the generator out and I try to start it. There was enough gas, but the big question was, “where is the pull cord?” I had let one of the Mozambican staff use it to test some equipment and he had returned it minus the pull-cord, and hadn’t even told me it was missing. It’s a good thing we were out of cell phone range; else I think I would have chewed his ear off over the phone. We use a piece of rope and wind it around the coil; finally we get the generator started and have some light in the church. After the preaching we prayed for people, and Heidi prayed for a guy that was lame, and he got up and walked. Pretty cool!

11pm and we set up our tents, in and around the church building and have a tuna roll for supper. Everyone settles down and by midnight all is quiet.

At 5am the Mozambicans start waking up and making a noise… by 6 it was impossible to sleep - I looked up and saw 7 little black faces pressed against the see-thru mosquito net covering the entrance of my tent. It had been too hot and stuffy to shut the door, but I need to change, so I try to get the door’s zip to cooperate with my sleepy brain, finally shutting out the staring eyes. I change and crawl out my tent, hoping that the water for coffee was already boiling on the wood fire. It was and I make myself a cup of coffee, strong and sweet, and munch on a buttered bread roll for breakfast.


I got the mission students to do sound – its great, so it leaves me free to film. Church starts at 8am and for once I’m not stuck behind the sound desk! There are too many people to fit in the church, so we move the speakers outside instead – its hot in the sun, so most of the crowd find a shady spot and listen from there instead. All the guest speakers preach, and there are a number of healings. A woman comes up to Heidi and says that her daughter is a deaf mute since birth, but she is at home, about 6km/3.72miles away please can someone go fetch her so that she can get prayer??? I offer to take Heidi’s Landrover to pick her up – when I get to the house there was also a cripple guy, so we picked him up too, and also another blind man. Back at the church Heidi prayed for the girl, she is about 12years old, and she said, ‘mama’, her first word. She seemed really bewildered, I guess I’d be too if this was the first time that I ever hear anything! That was awesome!



Heidi had to get into the church, we have to dedicate the building, and she has to officiate 4 weddings (well, actually one wedding for 4 couples). All goes well and the
couples enjoy their kiss at the end… the church building is dedicated, and now its time for lunch.

The film crew want to interview Heidi in the kitchen, so we can’t eat yet, an hour later they are finally done. We’re just about to eat when an Iris pastor comes to Heidi to show her 8 orphans that he has been looking after – he would like to register them with Iris, and he would like us to take them back to Pemba because he cannot afford to support them. They are older children, 13 – 16 years old. Heidi has been going the whole morning now; I think her mind was so tired. I was standing behind her, she turns around and says, “We cant take them to Pemba, what can we do for them?” My suggestion: Buy them goats? This kicks starts her again and she says. “OK, we will buy you 4 goats, some seeds for a garden, and food for the kids. We will register them and support them, but they will stay with you.” The pastor also needs a bicycle, so we head into town to get the bicycle.

Heidi goes shopping - an hour and a half later she returns with all the goodies she’s bought. She likes to shop – we got a bike, 30 capalanas, 50 pairs of flip-flops, a huge bag of rice, a huge bag of beans, buckets, school book, matches, candles… the goats will be bought in the village where they stay.

By the time we get back to the church, lunch is over (we had even fed the community), dishes were done, the camiao was loaded, ready to leave! There is a scramble to get everyone who needs a ride home on the back of the truck, the film crew are loaded, and Heidi’s Landrover is already just dust in the distance. Quickly we go after her – she wants a picture of each kid.

At the pastors house we unload the goodies Heidi had bought, she has a look around the house where they stay, then she dedicates the house as a children’s center, prays for the kids and then we’re off – its 4pm already!

The rain starts almost as soon as we hit the good road, and the students huddle under the black plastic again, some of them wrapped in the rain protectors of the tents. It rained the whole way home, stopping only just outside Pemba. None of the police gave us hassles and it was a fairly smooth journey home. The rain lulled me to sleep, and when I woke up I was so hungry, I realized that all I’d eaten the whole day was a butted bread roll and 2 little mangoes! The film crew was staying at the 5* Pemba Beach Hotel – they have the best buffet there, so I started dreaming of the meats, the veggies… I was ready to drop $20 on some food! But I knew I’d just eat some 2-minute noodles and tuna when I get home.

The sound equipment unloaded, the students dropped off and finally at 8pm I am home.
That was quite an adventure don't you think?

PS The GODtv programme should have been broadcast in 2 parts, on Fridays, Dec 22 and 29 at 10:30am... called 'In Depth with David Aldous', and is an interview with Heidi Baker, focusing on IRIS Pemba - BUT it wasnt - so just keep checking their website www.god.tv.

Pemba Conference!

A flurry of activity as the flatbed trucks start arriving, depositing their load , then heading out once again. The people had started to arrive! By the start of the conference on Friday night there were at least 2000 people camped out in and around the big-top tent, and also in all the outdoor classrooms.


Pit latrines and shower areas had been franticly dug in the week leading up to the conference, now no matter which direction you looked you would have no trouble locating a latrine - huge white ‘S’ (for women) and ‘H’ (for men) letters were painted on the bamboo walls (and for those that could not read, little stick men and woman were painted too!) There seemed to be some people who had never used a latrine before, so the conference organizers spent 10minutes during announcements clearly explaining the do’s and don’ts of using a latrine. They had also painted huge stick figures on the walls inside each stall, CLEARLY showing the correct and incorrect usage. That just cracked me up!

I had thought that we were going to show the JESUS film the first night, but instead they gave me an old VHS copy of some movie about a guy dying and going to hell and not liking it very much… it was in Portuguese, so not many of the people understood it, and the power cable kept being pulled out of the socket/falling out by itself so then it took time to restart the projector – so we never did see the end of the movie! But the people had fun singing and dancing and for once they weren’t upset when I said I was switching off the system – cos supper was served! Everyone rushed off to go eat and I was left to pack it up by myself (as usual) fortunately there was a guy that had forgotten his phone in the sound room, so I made a deal with him – he helps me, and once its all packed away, I’ll open the room for him to get his phone. It worked, and he somehow got more guys to help out so it went fairly quickly! Then as I was just despairing about getting a ride home (it was 10pm) I saw a Landrover drive past – yay!

The next morning the conference kicked off for real. During the night more people had arrived, and as the day went on more would still come, we were expecting about 3000 people in total from the other districts!

Well after an hour and a half of energetic singing and dancing the people settled down in the dirt and on the grass mats and to listen to the head of our missions school, Lesley Ann Leighton. After the ministry time the band came up again and the crowd went wild – kicking up another dust cloud as they praised the Lord. The bell for lunch rang and quickly the tent was deserted…

Each afternoon for the duration of the conference, Heidi had scheduled 4 workshops to run concurrently – and she had let me know the day before that I had to make happen a sound system for each of the 4 venues…
When I found out about this stretch of my super powers, I had quickly gone to where the mission school was having their class and asked one of the staff to get me 6 volunteers to do sound. Josh went up to the front and said, “I want six guys to put up their hands!”
Most of the guys dutifully raised their hands - not at all knowing what they were getting themselves into – and Josh picked 6. “OK – you’ve all have been assigned to extra work duty this weekend. See Nikki after class. Thanks”- I like his style! I might add that Josh had been a Marine before he had come here! When I met with the guys after the class to outline what I required of them, one of the guys gave a sigh of relief that the assignment had to do with sound – when he had put up his hand he had thought that maybe it was for “clean the latrines” duty!

I was so thankful that I had those 6 guys to help out – the workshops went off without a hitch and I was able to go home for 3 hours each afternoon to take a nap before I had to be back to re-setup the sound system for the evening session!

The evening sessions were amazing – all the people in the surrounding area had come too, and there were loads of people: singing, dancing, cheering, shouting, having fun - but it was loud.



So loud in fact, that I’ve lost the ability to hear some of high frequencies with my left ear. The minute I realized that, I sat behind the sound desk with my fingers plugging my ears. I couldn’t risk more damage. Now 2 weeks after the conference it hasn’t recovered, and I’m not sure if it will. I’m going to get some proper attenuating ear plugs made when I’m next in South Africa to stop my ears from more damage. So that’s sad.


Our high-tech sound setup, 2 Soundcraft Gigracs linked to power the 8 speakers

But the conference was good – I think that the people in the villages, those that live in the bush bush, went home feeling encouraged and not forgotten.

Sunset in Pemba

On the last day of the conference Heidi held a huge wedding ceremony for anyone that wanted to get married – there were 17 couples that said ‘I do’ that day. The message was about ‘Love’ and it was really sweet. Some churches in America had donated rings, and after Heidi led them in their vows our senior pastor went to each couple and they tried out the rings till they found one that fit. Each woman got a ring! Then Heidi said, ‘You may kiss the bride’. It was the FIRST time that I have ever seen a Mozambican publicly display affection, and this was not just one couple, it was 17 couples, all of them kissing. And they kissed for along time! ☺

It was a busy 4 days for me, and after working nearly 45 hours in total, I was fairly happy when it all came to an end!

No more little campfires in the outdoor classrooms, no more people scattered around sleeping where they could find space on the ground, no more laundry hanging on all the fences, no more 4000 mouths to feed 3 times a day. The people had all piled back into the trucks, and by Thursday the base was empty, and quiet.

Back in Pemba

I am back in Pemba after my quick 10 day visit to South Africa to write 3 exams - it was a nice break: hot running water, pork ribs - need I say more? :-)

I am back just in time for our annual Pemba conference - the place is a beehive of activity getting the big tent chruch expanded to fit in the extra 3000 people that are coming, and then finding them all place to sleep...



Pemba is blossoming - Summer is coming! The big baobabs are are green, and the mercury is rising and rising... its HOT here!

The sound systems are OK - they survived my absence, although the room was a mess with cables and speakers and stands lying around everywhere - I made my annoyance known and the guys came in and tidied, apologising profusely for being too lazy to pack things away properly... *sigh*

The conferennce kicks off tomorrow night with the JESUS film - and of course at least 2 hours of singing and dancing!

Até Logo! (Until Later)

Sad News

I received some sad news this morning, they said it better than I ever could.

" There are times when we don’t know what to say.
When we feel the emotions, but the words are so few, so,
so empty, or not close enough.

And such is the time now. Baby Lori is home now, in Jesus' arms.
She left us this morning, and, and He took her Home.

She just stopped breathing.

Just yesterday she seemed fine, was her usual darling self,
the laughing, joyous, cute, baby girl we all love so much,
and now, now she is gone and we are left trying to cope. "



You can read her story here: A Little Miracle

I will miss her so much.

Getting to Malawi

Mozambican immigration were being silly and had decided to take the end of Ramadan as a public holiday – this meant that my passport was still in their possession on Thursday when I was meant to be flying to Malawi with Rolland… We called and even sent someone to the office to ask for my passport – they refused to give it to me before 2:30pm. So frustrating!!!

Eventually I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to go to Lilongwe for the Iris Central Malawi Conference. I walked back to the little plane and took my suitcase out and sat on the front steps waiting for a driver to fetch me. Rolland and his other passenger cleared customs and took off.

I let everyone know that I was going to be in Pemba for the next four days and set about preparing for the next day. Suddenly I got a phone call – arrangements had been made and a Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) plane will come pick me up in Pemba the next morning and take me to Lilongwe. I was astounded. WOW! Someone had sponsored me a flight!!

The next morning bright and early I was at the airport – it was deserted and the few staff that was there must have thought I was slightly crazy, being there so early when there were no scheduled flights for the next 5 hours. It wasn’t too long before I saw the plane land – the guy at the gift shop kindly let me onto the runway and he also called the immigration guy to let him know I was there. He arrived 30 mins later and stamped me out the country. Finally we were off.

The pilot, Dave, had been working with MAF in Mozambique for 10 years! After we took off he let me fly the plane – quite a challenge trying to keep it level and on course! But it was fun – we had to dodge the clouds because MAF regulations require that they not fly thru clouds - I think that made the flight even more interesting! It wasn’t long before I saw the clear blue water of Lake Malawi below us, the next thing I knew Dave had taken the controls and we had landed.

I was really happy to be in Malawi!

(continued...)

Malawi - Conference in Lilongwe

I was a day late, but it didn’t matter – finally we could set up Rolland’s 2 powerful speakers to help the other 4 weaker ones! (he doesn’t like anyone else using his speakers, its me or nothing)
We gave a new meaning to ‘surround sound’ placing the 6 speakers in a circle around the stage to accommodate all the people staring at us from all directions!

Mo, the base director for Iris Malawi had a really cool worship drum track which we played at full blast to get the people’s attention – they were entertained by Mo dancing to the beat – some laughed and others joined in!


Dancing to the Drums

The Malawians as such a friendly people, and they differ in many ways to the Mozambicans we work with daily, but in some ways they are still the same, for example: The worship times were as usual a mixture of dancing and aerobics lasting about an hour and a half. Preaching translated into the local language, Chichewa, followed the energetic worship time and then we prayed for people and allowed God to move. There were so many testimonies at the end that blew me away. The Malawian culture does not often allow women to participate in church services, much less allow them to testify on stage. One after the other they described how sickness had left them or their families, how even in the face of extreme poverty they have discovered joy they never knew before and how they will go back to their villages refreshed and filled with more of God’s love.


The conference at night

The 3 days flew past – and before I knew it we were having our final service. They had arranged for a little variety concert, a showcase of singing for an hour before church started – young kids, old men, a man with an accordion, a family – but the group that stole the show was a group of women with babies tied to their backs. They started really quietly and had a pretty nice song going when suddenly they stopped and did a little ‘doe - doe - doe - tchaaaaaa” and then carried on with the song. The crowd went wild, cheering and clapping. It was great! Who would have thought, little African ladies being hip?


Me doing my job

We had an interesting time at the airport trying to convince the immigration people that we were on a private flight, seeing that Rolland was not wearing a pilot’s uniform (shorts, a blue Iris T-shirt and a baseball cap doesn't seem to be an acceptable pilot outfit). Also our statements of, “NO, we do not want to check our luggage in at the check-in counter” was met by strange looks. “So how are you going to get those 3 luggage trolleys up the stairs to the departure lounge?” *sigh* eventually they twigged that we were on a PRIVATE flight, meaning our own plane, meaning we had to wheel the trolleys onto the tarmac to get to the plane. They let us take the trolleys through the transit lounge on the ground floor – I got stuck trying to wheel the 2 speakers through the metal detector – it didn’t go off, the speakers were just too wide! But finally we got to the plane, loaded it and took off.

The flight back was uneventful; we missed the 5pm cut off for landing in Pemba by 15mins, so we had to pay the fine for a late landing – all because we had stopped to buy cokes in Lilongwe! (maybe the hassle at the airport was also to blame). But it was nice to be home again!

Dogs, Monkeys & A New House!

While I was in Morrumbala building the house for the orphans I bought a puppy! She belongs to both my housie and I, and we decided to call her ‘Bala’, after Morrumbala, but it also happens to mean, ‘bullet’!


Bala 2 months old

Its like having a little baby in house – the landmines and the puddles… *sigh* but we are getting the hang of it – trying to train her to be a good house dog. Not too sure what kind of dog she is… or how big she’s going to get!

She and Charlie the monkey get on really well – he escaped the other night and when I woke up to let Bala out the next morning I saw a monkey sitting on my kitchen wall!



He jumped down and Bala and he played for about an hour, chasing each other, tumbling, and tugging ears and tails! It was so cute.




Jessie and I have moved to a smaller house – so just the two of us live there now, and we have a bathroom INSIDE the house as well as a kitchen! And they finally hooked us up to the water too, we had been paying kids (with candy) to carry water for us… so now when the city has water I can take a real shower and walk back to my room in only a towel and not worry that half the base can see me! The only thing that needs to be fixed is the meter high gap between the roof and the wall in the kitchen/verandah area… It’s a security risk - I’ve hopped over it before, hopefully they will put bars and mosquito netting in soon!

Its so nice to live in a little house, they even planted a pretty little garden outside it! Sad thing is that we don't have a yard anymore, so Bala has to stay inside, else she runs around and eats the food scraps and fish bones out of the buckets the Mozambicans leave outside their houses!

Grrrouwf!!

Police...

One lazy Saturday we decided to go to the beach, to Murrebué, about 20mins away. I borrowed the Landrover and we see who all is going – so Will says he will take his car too. But he wants to go the long way round and drive on the beach, so the girls pile into the Landy and off we go. There is a Police checkpoint just as you leave the city and they stop everyone, but today they weren’t there – yay! But then as we were nearing the turnoff when we saw a little uniformed man wave us down… he asks to see my license and the car’s papers. No problem.


“There is a problem here, these papers do not say there is a roof rack added to the car. And also the payload weight written down is 1 ‘4’ 80 and on the car is says 1 ‘9’ 80. We go talk to the chief”

I get out the car and follow him to the side of the road where his supervisor is standing with another lady cop. “Please sir, let me call our head driver, he speaks better Portuguese than I do”… “No, your Portuguese is good”. Well at least I got a compliment out of it. I still try to convince him that the ‘4’ is just a poorly written ‘9’ and that I was so so so so sorry that we didn’t amend the papers to include the roof rack. He’s not buying.

He suddenly asks me, ”are you married?”
No I’m not married. I’m too young.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”
I don't have a boyfriend either.

“but you are so pretty, will you be my wife?”
Actually there was a guy I like a little bit.

“but we can just sleep together”
NO! I have a boyfriend.

“your boyfriend is in Pemba?”
yes…

“why is he not with you?”
ummm… he has to work today

“so do you sleep with him?”
NO.

“But how do you know if you like him if you don't sleep with him?”
I am a Christian, you must only sleep with your husband.

→ The other 3 police officers were cracking up; they thought it was the funniest thing ever. And they still had my license and the car’s papers else I would have punched him and ran.

“OK, so do you want to go on a date with me?”
No

“Don’t you like me?
NO.

“Why not?”
umm…

“So do any of the other girls in the car want to marry me?”
No, they ALL have boyfriends.
Please I just want to go to the beach to relax.

“But your paper’s are wrong”
I am so sorry.
Please can we go to the beach?
I will fix the papers on Monday.

“OK. Go. Maybe we can have a date some other time”

They hand back the papers and I get back in the car. I think that from now on the extent of my Portuguese when dealing with police will be, ‘now faa lou por chew ges’ (I don't speak Portuguese)

I really felt horrible, like he had molested me in some way with his words and the invasiveness of the questions. And there was nothing I could do about it either, anyone else I would have punched, but he had my driver’s license, and I was in an Iris Landrover, with the Iris logo on the door, so he would know where to find me…

And just incase you were wondering, I DON'T have a boyfriend. I invented him for the moment!

Other than that the rest of the day was good – the beach was good, Bala got to go swimming for the first time and we ran on the beach. She doesn’t like the waves too much but when the tide is out there are tons of sandy bars with puddles she swam thru.

I decide that I don't want to go the short way home, just incase the cops are still there – besides driving on the beach sounds like fun. I am following Will’s pickup and on the first sandy hill we come to I stopped too soon and got a bit stuck – but I put the DiffLock on, 4 High and there I go, reverse out the sand. Then the DiffLock off and I pick up speed and we clear the sand bar easily. There is a silence in the car as the girls process what just happened. But I love it! The tide had come in too much for us to drive on the beach itself, but there was a path right next to the beach we drove on. One part was on an angle, I’m sure it was close to 40 degrees, because it was scary, felt like we were going to roll, but so much fun! I like this kind of driving, off-roading!!!

Sunday after church I was invited by the same bunch of people to have a barbeque on the beach – Will had bought a whole goat and we grilled that on a huge grill they had made for their 4th of July party. It was so good. The goat I’ve eaten in the villages and at the center has always been in a stew, so to have a huge chunk of grilled goat was fantastic! The dogs loved the bones, the one we gave Bala was nearly as big as she was!

We dug a deep pit in the sand on the beach and after the BBQ we moved the hot coals over there and built a fire. It was great, the stars were out, there was NO one around, and the moon was a huge red ball, reflecting over all the rock pools formed by the outgoing tide. It was beautiful.

Collecting Kids

You might remember the village called Miegane that I mentioned in the Safari story… well I spoke to Heidi about the kids and Heidi said ‘why didn’t you bring the kids back with you???’ :-)

Well it isn’t that simple, there are documents that need to be filled out and we decided that we would go back later with Rodolfo, director of our children’s center here in Pemba. The kids would go to Maranghania, a new base that was starting about 20mins outside Pemba, one that is much smaller, with fewer kids. The vision is to have boys aged 6-10 living in little ‘families’ of 12 kids with two ‘parents’. They are still building, but there is one house ready for kids. The missionary couple running that base, Michael and Julie were excited that they would maybe get some kids.

Monday the 5 of us packed into the car and set off for this village – its exactly a month later, October 2! We arrive in the village and ask people until we are shown to Joao Assane’s house. Fortunately he is home, and he remembers me from the bush camp. He was surprised that we had come back! Word quickly spread and soon there was a crowd around the chairs that had been set out for us.



We had no idea what condition the kids would be in, and asked to see the kids. They were sent for, but it turns out that all of them are staying with their grandparents, and 4 of the kids’ caretakers refuse to let us have them. One lady, a grandmother with an 11-year-old daughter, was looking after her 2-orphaned grandchildren, a 3 1/2 year old boy and a year old baby. She is too weak to work the fields to get food for the kid, so the 11-year-old aunty looks after the baby. Both kids are slightly malnourished, but do not look like they are starving.

Michael and Julie are not ready to take a baby, but they do not want to split the family. Its a hard decision to We go to the bush camp for and hour to think and pray – it’s a huge decision to take a child away from all he has known. The camp is just as beautiful and peaceful as I remembered it to be!

Finally we think of a solution: we will buy her 2 goats, and then she can sell the goat kids and make money. That way we can leave the kids there and they would have food and be looked after. I think that was the best solution!

We get back to the village and quickly a man is found that has goats for sale: we buy 2 female goats, one is already pregnant, and we hire a man to build a pen for them to be kept.

The lady is covered in witch doctor paraphernalia, and so are the kids, so we want to pray for them – Michael preached in Portuguese and the assistant chief translated into Makua (hardly any of the villagers spoke Portuguese), then he asked if anyone wanted to give their lives to Christ. No one. Oh well, so we prayed for the grandmother and the kids and got ready to leave.

The crowd scattered, and suddenly Julie realized she didn’t have photos of the kids with the goats! So we drove to the lady’s house and took some photos, then went back to the assistant Chief’s house. And there, standing outside the gate were 2 guys. As we got out the car they said ‘we want to receive Jesus’. How AWESOME is that???? We prayed for them, and Michael led them in a prayer. It was so exciting! They had heard about Jesus before, but never really understood it. Now we have the start of a church.


Adults from Left to Right: Rodolfo, Michael, Julie, the Grandmother (she is holding the orphan baby)
The little boy in the front, dressed in blue, is the 3 1/2 year-old orphan. Also posing for the camera are the 2 goats we bought them!

I had already told Joao (the assistant chief) that I wanted to bring a team out there for a 3 or 4 night outreach, and this just made me want to do it even more! So that is my goal, to get an outreach scheduled in the village, and then also do outreaches in the other 2 villages you drive through to get there. I think it will be great – Iris hasn’t been there yet, this was the first time!

I also realized that I liked being in the villages more than I liked being at the base in Pemba, I mean its nice to have a home to go to, but I like going out to the villages and just being there…

So we left without any kids, but that’s better.

A Little Miracle

A grandmother showed up one day and brought a tiny starving baby to us. Baby Lori was 2 months old, and she had been surviving on watery shima (maize porrige) after her mother died giving birth. She looked horrible, weighing a mere 2 pounds with nearly every bone in her body visible. We did not have much hope for her survival and it made us so sad so we prayed and prayed that she would live.



Today, 4 months later we have the cutest fattest most adorable baby! Lori has gained so much weight and is developing normally! She is 11 pounds and so healthy! It is a miracle – she is a little fighter, and every day as we watch her grow we can hardly believe this is the same baby we took in those few months ago!

Monkey Business

I have a monkey – a real monkey!!! We have had him for about a month now, he belongs to my room mate and I, his name is Charlie, he is 10 months old and he is the naughtiest creature I have ever met – but so adorable!

We built him a huge cage outside our house, but for a while he lived in our kitchen and it gave new meaning to ‘child-proofing’ because if he could pick it up he would. He loved stealing the matches, running onto the roof and then patiently chewing the carton open and dumping the contents onto the roof before throwing the empty box back down into the kitchen! And when we take something out the oven his paw would be right in there…

He loves candy, and after he realized the world was bigger than just our house he would go explore the neighbors yards and then we would have to go out there and bribe him with something sweet to get him onto our shoulder and then we could walk him back to his house… these days he stays in his cage, but he still loves having his back scratched!

Safari

September 2 is Jessie, my ‘housie’s’ birthday and she really wanted to go away for the weekend and just relax.


So we asked around and met up with a guy that had helped with the horses. He knew a guy that owns a bush camp in an elephant reserve about 2 hours outside Pemba. We got his number and walked about a kilometer in the hot hot sun to his house to chat about things. It was so good – he would let us stay in a bungalow for free, and they would take us out on a game drive to look for elephants that Saturday, also for free! How cool is that?


Our little Bungalow

Friday morning we packed the Landrover we borrowed and headed into town to go buy some goodies for the weekend – meat to barbeque and lots of snacks.

The directions we had were pretty comprehensive cos we had to twist and turn thru 3 villages to get there, drive thru a dry riverbed and over a very odd little hill. But it was breathtaking. So peaceful and quiet. The camp is situated in a valley at the base of 3 huge rock mountains.


We unloaded the landy and then we all just lay outside on the verandah listening to the stillness that was only interrupted by the cracking sounds of huge seedpods bursting open. There were baboons running across the rock face right in front of us, but other than that NOTHING.

It was Jessie, Josham (her brother), Laura (she’s working with the horses) and me – we where all staying in a bungalow that had cold but running water, and at night they switched the generator on so we had light! Us girls pushed the 2 beds together and we shared, and Josham slept on the floor. The owner and 2 of his friends had come out too, so they made a huge fire in the pit and we barbequed, so good – then we roasted marshmallows over the coals!

The next morning early we all piled into the Unimog, an old army vehicle, and we drove down the dry river bed and up a mountain. We stopped at the ‘Salvador Dali’ rocks and walked over a carpet of rock hydrax (dassie) poo. The water erosion had created an interesting abstract paint effect over the huge cliff and the rock hydrax had smoothed some of the rocks so it was a great place to stop for a while. Jessie and I climbed up a rock that was really high up… scary!


We drove for hours but all we saw where the elephant tracks, finally we got to Montpuez River and some trackers we saw next to the river said that a huge herd of elephant had crossed the river bed about 2 hours before and were on the other side now. But it was getting dark so we had to turn back. So disappointing!

The next morning we went to the waterhole really early, and watched the sunrise! We had to climb up one of the rock mountains and went to an overhang that looked down over the waterhole. We stayed there for about 4 hours, but all we saw where some baboons and guinea fowl… but it was still breathtaking!

The bush camp was in the newly formed ‘Quirimbas National Park’, and they still have to fence off the park and then there are some investors who are thinking of helping repopulate the animal population – it’s a beautiful area!

Sunday afternoon and we had to pack up and leave. So sad – I had such a peaceful, relaxing time, who wants to go back to the bustle and noise of Pemba???

We said our good byes and were just about to leave when a Mozambican came up to us and asked us, ’what is Iris Ministries?’ (we were in an Iris Landrover) – ‘we help children, orphans’ – ‘Oh, in my village there are 6 children without a mother or a father’ It turns out that he is the assistant chief of the 3rd village, Miegane, we had passed on the way in. I take his name, and promise to get something done for the kids.

So the weekend was over, and back to work!

How to Build a House for 50 Orphans...

This is not a step by step instruction guide, but I will do my best to give you handy pointers should you ever attempt this amazing feat…

I am in Morrumbala, a town close to the Malawi border, just north of the mighty Zambezi River and I was asked to go build a house. A big house. Big enough to house 48 kids! I think I this trip has the dubious honor of being the trip with the longest delay in leaving – by about 3 weeks!
At first our team was 2 missionaries, 1 Landrover, a flatbed truck, and me. Then 2 missionaries gave me 1 week’s notice of leaving for America…

Then the team was 1 missionary, 1 Mozambican builder, no vehicle, and me. Then builder was told he had to stay in Pemba do finish his projects and the missionary went to South Africa for his visa…

Then the team was 1 missionary, 1 Mozambican foreman, 1 Landrover and me. The night before we leave I am told that I cannot be the only girl and the missionary may not drive, so I have to get a Mozambican driver and another girl!


Anton, Travis and I

But all was well and the team that finally left Pemba at 4:45am on Thursday morning was: 2 Missionaries (Travis and Octavia), 1 Mozambican foreman (Antonio), 1 Mozambican driver (Baros), 1 Landrover and Me (Nikki).

The drive down was great. I love road trips and Mozambique is a fun place to drive, with huge holes to dodge! The first day we drove to Mocuba – give or take 850km from Pemba. Last time I drove that road it was terrible. There were huge ruts in the road, so deep that you had to balance your wheels on the little ‘mountains’ else you’d be stuck if your wheel went into a ‘valley’ – they are busy repairing the road and its mostly solid packed dirt and tar. It was wonderful!!!

We got to Mocuba at about 5pm and finally found rooms at the 3rd guesthouse we tried (the 1st one had hot running water, the 2nd one had cold running water) this one had no running water, but has employees who constantly keep the huge buckets in the bathrooms filled with water (cold water!)

The next morning we set off at about 9am – arrived in Morrumbala at 2pm and immediately we went to see where we were going to build. There was a dilapidated little house that Iris had build for the orphans earlier, but it was made out of sandstone and the roof was all but missing and the social welfare had said that it was not good for the kids to live there (have they looked around at where the other people live?!?) so it had to be a proper house and apparently they have to have beds too… I priced 24 bunk beds and 48 mattresses in Quelimane and the total came to US$9000. I kid you not. $9000. Are these people crazy? The house I’m building is only $4000! So do they want the kids to sleep on beds outside or on grass mats inside? No one else sleeps on beds. Oh well, I think we found a carpenter who would build us the beds for $730, so now I am hoping to get cheaper mattresses.

The house we demolished



Anyways, back to the building: We had to demolish the little house and that was fun, we got 3 guys to smash the walls! Then I designed the house – about 16m long, 8.5m wide, with 8 rooms, each being 4m x 3.5m with a corridor down the middle. It will have a tin roof and a front door, each room has a window, and curtains in the doorways. The floors will be dirt. So that is the plan if the money stretches that far. First we are going to build just the 4 outside walls and put on a roof. Then if there is money left over we will do the corridor and rooms, and if there is more money, the floor will be cement. But we will see what happens.

Because Iris didn’t have a flatbed truck to spare we have to hire one and its expensive! We need lots of rock, sand, and bricks – there is no big shop to go buy from – we drive into the village and go to people’s houses where they bake clay bricks in their backyards. But the quality varies and the sizes too – so after we had bought 4000 bricks of one size from one guy we ran out and we had to search the entire area to find bricks of the same size!

Then we have to go far out to a quarry in the mountains and buy loads of rock, driving over treacherous tire popping terrain (well the tread on the truck’s tire was non-existent so I don’t think it took too much to pop it – I had to drive out there to bring them an equally worn spare tire!)

The water we get from a tap about 3km down the road, through a muddy field the car couldn’t go thru - we had to buy 20L bottles and then we got 3 girls to help us – they filled the bottles and carried it on their heads to the Landrover. We could only fit about 8 bottles in the back per trip… after a day of me going to and from the tap we struck a deal with a guy – he would fill the 2 huge pots we had (500L each) at night, using his bicycle to carry 40L at a time.

Next we needed wood – this was my favorite part - I could drive at least 20mins into the bush bush, middle of nowhere, sometimes just a footpath to get to a man’s house where he chops down trees and makes 2x4s! Many times it was a person that someone knew and then we’d drive, see them next to the road, pick them up and go to their house – more often than not their assurances of ‘its very close’ meant that it could be 25kms into the bush and take us an hour to get there! But it was great fun, I loved it – going up rocky hills in the Landrover, dodging rocks and holes, literally going where no car has gone before to stop at a little mud hut on a hill, overlooking mountains and there I was, buying a few of the 80 planks of wood we used!

The workers were another story – they are charging us at least double the going rate for manual labour! But then again we are working everyday 6am – 5:30pm… with only an hour for lunch and they are working very hard (with much encouragement from Antonio and I of course – I’d see them jump up back to work whenever the Landrover came around the corner!)

We started digging the foundation on Sunday – with the trucks going to and fro constantly. We hired 2 trucks – we pay per load so might as well get everything quicker for the same price!

Monday we filled the foundation with rocks and cement, and made sure it was all level. In all honesty, I don't do any of the actual building work - I mainly drive to buy stuff – I have all the money with me in cash, and I need to account for every centavos spent, so I go everywhere! The workers do all the work, although I did help fill some rocks in the foundation!

Tuesday we packed the first row of bricks, to raise the floor. We have used 25 bags of cement already! The shop is in the market, with roads not made for cars, but I squeezed the Landrover in there – and made a 12-point u-turn in the small dead-end to get the car out – always fun!

We could buy pretty much everything in Morrumbala, except wheelbarrows or shovels. So we had to beg and borrow shovels off neighbors. We found a guy with a wheelbarrow and we have to rent it from him, so we are sorted with that – but my number 1 tip for anyone wanting to do this kinda thing: BRING YOUR OWN TOOLS! And my number 2 tip is: BRING YOUR OWN FLATBED TRUCK! And my number 3 tip is: Have a good foreman, one that speaks Portuguese, English and the local dialect. We have one and he is amazing!

I am filming this whole trip, and I plan to make a little short DVD – maybe it will raise funds for us to do this more often! But I wanted to have a picture of each kid – to I got them to line up, say their name and age, and then I did a 2 second shot of each one. So I’m writing and writing and writing and finally all 48 kids have been filmed. I count the names to make sure we got them all. 1…2…3…10…20…30…40…47…48…49…50! 2 extra, but Pastor Sabala, the man who is looking after them says that those are all the kids! He doesn’t have food to feed them, so I went out and bought 10kg of corn, they will grind it and make ‘shima’ (maize porridge/ meilie pap) for the kids. And I plan to leave each kid 10kg of corn, like we did when I went on the food distribution outreach a few months ago.

I also got a list of veggies that would grow well here – the land we are buying will be big enough for them to have a little farm to grow food for the kids. The orphans will have to work it, but it will be good to get food to them! You might have noticed I said ‘the land we are buying’… the land we started building on isn’t actually ours yet – but I am assured that it will be easy to buy it – no worries… I really hope so! We submit the papers tomorrow, and give them about $100.

The building went quite quickly – I think I was pretty ‘slave driverish’, the workers worked 10 hours per day for 12 days, but it was needed – we got the walls done just in time for the roof to go on before we left! (and they were paid double to usual rate!)

The trucks we had hired to deliver the bricks just sped over all the bumps and only towards the end of construction did I realize just how many bricks had broken in the process – 2000! I wasn’t going to hire the trucks again at those astronomical prices only to have ¼ of the bricks break, so I had to drive a 26km round trip to find the right size brick and then the Landrover only had enough space to carry 200 bricks at a time!

It was nearly a week and a half later and the walls were not finished yet – the workers had started getting slack and after we paid 2 of them some of their money so they could buy food for their families, one guy stopped showing up. In desperation to get the walls done I put out word that we needed more workers, I will pay them a fixed amount for each wall they complete – we got 3 guys, 1 was excellent, the other 2 worked slow and then moaned about the wage. Then the guy we hired to carry water for us every night decided he wanted to be paid and after I gave him his pre-agreed wage he was unhappy because he had jumped into the Landrover every time we went to get wood and he had expected me to pay him extra for his help. I should have known that no one does anything out of the goodness of their hearts here in Africa. The next morning there was no water, the waterman was ‘tired’ so we got 10 ladies to walk to the hand pump and get us water – we paid them 0.07cents for every 20L bottle they carried… don’t be shocked, that was the payment THEY asked for!

Then I had a look at what the carpenters were doing – they seemed OK, showing up early, and working hard throughout the day. Our deal had been that they would make us 8 beds. 8 special beds – each bed measuring 3.6m x 1.9m (that is big enough to fit 4 mattresses next to each other). We had drawn them pictures with measurements and settled on a price. They worked out the amount of wood we needed and I went off in search of it (there was a lumber yard of sorts close by, but the wood was for export so the prices were stupid – each plank cost $8 instead of the $1.75 I could pay in the bush). They made the beds and finally when they assembled the parts I went to look. They had decided that 3.6m was too wide so they made me 8 beds that were 1.8m wide instead. And then they demanded payment for the beds, but payment for 16 beds and not just for 8. It took nearly 5 hours to reach a compromise, and in the end I paid more than I had wanted to and they received less than they demanded. But I was furious. I had tried to work out the best way for all the kids to sleep off the floor on a mattress, and seeing that I couldn’t afford a mattress or a bed per child, I had made a plan and the carpenters had just messed it all up. It was 2 days before we left and there wasn’t time (or money) to have another 8 double beds made. So we had to put one bed in each room and 2 of the mattresses on the floor. It was horrible, I was so disappointed because I really wanted all the kids to sleep on a bed, even if they had to share it would still be better than the floor.

The house as seen from the side/back:


The house as seen from the front:


But it was all worth it - when the house was done and we were getting ready to leave the site for the last time, all the kids came together and started singing, then we opened the door and in great excitement they all ruched in, singing and dancing and cheering and it was so so so moving. All the frustration was worth it!





This is something that I would REALLY LOVE TO DO AGAIN! I think there are 40 more places waiting for houses… now Iris just needs the funding to get us there to build!

A list of things you need to build a house for 50 kids:
86 wooden planks 300cm x 24cm = $264
140 wooden poles 3cm x 6cm x 300cm = $213
10 150 bricks = $383
10 truckloads of sand = $38
84 sheets of tin roofing = $620
3700kg cement = $731
7400 liters of water = $28
5 truckloads of rock = $94
28kg of nails = $127
the equivalent of 66 workers = $732
Truck hire for 25 loads = $528
Mattresses for the kids = $1509
The Land = $328
Seeds for vegetable garden = $20
Food for Kids = $83

And of course, 1 Nikki = priceless! ;-)

Out in a Dhow

I went out on a real life dhow, the fishing boats they have been using here on the eastern coast of Africa for hundreds of years. It was a day off and I was invited to go along with some of the other missionaries, and to top it off, one of them offered to pay for me – its about $20 per person for the day, snacks and drinks included, so that was amazing to start with!



We left at about 8am and set sail for the bay. First we went to the peninsula opposite Pemba and dived off the boat and went snorkeling, and then we headed out to the opposite side of the bay. Pemba bay is the 2nd largest natural harbor in the world, so it took quite a while to get there (by car it’s a good 4 hour drive) – but it is gorgeous, unspoiled beach. We lazed in the sun for about an hour or two until the tide had come so far in that we had to wade back out to the boat! There was a village quite close to the water and we saw some of the village girls on the beach. Their face’s were painted white, a natural beauty mask, except they have to wear it the whole time else they think they aren’t pretty!




Then they put up the sail and cut the motor, and we sailed across the water.

I lay at the edge of the boat with my hand trailing in the water - it was gorgeous. At about 3pm we had started heading back to the mainland when we all needed to pee. So they stopped the boat and we all jumped into the water and… well it was very funny ;-)

One of the missionaries has 2 dogs and they accompanied us – they had such fun in the water!

A Dive on Wimbi Reef

Life here can be a bit tough, especially when you live off the generosity of others, donations and gifts, and no fixed income! So justifying treating myself to a little luxury like chocolate or apple pie, or some meat can be hard - so a SCUBA dive for $50 was totally out the question, even though I have semi qualified (I still need to do the Open Water Course, I have the Resort Certificate) and I live at one of the most beautiful reefs in the world, the Wimbi Reef!

Charles, one pastor that was in Malawi with us said he wanted to treat me to a dive, and he would pay!!! That was just brilliant!

Saturday morning dawned and I had thought he had forgotten, but then I got a phone call telling me to be ready in an hour!
The dive was fantastic, we did the whole fall over backwards out the boat thing - the fish and the reef was stunning, so tranquil, so many bright vibrant colors! To think that this was the cheap dive – there are other even bigger more stunning dive sites! We were down there for 50mins and it was easily the best 50mins of my time in Pemba!!!

Malawi

Our center in Malawi, in the tiny town of Bangula was having their regional conference. I was at this same conference last year, before I had even started working for Iris! I still have the same journal, and I flipped back to where I had written of my experiences… things have changed so much, well the conference style has stayed the same, its my attitude towards it that has changed! I will let you read some excerpts of what I had written then, and my thoughts of now!

Rolland, Heidi and I were flying down to Bangula in the Rolland’s little Cessna 206, it’s a fairly short flight, about 4 hours, with a quick stop in Blantyre to do immigration – and stock up on cookies and ice-cream!

Malawi law does not permit anyone to fly after official sunset, and everyone had to be out the air by 5:45pm. That meant that we only had 15mins to get our passports stamped, refuel the plane and take off before airport officials would ground us for the night… Then Heidi went into the only shop at the airport!



About 20mins later we finally got into the plane and the tower gave Rolland special permission to leave – the flight to Bangula is only about 30mins so they allowed us to leave on condition that he called the tower and let them know that we had landed safely.

The scenery is beautiful, so rugged and mountainous. From the air you can see all little farms on the hillsides and it looks lush and green. It is hard to imagine that this area is the most impoverished part of Malawi – more people are dying of starvation here than anywhere else in Africa – drought and rains at the wrong time has completely wrecked this part of the country.

The sun was gone and it was getting dark – Rolland had called Mo (David Morrison) from the airport and asked him to start clearing the runway. “Activating goat-on-runway detector” – in the distance we could see the 2 pin-scourers’ headlights flashing on and off guiding us to the small dirt airstrip next to the church property. The landing was pretty smooth and as we taxied to a halt crowds and crowds of people started running next to the plane. Once we had stopped the crowds surrounded us, hundreds of people! We got out and unloaded the plane, then Matt, a long-term missionary took me to the stage.

I did a quick setup, and we started the meeting at 7 – all the others had gone to Mo’s house for dinner, I had to wait until after the meeting!

An excerpt from my journal – May 2005:
“…at 6pm they started, I was the only white person there, the others only started to think about coming when they heard the sound of the music and finally arrived 2 hours later and I don’t think that the sound system is powerful enough, its difficult maintaining the balance between maximum volume and distortion… I’m so tired. Its hot. I want to go home. I don’t think that Africa is the place for me. I just need strength or something. I’m so tired…”

This year was not much different, again I was the only white person there for a while and the sound system still wasn’t powerful enough – although having a monitor speaker facing us made a huge difference! I loved the conference, there were so many people all dressed so colorfully all so hungry for the Word – it was just awesome. And the dancers just amazed me – their stamina: 1 hour of aerobics, twice a day!



Excerpt from my journal – May 2005:
“…I’m still trying to decide if I should quit my job in England and move here. It’s a great opportunity…I’m out of my comfort zone. I want to stay in England; I don’t want to be in Africa. BUT I do want to be in Africa. It will be such a difficult life and I don’t know if I can handle it…”

“…I think I’m going to say yes…”

I am glad I made my decision, although things have been really hard at times. Often I have just wanted to leave, to go back to a regular job where you are guaranteed a paycheck at the end of each month!

At the conference there were so many people healed, especially deaf people – they just strikes a chord with me – how can you appreciate the beauty of sound when you cannot hear? The smiles on their faces says it ALL.

On Friday night there was so much dust as they were all singing and dancing and some of it got stuck under my contact lense… the next morning I woke up to severe pain and discomfort, my eye was swollen shut and puss was oozing out and it was just nasty. At first I thought that it was conjunctivitis, but then because of the pain we started thinking there was something stuck in there. By this time I couldn’t even open my good eye, its movement hurt my other eye, so I was basically blind.

They took me to the clinic and the doctor tried to see what was in there – he couldn’t see anything. We went back home and I asked the girl helping me to look in my contact lense case – one had a lense in it, the other was empty, with ½ a lense stuck the outside…

We rinsed my eye, eye-dropped it and covered it with a bandage. I just lay there. It was horrible – just waiting for the pieces of contact lense to come out. Heidi and Rolland were due to speak at a conference in South Africa so I had actually come to Malawi to be here specifically for those 2 days. And here I was, not able to do anything.

It made me appreciate my sight so much – my independence especially.

The conference ended, me having only done 5 of the 8 sessions (still a good 10 hours of work per day!) and on Monday morning we loaded up the plane. Two of the visiting preachers were coming back to Pemba with us – they had flown into Blantyre from the States on Wednesday so we had all their luggage, plus the sound system plus all our stuff and everything that Heidi had bought at the little airport store!

Rolland carefully weighed each bag, and asked each of us our weight! I think we were over the limit the plane could carry – In Nelspruit, the airfield in South Africa where he gets the plane serviced they call him the ‘Holy Man’, and its not cos he’s involved in missions – its because he carries loads heavier than any of them dare to, they all think he’s crazy!

Before takeoff Mo drove up and down the runway – his pin scourer (ex-Swiss military vehicle) has a small speaker attached to the roof – announcing in the local dialect, ‘clear the runway, remove your cows, chase away the goats and clear the runway!’ It was funny. I remember last year watching as the plane took off, standing next to my father. Never in a thousand years did I expect to be in that plane!

Because my eye was still sore and light sensitive (although getting much better) I sat with it closed most of the flight. We had to refuel in Blantyre and I managed to clear immigration without my pink eye patch, I wore sunglasses instead!

The flight was quite smooth; once the plane got its heavy belly off the ground we were fine. I was feeling airsick so I closed my eyes and slept.

We were nearing Pemba and the chatter in the headphones would occasionally wake me up as Charles and Steve chatted to Rolland. Suddenly I woke up and heard,” Oh no, we’ve lost the vacuum line, gyro compass and artificial horizon is gone!” That kinda freaked me out, and one of the passengers asked the BIG question: ”So what does that mean exactly?” Fortunately it was all-OK – landing would be a bit tricky, but it was all fine.

Another normal day at Ministério Arco-íris!

Guess what I did today!!!!

I had a shower. I mean a REAL shower. One where the water comes out of a showerhead and you can stand under it. It was exciting. Freezing cold, but so wonderful!

The Story of the Uncomfortable Chair

There was a fair amount of outcry at our ‘cruelty to cockroaches’ – so this time we decided to turn our attention to inanimate objects. Like uncomfortable wooden chairs…

We had run out of gas for our cooker, which meant that we couldn’t do anything – no cooking of veggies, no re-heating of food, no hot drinks, no toasting of stale bread, no hot water for showering. We let Julio ‘the keeper of keys’ know, but 2 days later we still hadn’t gotten a new bottle of gas.

It was late on night and I just really wanted a hot drink. So I said (to no one in particular), “We could cook over a fire on the kitchen floor, if only we had wood”. My roomie heard me and said, ”Well we can chop up one of those wooden chairs…”

NO WAY. Some villager had spent ages bending the sapling branches to make that pretty chair, we cant burn it! Well OK.

Our kitchen is practically outside, just walls of bamboo with huge open spaces for windows and there is a 30cm gap between the top of the bamboo and where the roof starts – so there is good ventilation, and our floor is just concrete.

We stacked the wood, tore up a box and lit the fire! It went up beautifully! We had kept the legs and seat of the chair so we put a pot of water on the seat and it boiled really quickly.



YAY! I had my hot chocolate and now I could go sleep!

The next morning I lit the fire again and made a cuppa and heated some sausages over the coals – I even heated water for my shower!

Finally Cassandra saw Julio and led him into the kitchen to see our fire place – needless to say we got gas an hour later!

Cass had also recently received a parcel from the States containing marshmallows!!! So one night we re-lit the fire (the wood is nearly finished now) and using sticks we roasted marshmallows over the fire! Yum!

Now I’m saving the last few wooden sticks to have a ‘braai’ (barbeque) – I bought some ‘boerewors’ (SA sausage) in Nampula – I’m excited and looking forward to it!

Nampula Jesus Film Training Trip

Tuesday 27th June
It was 10pm and I was walking back from the Naval after eating some gorgeous apple pie – Just got to the driveway when I was stopped by Felito, the head of evangelism and asked if I wanted to go to Nampula the next day to attend training given by Campus Crusade for Christ on the old school projectors they want to give us. I say yes… I ask Cassandra my housemate to accompany me; she is a writer and can take her work with her.

Wednesday 28th June
I was meant to meet Felito at 11am to get the Landrover and money and then we’d be off. Finally at 2pm I get the money – they want me to buy a motorbike while I’m there. Then at 3pm we find out the car is not available now, have to wait till morning to leave. 9pm that night I get a phone call to say that I may not use the Landrover, they have a little Opel Corsa non4x4 for me to use instead. Fair enough except that the battery is bad and the papers are not really in order… but they will try and sort that in the morning – so I guess we’re not leaving at 11am then…

Thursday 29th June
The training started this morning and I am still in Pemba. To waste some time I went to the bank at 9am to cash the cheque I got, the computers are down so I wait for a what seems ages to get special permission to get the money, about US$2000. Then when I get back to the base I find that they managed to find a new battery but locked the keys in the car.

So we waited for 30mins while the spare set of keys came – at least I know that our guards make bad car thieves! Finally we get into the car and then the car wont start – 1 hour later the car is running fine and at 12:20 we are off in the little non-4x4. Barely out the gate and I hit a stone or something in our driveway and the tire starts feeling funny.

Near the airport (2km later) its finally flat. We stop and change the tire – 4 guys materialize and do it for us – we have to ‘tip’ them of course and they wont take ‘no we can do it ourselves’ for an answer. There was a huge gash on the side of the tire, I have no idea how it lasted as long as it did! The rim on the spare is a bit bent and I know that its not good. Also as they pump up the spare tire there is a sound of rushing wind. The spare got a little hole too. So back to the base we go. Its1pm now…

When we get back to the base I get a phone call and am told we are NOT allowed to drive the little green non4x4, the papers are not in order and the battery is not quite good yet. I could have told them that… BEFORE we nearly set off the trip! Then I get another phone call and I am told that we have to take a 16year old Mozambican with us… then a other phone call to say that the 4x4 they want to give us first has to go to the airport at 3pm.

I wanted to leave at 11am…. YESTERDAY!

I finally convinced my boss that taking a Mozambican schoolboy is not necessary – he doesn’t ever do any sound anyways. Besides there isn’t room at the place we were gonna stay and if we bring back a bike then there would be no room at the back either. They got another car for the airport run and finally we left again at 2:30. Only 28 hours later than planned!

The drive to Nampula fairly smooth – only about 5hours – I let Cass drive for a bit – it was so scary she was all over the place the first while – stuck pedantically to the left side of the road and kept honking at people and goats and bicycles and chickens that dared walk on the road – she couldn’t seem to understand that the car didn’t really have the right of way! I feel: why stay in your lane when you have all that tarmac open next to you??? I could see the hordes of people and bikes rush past real close – eventually she got the knack of straddling the middle line! I think now I know what my father felt like when he first let me drive in Mozambique on our road trip from South Africa to Pemba last year! But it was good after a while, and I could relax. She was tired after an hour so I took over again – I love driving!

We found the SIL Guest house and stopped at Shoprite to buy something to eat for supper.

Friday 30th June
I wake up at 8am and immediately called the Jesus Film People to find out what is happening and they told me that the session starts at 8am (that would be… right now). OK. I am still trying to figure out where the church is!

It’s a full on training on evangelism etc. I had only come for the technical part! So I was glad that I was actually a day late cos the previous day had only been theoretical on evangelism! The technical training went well – I am confident that I can teach it to the people back home. I had a great conversation with the leaders of the training – they are from Kenya and Zimbabwe and speak good English, actually all the training is in English translated into Portuguese! So I am happy – I am also the only white person there, but not the only girl!

I excuse myself after lunch, they are going to be doing more theory stuff, so instead I go pick Cassandra up and we go shopping for the motorbike. Find at 125cc ‘super bike’ for 32 million = approx US$1260 - we managed to barter down to 30million! = US$1181! So proud of ourselves! Then the next obstacle was to get it into our vehicle. We have a single cab Mazda 4x4 with a canopy. And the doorway aint that big!

Eventually the 4 guys that were helping us load took one of the benches out of the back of the 4x4 (it was semi broken anyways…) and dismantled the front windscreen bit of the bike and did something to the handle bars and finally an hour later it was in the back! I wonder how we’re gonna get it out again, but we’ll figure it out later. The only problem is that the lock on the backdoor doesn’t work, but I doubt that anyone will get the bike out easily! Asked the Indian guys that ran the store where the best place was to eat – hadn’t had lunch so was really hungry – gave directions and we found it – a 4* hotel in town. The prices are better than in Pemba and the food was very very very very good! Yum! Then it was back to the house – chatted to the other people staying there and then it was off the bed!

Saturday 1st July
I was told that I could be there at 9:30 as the morning was devoted to theory stuff – that was great, so I got to sleep in a bit. I tried to get the backdoor lock fixed this morning before going to class, but the Toyota dealership was shut. So I got some boxes of cheap mineral water – I’m having a bit of trouble with my water purifier at the moment…

The equipment was scheduled to arrive from Maputo at 10:30am and I offered to go pick up the stuff that was for Pemba, 2 full systems. A little while later, Alfred, the Pastor from CCC came up to me and said “I understand that you offered to drop me off at the airport now when you go fetch your equipment” OK – I don’t recall saying that, but what ever! So we hop in the car and off to the airport we go. I love the freedom of having my ‘own’ car!!!

Alfred gets checked in OK, but there is a problem with the cargo… today is the dawn of a new currency in Moçambique. Its called the Nova Familia do Metical – basically they are dropping 3 zeros – so now my weekly budget wont be 1 million mets, it will just be 1000! So anyways, because they needed to distribute all the new notes and coins they filled the plane with money and left any ‘non-essential’ cargo in Maputo! It should (meaning maybe, quite possibly not) be arriving late on Sunday night, but I have to be back in Pemba then… So I had to make plans to have it shipped up to Pemba.

I get back to the church at 2pm and its lunch time, they hadn’t covered the maintenance part yet and I really have to organize things and the shops close at 5pm and nothing is open on Sundays – So I really want to get some meat and other essentials! Steve ran thru the maintenance with me quickly while the others were having lunch, then I was off home to pick Cass up.

We get to Shoprite at 3pm – We leave loaded with goodies at 4:30! I bought (amongst other things) a cooler box and some ice bricks so that I can take some mince meat and real ‘boerewors’ home!

At Shoprite we ran into Antonio, a guy that works as a medic for the Portuguese Air Force. Cassandra had met him in Pemba! He invited us to go watch the Portugal vs England game at the Mozambican Military housing where he was staying – but we hadn’t eaten yet so declined and went to watch the game at the restaurant we were at the previous night.

I am so tried by now, this whole trip has been busy – and now I have to find out if I have to stay in Nampula for another night and hope that the equipment arrives. Felito is out of town on a weekend bush outreach so I cant ask him… instead I call our centre director, Aguinaldo and ask him what to do. YAY I can go home the next morning! We have a guy driving up from Maputo in 2 weeks and he can pick up the stuff from our base there when he comes past.

Sunday 2nd July
Finally I can sleep late! At 8:30am the phone beeps and it’s a text message from Antonio – he wants to know if we want to have breakfast with him at a café? OK! We packed quickly and by 10 we were out the door – we meet up with him at a cute sidewalk café and order sugary donuts and a latte! Mmmm delicious! Antonio’s English isn’t that great, and our Portuguese isn’t that great, but we managed to have a decent conversation – I love the fact that I am able to understand Portuguese! He is going back to Portugal in the week – and he was absolutely delighted that they were through to the semis in the World Cup.

He had a meeting at 11, so we hit the road for our drive back to Pemba.
5 hours later (we stopped for photos and I bought some furniture) we were back home in Pemba – and after we had unloaded the car and restocked the freezer I flopped down on a chair totally exhausted, glad to be back home!

Cockroach and toilet story

We have a bug problem in our bathrooms, to be more specific a cockroach problem! This night there was one in the toilet bowl, and with the water shortages we didn’t have much water to just waste it on flushing it down, so instead we tried to kill it with bleach. That didn’t work so we went searching for something flammable…

we came up with a lighter gas and 3 matches.

Try 1 – There was just a small small woosh of flames in the bowl and we just laughed. Roach still alive. Think it ducked underwater or something.

Try 2 – Another small woosh but its still alive, and now we are getting desperate...

Try 3 – loads of gas and the match: there were huge flames that leap out of the bowl and then the vacuum created by the lack of oxygen caused the water to rush up to fill the space - there was a pop and the water spurted up like a fountain and splashed all over the floor. Cockroach included. But it was still alive!

Luckily there was a boy around to witness this last try and he squished the roach for us. We were screaming with laughter it was so funny. Never before have I ever done something like that but it was great.

It was myself, and my 2 house mates: Cassandra and Jessie!

Who says being a girl missionary aint fun???

FRELIMO visit to our base

FRELIMO is the current ruling party and the governor sent some very important people to visit our centre and see what we are doing as a direct result of the recent accusations against Iris Ministries. This is an update to the earlier ‘front page news’ article I wrote about.

It has been revealed that there is a RENAMO (opposition party) supporting pastor in one of our districts that has been holding anti-government meetings in the name of Iris. He had been removed from the position of district leader some time ago but still had the official ‘Iris stamp’ that he used for his own purposes. The government feels quite threatened by our ministry here seeing that we have a network of more than 3000 churches across the country and could in effect topple the balance of power should we wish to mobilize all our churches.

The RENAMO / FRELIMO struggle is an ongoing story. The civil war that ravaged Mozambique for the best part of 17 years was a north/south, RENAMO / FRELIMO struggle. This war ended in the 1980’s, but there is still a delicate line. People have been murdered over it, and last week we were chased out of a village because the messenger we had sent to say there was going to be an outreach was a fervent RENAMO supporter and FRELIMO supporting villagers didn’t like that.

I had never realized that this was such an issue, but now that the government has taken an interest in the Pemba base it has become real to me.

Heidi has had some serious problems on her hands trying to convince the government that Iris is a non-political, un-biased organization. We love everyone. We welcome anyone. And a few of our higher-ranking pastors have found it hard to accept that they cannot preach politics from the pulpit.

The FRELIMO government published an apology to the article they had written, but it was not un-conditional, it still basically warned us that we are on perilous ground and have to keep a check on all aspects of the ministry.

Right now we would appreciate your prayers for the ongoing favour in the eyes of the government and that a good relationship can be built. They were very impressed with out Primary school (grades 1 -7) and they were also given a chance to speak at our ‘International Cross-Cultural Training School’ formally known as ‘Mission School’. So all in all the visit was a success and they have been welcomed to return anytime!

Independence day – 25 June

Mozambique celebrated its Independence from Portugal today! We had regular church and then everyone rushed to the dining hall/kitchen for lunch.

CHICKEN!

Georgian Banov was here, a fantastic musician from Bulgaria, so we carried all the sound stuff up there and set up the band in the dining hall. It was a blast, the drums, the guitars and the djembes. We had kids dancing in front with their coke bottles.

The Mission School students served everyone, and when I say everyone I mean everyone – Sunday lunch is open the whole community – and there were loads of people, but everyone got food – lots of food!

It was a fun day – I was thinking that if I had a camcorder then the band playing in the hall would have made the most interesting music video!

Nampula Conference (Day 3 & 4)

The day’s session was due to start at 10am, but because of transport problems I had to go in at 8:30am and wait around! We were set up really quick, the guys helped me a lot – then we had an hour to kill till it all began. The plan was that I was to go into town again and get the generator and other bits that we needed (I had a look at the system when I got home and it had an Indian power plug… so I needed to change that to the Mozambican 2-pin plug!

I was surprised when the pastor actually came to start on the dot 10am! I had no idea what the program was, so I just winged it – turns out that the first hour was performances by each of the smaller churches in the province… some of it was good, some really really really bad – although the last act was fantastic, just guys singing a cappella –I think I prefer male Moçambican voices. The girls/women tend to be way off key and very shrill.

They were done at 11am and Heidi was just on her way in the door! Perfect timing! (and on time too!) They sang just one more song all together before the preaching started, Heidi came to the front and was holding a little baby boy, he was fast asleep! Suddenly she holds him out at arms length, but he had already peed all over the front of her top! A puddle was also forming on the floor, with 3 of my microphone cables running right thru it! Yuk! I have a little towel that used to be my favorite when I was little, that I use now to wrap the little sound desk in – I figured that in that way I can see it everyday! So when the baby peed on Heidi I passed her the towel to dry herself off. She is a remarkable woman, she kept her composure, wrapped the baby in the towel, covered the wet spot on her top and stayed at the front for at least another 20mins before carrying the baby to the back! She took my favorite towel with her and that’s the last I saw it. Very sad. But now someone else can enjoy it.

The session lasted till about 2pm, then home for a quick lunch (1 hour, service is shockingly slow), and then I was back to set up for the evening conference outside on the field. The people (us included) were getting very tired, its been long busy days and we wanted to be finished by 8pm. We had to setup the screen to show Christian Swahili music videos. As soon as the people saw the screen go up they all crowded round and sat down. Argh, it made life so difficult because I still had to run the cables to the projector and get the bench set up and they were so tightly packed and making such a noise that I had to really raise my voice to be heard! But I got it done eventually and the DVD started. There was one little girl, maybe about 2 or 3 years old, she was dancing to the music, adorable!

That night there were more miracles, it was great – but I was just so tired! We got packed up in record time and loaded the trucks, then back to the hotel where they had prepared a buffet meal for us: chicken, beef and salad! (I think there were fried potato chips too, but they were gone by the time I got to the food!) I just sat down, ate and went to bed!

Its 11:30pm and I had just fallen asleep when I have the most severe stomach cramps ever. Diarrhea! I was up most of the night – thankfully I didn’t have a roommate! In the morning I text messaged Will, the Iris co-ordinator for this conference. He came to my room looking really gruff and wanted to know what was up. I told him and his expression lightened a bit. “Oh Josham has it too” *sigh of relief* misery loves company! I stayed in bed the whole day, alternating between sleeping and visiting the loo. Turns out that about 10 people in our group got it. Couldn't quite decide if it was food poisoning or not, seeing that everyone had eaten the same food (after we got back to Pemba some of the other people also got it, so now I think it was a virus). Heidi came and prayed for me, and made me take my malaria medication because I had a fever. She also loaned me her iPod for the day so that I could listen to music!

The guys that had been helping me with sound were on their own for the last day of the conference – they came and got the equipment out my room (I didn’t even hear them come-in!)

The day passed by really quickly, the medication I’d been given stopped the diarrhea and when the guys came back with the sound stuff I was awake.

“One of the speakers doesn’t work that well anymore, and one of the cables broke” *sigh* turns out that one of the cables broke, and to compensate for the decrease in volume they turned the remaining speaker up till it went ‘pop’. And these speakers are only 2 weeks old. They are BRAND new. So that’s another sound system gone, and JBL just aren't getting us the replacement parts – I have been waiting for over a month now!!!

Originally I was meant to stay in Nampula for another 3 days to drive back the car that Heidi had bought (she had bought it on Thursday, sent her daughter’s boyfriend to drive it back to the hotel and he had crashed it into a stationary vehicle before he even left the vendor’s yard… oops! So it had to be repaired, panel beaten and would be ready on Tuesday). So now that I was ill (and so many others) another plan was made. Shara (Heidi’s assistant) popped into my room on Saturday night and handed me her plane ticket – “You fly and I’ll drive the Landrover back, be ready at 8am tomorrow” WOW!

I had to finish up the last few cables for the Nampula sound system, so I set my alarm for 6am and fell asleep, I was wide awake at 1am – probably since I had been sleeping nearly non-stop for the past 15 hours! The cables got done and I packed. Was still a bit woozy when I walked around, and I was getting a chest cold!

I ate for the first time since I had got sick, just a small bread roll, and got on the truck to the airport. Our flight was at 10 and we got there at 9:30! But all was good and it was amazing to be back in Pemba only 30mins later!!!! Sure beats a 7 hour bumpy truck ride!