Nampula Conference (Day 1 & 2)

Wednesday morning dawned and I was awake to see the sunrise, so something HAD to be wrong! Nope, just the usual: On my way to Nampula, the 3rd largest city in Moçambique for a week long conference!

There are about 40 Americans from the ‘Global Awakening’ Team with us and it took 2 camiões and a Landrover to get everything we needed there! We set off fairly on time and 7 very bumpy, very uncomfortable hours later we arrive. I was fortunate enough to sit in the back of the Landy, so my ride wasn’t as crowded as the people in the trucks!

The Global team had basically asked to hold this conference, so they are sponsoring the Iris staff that will make it happen – we got checked into a fairly nice hotel, the ‘Bamboo’ and all my meals were paid! Yay!! That’s pretty cool – there are advantages to being the sound person… Also I was meant to share a room, but the girl hadn’t seen her 2 friends for a long time so we moved her matteress into their room and I got to have the luxurious hot shower flushing toilet sattelite TV room all to myself! It was great!

The conference kicked off that night, held on a large open field, about the size of 2 soccer fields (actually I think they were soccer fields!) and the sound went smooth. They had quickly hammered together a wooden platform for Heidi and the other speakers to stand on – I think it could safely hold about 10 people, as long as they didn’t dance, or make any jumpy movements! I would guess that there were over 2000 people there – kinda hard to count cos the light was mainly focused on the stage!

Randy Clarke was the guest speaker for this conference and he opened the whole thing. While he was talking Heidi suddenly turned to me and said, ‘I want you to go buy a sound system for this church. How much do you think it will cost? Something simple. I will give you a cheque tomorrow then you go buy it. OK?’
So I thought to myself. “Okie dokie… No problem. I speak Portuguese fluently and I know EXACTLY where to go to find a sound system in this strange city I have never before in my entire life been in, bring it on!” OK, so maybe my thoughts were more like, “How on earth am I going to do that?”

What can I say, life here is NEVER dull!

Thursday came and I had pondered for part of the night what a simple, yet powerful and preferably indestructible sound system would cost here in Mozambique… Heidi grabbed me at the breakfast buffet table and asked me the cost: I guesstimated that it wouldn’t be more than US$2000. “No problem”, she said, “I will give you a cheque for US$3000, I need $1000 to buy a car”. So I was going to cash a cheque for $3000 and walk around with over 75 million meticais for the whole day. In Moçambique. Fun.

First problem though: Who will do sound while I was gallivanting around town? Fortunately there were 2 younger guys on the Global team and they were roped in to help me out – We set off for the church at about 8:30am, and drove across the soccer field. The church is just next to the field, down a steep little incline. Josham drove under the goalpost and down the hill. Suddenly we hear a loud grinding noise! OH NO, we had hit the top of the posts and had dented the roof-rack... but we wer also stuck. Couldnt move forward or backwards. FInally we unloaded all the sound stuff and go tsome of the guys standing around to pile into the back of the Landrover. Everyone in, and we cleared the top of the posts by at least 20cm. At the bottom of the hill we opened the door and the guys started getting out. 1..2..3...4...5..6......10...13....15....18...19! I think we set a new record! We had gotten 19 men in the back, plus 2 on top and 2 hanging on the back door... no wonder we cleared the post so easily! After that little aside the set up went fine, and they guys were pretty confident they could handle it.

So off we went, Josham and I, with a rough idea of where to find the local sound store and the bank. First stop was the bank to cash the cheque (75 000 000 meticais isn’t that much, I was expecting a mountain of money!), then to find the ‘big 3 story shop on the right hand side of the road just before the funny cross road’ Well we found, but its not really 3 stories high and the cross road, well I wouldn’t call it a cross road. But we found it and hey, it looked half decent. It took us about 2 hours to get the 2 mics, a pair of speakers and a decent/simple mixer amp. And my Portuguese stood the test – although the pictures I drew helped loads! The only name brand in the store I recognized was ‘wharfdale’ so I was going to get a set of them, but they only had 1 speaker of each instock! Who on earth will ever only buy 1 speaker??? So the system I got was made in India: Ahuja amp and mics and Tovaste speakers… They plugged it all in and tested it, didn’t sound too bad! Now we had to find a shop that sold speaker cable.

Josham and I drove Nampula flat, I think I can find my way around it easily now! There is only one set of traffic lights, and we kinda didn’t see them, so we treated it like a traffic circle – we were halfway around the circle when we saw that we had gone over the red light… haha, oops!

We found everything we were looking for, bar the halogen spotlight with legs (they only had the spotlight part) and a generator. Time to head back to the field to set up for the film.

The screen is in its final stages of death. We had patched it with bamboo splints and electrical tape on the last weekend outreach, but we needed another splint now on top!

While we were working the kids were being entertained by the Global team. They had split the kids into 5 groups and I was amazed to see them sitting quietly – in their groups! One group was playing ‘duck duck goose’ or since Erik didn’t know the Portuguese for goose, it became ‘duck duck chicken’! It is a game where the kids sit in a circle and hold hands, then one person walks around the outside of the circle saying ‘duck’ as he pats each head. Then he picks someone by patting their head and saying ‘chicken’ – then it is chase time. The aim is to run around the circle of children and sit down in the ‘chicken’s’ place before the ‘chicken’ catches you. The kids loved it!

The movie started about 15mins late because we were struggling with the screen, but that was OK. I lay down to nap on the stage while the movie played – its nearly 2hours long, and I’d seen it plenty of times now! The crowd was enthralled (as usual), and before I knew it the movie was over and Heidi and Randy got up to preach!

There were some amazing miracles that happened, many many people got healed, but the special miracle for me was a little 6 year old boy, Edvaldo, who had never before made a sound. Not laughed, not cried, nothing. His mother brought him forward and Heidi prayed for him. ‘ba ba’ his first sounds and then he laughed. Such a sweet sweet sound. I just was awestruck, how amazing is that??? For 6 years, and now he can express himself verbally! His mother was all smiles – it was awesome, just wonderful!