Wednesday, June 21, 2006

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!

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