7am we hit the road for the 10hour drive to Marromeu, a town next to the Zambezi river and also quite close to the ocean. We are squashed into the back of the 4x4, I cannot believe we got everything in!!! The road is bad to say the least and by the time we get to the crossroad only an hour away I am so thankful to get out and stretch my legs! The next part of the journey I sat in front with the driver, Claudia, the German girl that organizes and facilitates these food distribution outreaches. This is only her 4th one, but it seems like she has been doing it for years. The 400km to Caia, is a gorgeous tarred road and the hours wiz by as we travel – we had to stop there for lunch with the local pastor and also prayed for a man who was in a bad car accident. One of our passengers stayed there for the weekend, so now there were only 6 people in the back!
From Caia to Marromeu it is only 3 hours, but the road is HORRIBLE – I don’t think that the canopy was meant to carry passengers, cos it sure wasn’t designed with extra shocks at the back… each bump, each pothole – my back!!!!
Claudia, from Germany, the leader of this expedition, and main driver;
Lisa, from Canada, a long termer at Dondo, came to learn how these things worked and be a 2nd driver
Jeremias, from Moçambique, here to do sound, play keyboard and lift & carry heavy things;
José, from Moçambique, our translator and carrier of heavy things;
Manuel, from Moçambique, sings/leads worship and lifts & carries heavy things;
Me, from South Africa, here to supervise sound, films, and to help with anything.
Pastor Battiste and his wife, from Moçambique, they are the regional pastors and came along because they can. I don’t think they helped much.
Finally we made it, 7pm, we are all exhausted! We were welcomed with singing and dancing!!! The local pastor and his wife have specially built a guesthouse; a simple mud hut with 2 small rooms at the back and a large front room – they insisted we sleep there. So us 3 girls pitched our tents inside! I am sharing a tent with Lisa, and Claudia has her own. The guys all shared a big tent outside, and Pastor Battiste and his wife are visiting family and they are sleeping there too. Our house only had tiny windows so it was pretty stuffy in there, but the privacy was good. We were shown the toilet – it doubles as a shower - Just a little room with a concrete floor, sprinkled with some cat litter to soak up any excess pee. Ugh.
We are all ready to go to bed, but we must wait as they are preparing supper for us, it will be ready at about 9:30. They pack chairs around a paraffin lantern and we sit there and chat, grateful not to be on the road again. At bout 8:45pm just as I was thinking that if I slipped away now no one will notice, I got a tap on my shoulder – They wanted to know if I would quickly set up the sound system so that they could have a quick church service… *sigh* NO!
OK, so I didn’t say that, but I wanted to! There is no such thing as a quick church service here; we’re talking minimum 2 hours and that’s if we’re lucky!!!! We made them promise to be quick... This is the first time that Jeremias is using this system, so now is his chance to put all he has learnt into practice. I help him since its really dark. We are ready.
At 9:15 we start and at 11pm we finish... The whole service was more of a loud event so that the people in the community will know that we are here, and know that they should come here on Sunday for the food distribution (that is, if they are on the lists).
We pack up the system and store it in the front room of the little guesthouse then we go eat. They have prepared a lovely meal of rice and chicken – also their hospitality is great, once we are seated at the table they come around with a bowl of warm water for us to wash our hands! We eat and as soon as we possibly can, we excuse ourselves and head for bed!
Saturday morning we are up at 6am. We have to buy all the ‘melio’ (corn) today – need about 12.5kg per child and there are about 200 kids… that is a lot of corn! Claudia sets off with the guys while Lisa and I stay behind to guard all the stuff. We sit in the shade and chat, we cant really talk to the locals because they hardly speak Portuguese, only Sena. There are a group of boys who are playing near us, and they kept saying ‘thtop, go, thtop, go’, so Lisa decided to teach them ‘STOP… GO!’ She drew a line in the sand, and in her best mime she tried to convey the essence of the game. They twigged pretty quick and soon we had 6 boys running full speed towards the ‘caller’, most of them going so fast that when ‘STOP!’ was called they would still be moving! Lisa thought she should reinforce the concept of freezing when ‘stop’ was called so she mimed running really fast, then called ‘stop!’ and froze in place. Then she mimed moving, a sort of bum wiggle action. The boys lined up again and the call was heard: GO! They ran for all they were worth, STOP! They froze and then they all wiggled their bums! It was hilarious!
I was really happy when I was shown the ‘hospitality’ pit latrine, it had a cover and everything, didn’t smell, it was clean – wonderful! Yay, no more peeing on a concrete floor, wonder why they didn’t show us this one to start off with? Claudia returned with the 4x4 loaded to capacity with about 800kg of corn – she had left 2 of the guys at the vendor so start measuring out the next load and we set about unloading the bags. There was nowhere to store the corn so we decided to put it in the front room of the guesthouse, in a huge pile on the floor… we tried making a wall so that we could at least get to our rooms without having to wade through the corn… it worked to some extent, but the time the 2nd load came back with another 500kg we gave up that idea! It was my job to count how many ‘latas’ (buckets holding about 12kg of corn) were being poured out onto the floor. I counted 100! We got the corn at a pretty decent price, only about 40 000 meticais that is about $1.50/R10 per lata! And that is enough food for a child to last a month, maybe even a bit longer! That night we setup the sound system and the projector and showed the JESUS film. We didn’t have enough space to pack a screen, so I brought a sheet – fortunately the side of the pastor’s house was painted white, so we showed the film there! There were loads of people and I was happy to start the movie as soon as it got dark at 6pm. It was just Jeremias and I, the rest of the team had left much earlier to go to a village about 40km away to give out corn and oil to the children there – it was too far for them to walk to Marromeu and then carry their lata’s back, they are only small children! The movie was nearing its end and there was still no sign of the others – who was going to preach?? I had just about gathered the courage to try and preach in Portuguese with Jeremias translating to Sena when I saw the lights of the car as they drove in! yay! They had gotten stuck in the mud twice and had to pay locals to help them out.
Claudia preached a little bit, but the people started leaving as soon as the film was done. No one came forward for prayer and no one responded to the altar call… strange.
Sunday morning church was scheduled to start at 8am, but that didn’t happen! We finally got going at 9. ‘Sunday Church’ in this culture is the most horrible religious long-winded program driven aerobics workout you have ever seen in your life. It’s just horrible. First it’s this group of people performing 3 songs, then its that group, then its ‘worship’ where they try and out do each other with the fanciest moves. When they finally got to the sermon 2 hours later the people just stood and stared at us, not taking any notice to the pastor. Just horrible. I would love to know who told them that THIS was the proper way of conducting Sunday church!
This is where we held church
Finally it was over at 12, only 3 hours, which wasn’t too bad, I’ve sat thru longer services! Now the food distribution can start – while the caregivers and the kids assembled, Lisa went to supervise the cooking of food for 600 people. Because we had gotten the melio so cheap we could buy extra to feed the village!
Now the fun began: Claudia would verify that the kids where who they were meant to be then she sent them on to us, Jeremias and I to collect their lata of melio. We were scooping and lifting, standing knee deep in corn pouring the melio into capalanas, bags and buckets.
We kept going until we were sweeping the last few grains off the ground. We had just moved 1200kg of corn by hand. My fingers ached from holding the plate we used to fill the lata to the top. But it was fantastic. The kids’ faces when they got their lata and their bottle of oil, it was priceless!
I went to let Claudia know that we needed more corn, so she sent me to take over from Lisa so that Lisa could go buy more. But first I had to find some water – the corn dust had turned my hand and nails black (not to mention my feet!) After I had cleaned up a bit I went to find out what Lisa had been up to all this time – she had supervised the cooking of 25kg of ground corn and 6 chickens. Now she was busy portioning out the cooked shima to all 600 waiting bowls using a spoon and a bread knife that was missing its handle. I quickly got into the routine, basically just looking down ignoring all the outstretched hands and just giving to those José pointed to. Most of the kids gobbled down their food then came back begging for more, so I was really grateful that José kept things in order, making sure that everyone got their portion, lightly tapping the kids on the head with a stick when they got out of hand!
By the time all the shima was gone and only a 3 feathers were left in the chicken pot my fingers had 2 huge blisters and my hands were covered in sticky white globs of shima! Time to get cleaned up – the truck just arrived carrying another 500kgs of corn so back to the house to start scooping again – this time José helped me. Finally all that was gone too and we just needed another 100kgs to give to the last few people. The truck set off again, but now it was time to start setting up the sound system to show the film again tonight. The setup went quick, Jeremias is learning fast! Again we started the movie promptly at 6 – an even larger crowd tonight.
While the movie was going I left Jeremias to watch the system and then the rest of the team gathered to pray – there seemed to be so much resistance here and we just needed a breakthrough. Claudia had a vision of us in a fishing boat, and when we pulled in the nets they were filled with hundreds of tiny fish, and just a few big ones.
After the movie finished at about 8:15 José got up to preach, and then gave an altar call. About 200 kids came forward and 3 adults! The four of us prayed for each one of them while Jeremias and Manuel lead worship. It was such a privilege to pray for those little children!!! And it was also a fantastic way to finish our time in Marromeu.
5am we are all up, the ground had seemed softer last night! Piled back into the truck, ready to set off back to Dondo. First we had to convince Pastor Battiste’s wife that when we said ‘NO, we will not take that live chicken back with us’ we really meant no. She couldn’t figure what was wrong with having a chicken with 7 people and their luggage and a sound system in the back of a truck…!
First though we stopped in Chupanga to hand out some more food. The pastor from Marromeu came with us to give directions to the village church, but he got completely lost and we ended up driving into the bush on the worst road you can imagine. There were 7 of us squashed in the back and each bump was so hard that you heard ‘thud, thud, smack’ as we all bumped our heads on the ceiling. OUCH! Lisa and I even hit our heads together once! Finally Claudia stopped and asked directions from some villagers that had appeared from the bushes – we had gone all that way, and it was wrong! We turned around and had to endure the torturous journey back to the fork in the road. Once we were on the right path it was better, but it was just a footpath! We were running very late by now so we gave the pastor the money to buy the melio, told all the kids to go to the vendor and watched as the first lata was handed out – then we made our way back to the main road and made our way home!
This has been the most fantastic outreach I have had, I loved it, it was great!
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