Helicopter

I have a warm bucket bath every morning - They have a little outdoor latrine area with a drain so it doubles as a bathroom, its made out of bricks, and when I stand up straight I think people can see the top of my head. Its quite cold early in the morning, everything comes to life at 5am, and I finally capitulate and get out of bed at 6. Disrobing in the cold outdoors is quite interesting, and I think that if a helicopter flies past they would see everything! But there is something really refreshing about being outside so early, and when it started raining while I was bathing this morning it just made it more interesting! We are being fed SO well, Pastor Phombo's wife is cooking all our meals - we've had chicken stew, fried fish, beans with bush-rat meat (interesting!) grilled chicken and of course rice. They even gave us maize meal, Shima, yesterday! Its first class hospitality, so amazing! The village itself is quite quiet actually, I havn't felt clausterphobic at all - the people have respected our 'space' - and staying in the storeroom is SO much better than living in a tent!

Then in a different world, just down the road there are meetings meetings and more meetings. Running around in a circle becuase NO ONE seems to know anything about the camp where there are apparently 10 000 people! Finally I spoke to Julia, my contact at the WFP, and mentioned that if no one else knows anything, then maybe we could rent a helicopter to go see whats what. She said I should wait till the meetings that afternoon to see what people know. At the first meeting when I raised my question the INGC and a guy from the Mozambican Army said, 'there is NO official camp in that area', so I said, 'well there might be an unofficial camp and if there is then Iris would like to go help them...' There were officials grumbling, they said they would check it out, and then the meeting was over. I pulled the INGC official aside and asked when I would be able to have an answer about Maringapaz. He said, well come to the next meeting you can ask about helicopters there. OK... I quickly drive to the UN House and plug my computer into the electricity. I only have 20mins before the meeting starts and I really need to re-charge my mac! The 20mins over and I have 3 mins to get to the meeting I have a bright idea - Miguel my translator wouldn't be needed for the next meeting because there are many others who cannot speak Portuguese so there will be a general translator! "Miguel, would you mind waiting here with my computer? I will be back in an hour or so..." He was more than willing - incidentally he even had his cellphone and the charger with him, so he was happy to be able to charge it.

When I got to the meeting they were all still standing around outside: WFP, World Vision, Feed the Hungry, Moz Army, INGC... waiting for the representative of 'Air' - he arrived, an affable Frenchman who is actually a Sea Captain... but now in charge of logistics for the 3 helicopters and 1 Caravan plane they have here in Caia.

Each person brought their daily report, 'Barges', 'Road', and finally 'Air'. He rattled off the figures of what had happened that day, then moved on the what was scheduled for the next day. "...World Vision food drops...., INGC scouting..., Arco-Íris..." WHAT? I was on the schedule? WOW. There was some consternation and the Army guy was adamant that there was NO camp in Maringapaz. INGC concurred. But I was on the schedule! I helpfully tried to give the army guy the phone number of the Administrator who had contacted us with the news, but he had his number already. Finally it was decided that even if the Administrator couldnt be reached we would go anyways. They asked me who was going from Iris, so I picked: Myself (naturally) and Miguel (translator). It is apparently only a little chopper, space for pilot plus 3. We will be meeting the administrator in Marromeu, then continuing on to see the actual vilage.

So lets see how it goes!