That is about 26 000 kg corn, 2 600 kg beans and 1 300 litres of oil!
(Jessie, one of my amazing team, wrote an update on her blog on 20 July 2008, have a look!)
The Team: Sitoe, Carlito, Jessie, Annelie, Nikki, Pastor Jeronimo, Travis
Pastors Jeronimo's house - Day 1, making the plans for the coming weeks - we were quite spoiled, he has electricity!
Outside Pastor Jeronimo's house in Canangola, on the outskirts of Tete. In the foreground is the 'kitchen' where the food was prepared.
The little market in Canangola just outside Tete where we bought the first few tons of corn
Here we are measuring out the corn to make sure that the bags really contain the amount of latas we are paying for
The prices spiked when we arrived, so we sent in our negotiator to get the price of corn back down to 125mtn (±$5) per lata (20kg)
Sitting on food for 200 kids in Tsangano
Handing out the beans in Moatize
We had to document and photograph each child that received food
But first we had to make sure that the kids were who they said they were and that they really were being looked after by the caretaker... Matching names to faces using the lists of registered orphans in Canangola
We lived out in the mountains near Tsangano for 4 days:
African 'Drive-Thru Take Away' :-) Chicken and Fries sold next to the road - quite delicious actually!
Driving into the 'bush bush' to get to the village
On the way we saw some boys who were dressed as antelope with long horns stretching out from a grotesque face mask. I think we scared them as much as they scared us, because they bounded away into the bush with a machete in each hand.
There is never a shortage of eager hands...
... and heads to help unload the boxes of oil
This was our bathroom
...and here is the view we had while brushing our teeth (it was beautiful)
We were doing distribution in a grass-walled building (the church), and the kids practically destroyed the walls trying to stare at us
Locally made chairs - we sat on these for hours!
Distribution in progress
The multitude of people waiting outside for their names to be called
Some of the kids would scour the ground and pick up all the spilled corn kernels.
Each child receives 1 lata of corn (±20kg)
Each child also received 1 bottle of oil and ±2kg beans
Then they walk up to 10km back to their home with their caretaker
We had a bit of 'fun' driving back to Pemba - we decided to drive back to Pemba via Morrumbala...
After taking the 'shortcut' we encountered the broken ferry across the Shire River... just 30km away from where we would have stopped for the night!
Our other option to cross the river was the Dona Ana Bridge, the longest train bridge in Africa at 3.2km, which stretches across the Zambezi River to Vila de Sena (Which is close to Caia, where we could take the ferry). BUT they have converted this bridge back into a train bridge, so we were stuck on the wrong side of the river, and because of the current refurbishing work on this bridge we could not cross here either - so we had to drive all the way back to Tete - a 9 hour drive!
The train bridge with the deceptive remnants of the planks put down to make it possible for vehicles to cross in the earlier days - apparently the new railway tracks start just out of eyesight...
It was fun, challenging and quite an experience - there are other teams who have gone out in the meantime and are continuing what we started.
