How to Build a House for 50 Orphans...

This is not a step by step instruction guide, but I will do my best to give you handy pointers should you ever attempt this amazing feat…

I am in Morrumbala, a town close to the Malawi border, just north of the mighty Zambezi River and I was asked to go build a house. A big house. Big enough to house 48 kids! I think I this trip has the dubious honor of being the trip with the longest delay in leaving – by about 3 weeks!
At first our team was 2 missionaries, 1 Landrover, a flatbed truck, and me. Then 2 missionaries gave me 1 week’s notice of leaving for America…

Then the team was 1 missionary, 1 Mozambican builder, no vehicle, and me. Then builder was told he had to stay in Pemba do finish his projects and the missionary went to South Africa for his visa…

Then the team was 1 missionary, 1 Mozambican foreman, 1 Landrover and me. The night before we leave I am told that I cannot be the only girl and the missionary may not drive, so I have to get a Mozambican driver and another girl!


Anton, Travis and I

But all was well and the team that finally left Pemba at 4:45am on Thursday morning was: 2 Missionaries (Travis and Octavia), 1 Mozambican foreman (Antonio), 1 Mozambican driver (Baros), 1 Landrover and Me (Nikki).

The drive down was great. I love road trips and Mozambique is a fun place to drive, with huge holes to dodge! The first day we drove to Mocuba – give or take 850km from Pemba. Last time I drove that road it was terrible. There were huge ruts in the road, so deep that you had to balance your wheels on the little ‘mountains’ else you’d be stuck if your wheel went into a ‘valley’ – they are busy repairing the road and its mostly solid packed dirt and tar. It was wonderful!!!

We got to Mocuba at about 5pm and finally found rooms at the 3rd guesthouse we tried (the 1st one had hot running water, the 2nd one had cold running water) this one had no running water, but has employees who constantly keep the huge buckets in the bathrooms filled with water (cold water!)

The next morning we set off at about 9am – arrived in Morrumbala at 2pm and immediately we went to see where we were going to build. There was a dilapidated little house that Iris had build for the orphans earlier, but it was made out of sandstone and the roof was all but missing and the social welfare had said that it was not good for the kids to live there (have they looked around at where the other people live?!?) so it had to be a proper house and apparently they have to have beds too… I priced 24 bunk beds and 48 mattresses in Quelimane and the total came to US$9000. I kid you not. $9000. Are these people crazy? The house I’m building is only $4000! So do they want the kids to sleep on beds outside or on grass mats inside? No one else sleeps on beds. Oh well, I think we found a carpenter who would build us the beds for $730, so now I am hoping to get cheaper mattresses.

The house we demolished



Anyways, back to the building: We had to demolish the little house and that was fun, we got 3 guys to smash the walls! Then I designed the house – about 16m long, 8.5m wide, with 8 rooms, each being 4m x 3.5m with a corridor down the middle. It will have a tin roof and a front door, each room has a window, and curtains in the doorways. The floors will be dirt. So that is the plan if the money stretches that far. First we are going to build just the 4 outside walls and put on a roof. Then if there is money left over we will do the corridor and rooms, and if there is more money, the floor will be cement. But we will see what happens.

Because Iris didn’t have a flatbed truck to spare we have to hire one and its expensive! We need lots of rock, sand, and bricks – there is no big shop to go buy from – we drive into the village and go to people’s houses where they bake clay bricks in their backyards. But the quality varies and the sizes too – so after we had bought 4000 bricks of one size from one guy we ran out and we had to search the entire area to find bricks of the same size!

Then we have to go far out to a quarry in the mountains and buy loads of rock, driving over treacherous tire popping terrain (well the tread on the truck’s tire was non-existent so I don’t think it took too much to pop it – I had to drive out there to bring them an equally worn spare tire!)

The water we get from a tap about 3km down the road, through a muddy field the car couldn’t go thru - we had to buy 20L bottles and then we got 3 girls to help us – they filled the bottles and carried it on their heads to the Landrover. We could only fit about 8 bottles in the back per trip… after a day of me going to and from the tap we struck a deal with a guy – he would fill the 2 huge pots we had (500L each) at night, using his bicycle to carry 40L at a time.

Next we needed wood – this was my favorite part - I could drive at least 20mins into the bush bush, middle of nowhere, sometimes just a footpath to get to a man’s house where he chops down trees and makes 2x4s! Many times it was a person that someone knew and then we’d drive, see them next to the road, pick them up and go to their house – more often than not their assurances of ‘its very close’ meant that it could be 25kms into the bush and take us an hour to get there! But it was great fun, I loved it – going up rocky hills in the Landrover, dodging rocks and holes, literally going where no car has gone before to stop at a little mud hut on a hill, overlooking mountains and there I was, buying a few of the 80 planks of wood we used!

The workers were another story – they are charging us at least double the going rate for manual labour! But then again we are working everyday 6am – 5:30pm… with only an hour for lunch and they are working very hard (with much encouragement from Antonio and I of course – I’d see them jump up back to work whenever the Landrover came around the corner!)

We started digging the foundation on Sunday – with the trucks going to and fro constantly. We hired 2 trucks – we pay per load so might as well get everything quicker for the same price!

Monday we filled the foundation with rocks and cement, and made sure it was all level. In all honesty, I don't do any of the actual building work - I mainly drive to buy stuff – I have all the money with me in cash, and I need to account for every centavos spent, so I go everywhere! The workers do all the work, although I did help fill some rocks in the foundation!

Tuesday we packed the first row of bricks, to raise the floor. We have used 25 bags of cement already! The shop is in the market, with roads not made for cars, but I squeezed the Landrover in there – and made a 12-point u-turn in the small dead-end to get the car out – always fun!

We could buy pretty much everything in Morrumbala, except wheelbarrows or shovels. So we had to beg and borrow shovels off neighbors. We found a guy with a wheelbarrow and we have to rent it from him, so we are sorted with that – but my number 1 tip for anyone wanting to do this kinda thing: BRING YOUR OWN TOOLS! And my number 2 tip is: BRING YOUR OWN FLATBED TRUCK! And my number 3 tip is: Have a good foreman, one that speaks Portuguese, English and the local dialect. We have one and he is amazing!

I am filming this whole trip, and I plan to make a little short DVD – maybe it will raise funds for us to do this more often! But I wanted to have a picture of each kid – to I got them to line up, say their name and age, and then I did a 2 second shot of each one. So I’m writing and writing and writing and finally all 48 kids have been filmed. I count the names to make sure we got them all. 1…2…3…10…20…30…40…47…48…49…50! 2 extra, but Pastor Sabala, the man who is looking after them says that those are all the kids! He doesn’t have food to feed them, so I went out and bought 10kg of corn, they will grind it and make ‘shima’ (maize porridge/ meilie pap) for the kids. And I plan to leave each kid 10kg of corn, like we did when I went on the food distribution outreach a few months ago.

I also got a list of veggies that would grow well here – the land we are buying will be big enough for them to have a little farm to grow food for the kids. The orphans will have to work it, but it will be good to get food to them! You might have noticed I said ‘the land we are buying’… the land we started building on isn’t actually ours yet – but I am assured that it will be easy to buy it – no worries… I really hope so! We submit the papers tomorrow, and give them about $100.

The building went quite quickly – I think I was pretty ‘slave driverish’, the workers worked 10 hours per day for 12 days, but it was needed – we got the walls done just in time for the roof to go on before we left! (and they were paid double to usual rate!)

The trucks we had hired to deliver the bricks just sped over all the bumps and only towards the end of construction did I realize just how many bricks had broken in the process – 2000! I wasn’t going to hire the trucks again at those astronomical prices only to have ¼ of the bricks break, so I had to drive a 26km round trip to find the right size brick and then the Landrover only had enough space to carry 200 bricks at a time!

It was nearly a week and a half later and the walls were not finished yet – the workers had started getting slack and after we paid 2 of them some of their money so they could buy food for their families, one guy stopped showing up. In desperation to get the walls done I put out word that we needed more workers, I will pay them a fixed amount for each wall they complete – we got 3 guys, 1 was excellent, the other 2 worked slow and then moaned about the wage. Then the guy we hired to carry water for us every night decided he wanted to be paid and after I gave him his pre-agreed wage he was unhappy because he had jumped into the Landrover every time we went to get wood and he had expected me to pay him extra for his help. I should have known that no one does anything out of the goodness of their hearts here in Africa. The next morning there was no water, the waterman was ‘tired’ so we got 10 ladies to walk to the hand pump and get us water – we paid them 0.07cents for every 20L bottle they carried… don’t be shocked, that was the payment THEY asked for!

Then I had a look at what the carpenters were doing – they seemed OK, showing up early, and working hard throughout the day. Our deal had been that they would make us 8 beds. 8 special beds – each bed measuring 3.6m x 1.9m (that is big enough to fit 4 mattresses next to each other). We had drawn them pictures with measurements and settled on a price. They worked out the amount of wood we needed and I went off in search of it (there was a lumber yard of sorts close by, but the wood was for export so the prices were stupid – each plank cost $8 instead of the $1.75 I could pay in the bush). They made the beds and finally when they assembled the parts I went to look. They had decided that 3.6m was too wide so they made me 8 beds that were 1.8m wide instead. And then they demanded payment for the beds, but payment for 16 beds and not just for 8. It took nearly 5 hours to reach a compromise, and in the end I paid more than I had wanted to and they received less than they demanded. But I was furious. I had tried to work out the best way for all the kids to sleep off the floor on a mattress, and seeing that I couldn’t afford a mattress or a bed per child, I had made a plan and the carpenters had just messed it all up. It was 2 days before we left and there wasn’t time (or money) to have another 8 double beds made. So we had to put one bed in each room and 2 of the mattresses on the floor. It was horrible, I was so disappointed because I really wanted all the kids to sleep on a bed, even if they had to share it would still be better than the floor.

The house as seen from the side/back:


The house as seen from the front:


But it was all worth it - when the house was done and we were getting ready to leave the site for the last time, all the kids came together and started singing, then we opened the door and in great excitement they all ruched in, singing and dancing and cheering and it was so so so moving. All the frustration was worth it!





This is something that I would REALLY LOVE TO DO AGAIN! I think there are 40 more places waiting for houses… now Iris just needs the funding to get us there to build!

A list of things you need to build a house for 50 kids:
86 wooden planks 300cm x 24cm = $264
140 wooden poles 3cm x 6cm x 300cm = $213
10 150 bricks = $383
10 truckloads of sand = $38
84 sheets of tin roofing = $620
3700kg cement = $731
7400 liters of water = $28
5 truckloads of rock = $94
28kg of nails = $127
the equivalent of 66 workers = $732
Truck hire for 25 loads = $528
Mattresses for the kids = $1509
The Land = $328
Seeds for vegetable garden = $20
Food for Kids = $83

And of course, 1 Nikki = priceless! ;-)

Out in a Dhow

I went out on a real life dhow, the fishing boats they have been using here on the eastern coast of Africa for hundreds of years. It was a day off and I was invited to go along with some of the other missionaries, and to top it off, one of them offered to pay for me – its about $20 per person for the day, snacks and drinks included, so that was amazing to start with!



We left at about 8am and set sail for the bay. First we went to the peninsula opposite Pemba and dived off the boat and went snorkeling, and then we headed out to the opposite side of the bay. Pemba bay is the 2nd largest natural harbor in the world, so it took quite a while to get there (by car it’s a good 4 hour drive) – but it is gorgeous, unspoiled beach. We lazed in the sun for about an hour or two until the tide had come so far in that we had to wade back out to the boat! There was a village quite close to the water and we saw some of the village girls on the beach. Their face’s were painted white, a natural beauty mask, except they have to wear it the whole time else they think they aren’t pretty!




Then they put up the sail and cut the motor, and we sailed across the water.

I lay at the edge of the boat with my hand trailing in the water - it was gorgeous. At about 3pm we had started heading back to the mainland when we all needed to pee. So they stopped the boat and we all jumped into the water and… well it was very funny ;-)

One of the missionaries has 2 dogs and they accompanied us – they had such fun in the water!

A Dive on Wimbi Reef

Life here can be a bit tough, especially when you live off the generosity of others, donations and gifts, and no fixed income! So justifying treating myself to a little luxury like chocolate or apple pie, or some meat can be hard - so a SCUBA dive for $50 was totally out the question, even though I have semi qualified (I still need to do the Open Water Course, I have the Resort Certificate) and I live at one of the most beautiful reefs in the world, the Wimbi Reef!

Charles, one pastor that was in Malawi with us said he wanted to treat me to a dive, and he would pay!!! That was just brilliant!

Saturday morning dawned and I had thought he had forgotten, but then I got a phone call telling me to be ready in an hour!
The dive was fantastic, we did the whole fall over backwards out the boat thing - the fish and the reef was stunning, so tranquil, so many bright vibrant colors! To think that this was the cheap dive – there are other even bigger more stunning dive sites! We were down there for 50mins and it was easily the best 50mins of my time in Pemba!!!

Malawi

Our center in Malawi, in the tiny town of Bangula was having their regional conference. I was at this same conference last year, before I had even started working for Iris! I still have the same journal, and I flipped back to where I had written of my experiences… things have changed so much, well the conference style has stayed the same, its my attitude towards it that has changed! I will let you read some excerpts of what I had written then, and my thoughts of now!

Rolland, Heidi and I were flying down to Bangula in the Rolland’s little Cessna 206, it’s a fairly short flight, about 4 hours, with a quick stop in Blantyre to do immigration – and stock up on cookies and ice-cream!

Malawi law does not permit anyone to fly after official sunset, and everyone had to be out the air by 5:45pm. That meant that we only had 15mins to get our passports stamped, refuel the plane and take off before airport officials would ground us for the night… Then Heidi went into the only shop at the airport!



About 20mins later we finally got into the plane and the tower gave Rolland special permission to leave – the flight to Bangula is only about 30mins so they allowed us to leave on condition that he called the tower and let them know that we had landed safely.

The scenery is beautiful, so rugged and mountainous. From the air you can see all little farms on the hillsides and it looks lush and green. It is hard to imagine that this area is the most impoverished part of Malawi – more people are dying of starvation here than anywhere else in Africa – drought and rains at the wrong time has completely wrecked this part of the country.

The sun was gone and it was getting dark – Rolland had called Mo (David Morrison) from the airport and asked him to start clearing the runway. “Activating goat-on-runway detector” – in the distance we could see the 2 pin-scourers’ headlights flashing on and off guiding us to the small dirt airstrip next to the church property. The landing was pretty smooth and as we taxied to a halt crowds and crowds of people started running next to the plane. Once we had stopped the crowds surrounded us, hundreds of people! We got out and unloaded the plane, then Matt, a long-term missionary took me to the stage.

I did a quick setup, and we started the meeting at 7 – all the others had gone to Mo’s house for dinner, I had to wait until after the meeting!

An excerpt from my journal – May 2005:
“…at 6pm they started, I was the only white person there, the others only started to think about coming when they heard the sound of the music and finally arrived 2 hours later and I don’t think that the sound system is powerful enough, its difficult maintaining the balance between maximum volume and distortion… I’m so tired. Its hot. I want to go home. I don’t think that Africa is the place for me. I just need strength or something. I’m so tired…”

This year was not much different, again I was the only white person there for a while and the sound system still wasn’t powerful enough – although having a monitor speaker facing us made a huge difference! I loved the conference, there were so many people all dressed so colorfully all so hungry for the Word – it was just awesome. And the dancers just amazed me – their stamina: 1 hour of aerobics, twice a day!



Excerpt from my journal – May 2005:
“…I’m still trying to decide if I should quit my job in England and move here. It’s a great opportunity…I’m out of my comfort zone. I want to stay in England; I don’t want to be in Africa. BUT I do want to be in Africa. It will be such a difficult life and I don’t know if I can handle it…”

“…I think I’m going to say yes…”

I am glad I made my decision, although things have been really hard at times. Often I have just wanted to leave, to go back to a regular job where you are guaranteed a paycheck at the end of each month!

At the conference there were so many people healed, especially deaf people – they just strikes a chord with me – how can you appreciate the beauty of sound when you cannot hear? The smiles on their faces says it ALL.

On Friday night there was so much dust as they were all singing and dancing and some of it got stuck under my contact lense… the next morning I woke up to severe pain and discomfort, my eye was swollen shut and puss was oozing out and it was just nasty. At first I thought that it was conjunctivitis, but then because of the pain we started thinking there was something stuck in there. By this time I couldn’t even open my good eye, its movement hurt my other eye, so I was basically blind.

They took me to the clinic and the doctor tried to see what was in there – he couldn’t see anything. We went back home and I asked the girl helping me to look in my contact lense case – one had a lense in it, the other was empty, with ½ a lense stuck the outside…

We rinsed my eye, eye-dropped it and covered it with a bandage. I just lay there. It was horrible – just waiting for the pieces of contact lense to come out. Heidi and Rolland were due to speak at a conference in South Africa so I had actually come to Malawi to be here specifically for those 2 days. And here I was, not able to do anything.

It made me appreciate my sight so much – my independence especially.

The conference ended, me having only done 5 of the 8 sessions (still a good 10 hours of work per day!) and on Monday morning we loaded up the plane. Two of the visiting preachers were coming back to Pemba with us – they had flown into Blantyre from the States on Wednesday so we had all their luggage, plus the sound system plus all our stuff and everything that Heidi had bought at the little airport store!

Rolland carefully weighed each bag, and asked each of us our weight! I think we were over the limit the plane could carry – In Nelspruit, the airfield in South Africa where he gets the plane serviced they call him the ‘Holy Man’, and its not cos he’s involved in missions – its because he carries loads heavier than any of them dare to, they all think he’s crazy!

Before takeoff Mo drove up and down the runway – his pin scourer (ex-Swiss military vehicle) has a small speaker attached to the roof – announcing in the local dialect, ‘clear the runway, remove your cows, chase away the goats and clear the runway!’ It was funny. I remember last year watching as the plane took off, standing next to my father. Never in a thousand years did I expect to be in that plane!

Because my eye was still sore and light sensitive (although getting much better) I sat with it closed most of the flight. We had to refuel in Blantyre and I managed to clear immigration without my pink eye patch, I wore sunglasses instead!

The flight was quite smooth; once the plane got its heavy belly off the ground we were fine. I was feeling airsick so I closed my eyes and slept.

We were nearing Pemba and the chatter in the headphones would occasionally wake me up as Charles and Steve chatted to Rolland. Suddenly I woke up and heard,” Oh no, we’ve lost the vacuum line, gyro compass and artificial horizon is gone!” That kinda freaked me out, and one of the passengers asked the BIG question: ”So what does that mean exactly?” Fortunately it was all-OK – landing would be a bit tricky, but it was all fine.

Another normal day at Ministério Arco-íris!

Guess what I did today!!!!

I had a shower. I mean a REAL shower. One where the water comes out of a showerhead and you can stand under it. It was exciting. Freezing cold, but so wonderful!

The Story of the Uncomfortable Chair

There was a fair amount of outcry at our ‘cruelty to cockroaches’ – so this time we decided to turn our attention to inanimate objects. Like uncomfortable wooden chairs…

We had run out of gas for our cooker, which meant that we couldn’t do anything – no cooking of veggies, no re-heating of food, no hot drinks, no toasting of stale bread, no hot water for showering. We let Julio ‘the keeper of keys’ know, but 2 days later we still hadn’t gotten a new bottle of gas.

It was late on night and I just really wanted a hot drink. So I said (to no one in particular), “We could cook over a fire on the kitchen floor, if only we had wood”. My roomie heard me and said, ”Well we can chop up one of those wooden chairs…”

NO WAY. Some villager had spent ages bending the sapling branches to make that pretty chair, we cant burn it! Well OK.

Our kitchen is practically outside, just walls of bamboo with huge open spaces for windows and there is a 30cm gap between the top of the bamboo and where the roof starts – so there is good ventilation, and our floor is just concrete.

We stacked the wood, tore up a box and lit the fire! It went up beautifully! We had kept the legs and seat of the chair so we put a pot of water on the seat and it boiled really quickly.



YAY! I had my hot chocolate and now I could go sleep!

The next morning I lit the fire again and made a cuppa and heated some sausages over the coals – I even heated water for my shower!

Finally Cassandra saw Julio and led him into the kitchen to see our fire place – needless to say we got gas an hour later!

Cass had also recently received a parcel from the States containing marshmallows!!! So one night we re-lit the fire (the wood is nearly finished now) and using sticks we roasted marshmallows over the fire! Yum!

Now I’m saving the last few wooden sticks to have a ‘braai’ (barbeque) – I bought some ‘boerewors’ (SA sausage) in Nampula – I’m excited and looking forward to it!

Nampula Jesus Film Training Trip

Tuesday 27th June
It was 10pm and I was walking back from the Naval after eating some gorgeous apple pie – Just got to the driveway when I was stopped by Felito, the head of evangelism and asked if I wanted to go to Nampula the next day to attend training given by Campus Crusade for Christ on the old school projectors they want to give us. I say yes… I ask Cassandra my housemate to accompany me; she is a writer and can take her work with her.

Wednesday 28th June
I was meant to meet Felito at 11am to get the Landrover and money and then we’d be off. Finally at 2pm I get the money – they want me to buy a motorbike while I’m there. Then at 3pm we find out the car is not available now, have to wait till morning to leave. 9pm that night I get a phone call to say that I may not use the Landrover, they have a little Opel Corsa non4x4 for me to use instead. Fair enough except that the battery is bad and the papers are not really in order… but they will try and sort that in the morning – so I guess we’re not leaving at 11am then…

Thursday 29th June
The training started this morning and I am still in Pemba. To waste some time I went to the bank at 9am to cash the cheque I got, the computers are down so I wait for a what seems ages to get special permission to get the money, about US$2000. Then when I get back to the base I find that they managed to find a new battery but locked the keys in the car.

So we waited for 30mins while the spare set of keys came – at least I know that our guards make bad car thieves! Finally we get into the car and then the car wont start – 1 hour later the car is running fine and at 12:20 we are off in the little non-4x4. Barely out the gate and I hit a stone or something in our driveway and the tire starts feeling funny.

Near the airport (2km later) its finally flat. We stop and change the tire – 4 guys materialize and do it for us – we have to ‘tip’ them of course and they wont take ‘no we can do it ourselves’ for an answer. There was a huge gash on the side of the tire, I have no idea how it lasted as long as it did! The rim on the spare is a bit bent and I know that its not good. Also as they pump up the spare tire there is a sound of rushing wind. The spare got a little hole too. So back to the base we go. Its1pm now…

When we get back to the base I get a phone call and am told we are NOT allowed to drive the little green non4x4, the papers are not in order and the battery is not quite good yet. I could have told them that… BEFORE we nearly set off the trip! Then I get another phone call and I am told that we have to take a 16year old Mozambican with us… then a other phone call to say that the 4x4 they want to give us first has to go to the airport at 3pm.

I wanted to leave at 11am…. YESTERDAY!

I finally convinced my boss that taking a Mozambican schoolboy is not necessary – he doesn’t ever do any sound anyways. Besides there isn’t room at the place we were gonna stay and if we bring back a bike then there would be no room at the back either. They got another car for the airport run and finally we left again at 2:30. Only 28 hours later than planned!

The drive to Nampula fairly smooth – only about 5hours – I let Cass drive for a bit – it was so scary she was all over the place the first while – stuck pedantically to the left side of the road and kept honking at people and goats and bicycles and chickens that dared walk on the road – she couldn’t seem to understand that the car didn’t really have the right of way! I feel: why stay in your lane when you have all that tarmac open next to you??? I could see the hordes of people and bikes rush past real close – eventually she got the knack of straddling the middle line! I think now I know what my father felt like when he first let me drive in Mozambique on our road trip from South Africa to Pemba last year! But it was good after a while, and I could relax. She was tired after an hour so I took over again – I love driving!

We found the SIL Guest house and stopped at Shoprite to buy something to eat for supper.

Friday 30th June
I wake up at 8am and immediately called the Jesus Film People to find out what is happening and they told me that the session starts at 8am (that would be… right now). OK. I am still trying to figure out where the church is!

It’s a full on training on evangelism etc. I had only come for the technical part! So I was glad that I was actually a day late cos the previous day had only been theoretical on evangelism! The technical training went well – I am confident that I can teach it to the people back home. I had a great conversation with the leaders of the training – they are from Kenya and Zimbabwe and speak good English, actually all the training is in English translated into Portuguese! So I am happy – I am also the only white person there, but not the only girl!

I excuse myself after lunch, they are going to be doing more theory stuff, so instead I go pick Cassandra up and we go shopping for the motorbike. Find at 125cc ‘super bike’ for 32 million = approx US$1260 - we managed to barter down to 30million! = US$1181! So proud of ourselves! Then the next obstacle was to get it into our vehicle. We have a single cab Mazda 4x4 with a canopy. And the doorway aint that big!

Eventually the 4 guys that were helping us load took one of the benches out of the back of the 4x4 (it was semi broken anyways…) and dismantled the front windscreen bit of the bike and did something to the handle bars and finally an hour later it was in the back! I wonder how we’re gonna get it out again, but we’ll figure it out later. The only problem is that the lock on the backdoor doesn’t work, but I doubt that anyone will get the bike out easily! Asked the Indian guys that ran the store where the best place was to eat – hadn’t had lunch so was really hungry – gave directions and we found it – a 4* hotel in town. The prices are better than in Pemba and the food was very very very very good! Yum! Then it was back to the house – chatted to the other people staying there and then it was off the bed!

Saturday 1st July
I was told that I could be there at 9:30 as the morning was devoted to theory stuff – that was great, so I got to sleep in a bit. I tried to get the backdoor lock fixed this morning before going to class, but the Toyota dealership was shut. So I got some boxes of cheap mineral water – I’m having a bit of trouble with my water purifier at the moment…

The equipment was scheduled to arrive from Maputo at 10:30am and I offered to go pick up the stuff that was for Pemba, 2 full systems. A little while later, Alfred, the Pastor from CCC came up to me and said “I understand that you offered to drop me off at the airport now when you go fetch your equipment” OK – I don’t recall saying that, but what ever! So we hop in the car and off to the airport we go. I love the freedom of having my ‘own’ car!!!

Alfred gets checked in OK, but there is a problem with the cargo… today is the dawn of a new currency in Moçambique. Its called the Nova Familia do Metical – basically they are dropping 3 zeros – so now my weekly budget wont be 1 million mets, it will just be 1000! So anyways, because they needed to distribute all the new notes and coins they filled the plane with money and left any ‘non-essential’ cargo in Maputo! It should (meaning maybe, quite possibly not) be arriving late on Sunday night, but I have to be back in Pemba then… So I had to make plans to have it shipped up to Pemba.

I get back to the church at 2pm and its lunch time, they hadn’t covered the maintenance part yet and I really have to organize things and the shops close at 5pm and nothing is open on Sundays – So I really want to get some meat and other essentials! Steve ran thru the maintenance with me quickly while the others were having lunch, then I was off home to pick Cass up.

We get to Shoprite at 3pm – We leave loaded with goodies at 4:30! I bought (amongst other things) a cooler box and some ice bricks so that I can take some mince meat and real ‘boerewors’ home!

At Shoprite we ran into Antonio, a guy that works as a medic for the Portuguese Air Force. Cassandra had met him in Pemba! He invited us to go watch the Portugal vs England game at the Mozambican Military housing where he was staying – but we hadn’t eaten yet so declined and went to watch the game at the restaurant we were at the previous night.

I am so tried by now, this whole trip has been busy – and now I have to find out if I have to stay in Nampula for another night and hope that the equipment arrives. Felito is out of town on a weekend bush outreach so I cant ask him… instead I call our centre director, Aguinaldo and ask him what to do. YAY I can go home the next morning! We have a guy driving up from Maputo in 2 weeks and he can pick up the stuff from our base there when he comes past.

Sunday 2nd July
Finally I can sleep late! At 8:30am the phone beeps and it’s a text message from Antonio – he wants to know if we want to have breakfast with him at a café? OK! We packed quickly and by 10 we were out the door – we meet up with him at a cute sidewalk café and order sugary donuts and a latte! Mmmm delicious! Antonio’s English isn’t that great, and our Portuguese isn’t that great, but we managed to have a decent conversation – I love the fact that I am able to understand Portuguese! He is going back to Portugal in the week – and he was absolutely delighted that they were through to the semis in the World Cup.

He had a meeting at 11, so we hit the road for our drive back to Pemba.
5 hours later (we stopped for photos and I bought some furniture) we were back home in Pemba – and after we had unloaded the car and restocked the freezer I flopped down on a chair totally exhausted, glad to be back home!

Cockroach and toilet story

We have a bug problem in our bathrooms, to be more specific a cockroach problem! This night there was one in the toilet bowl, and with the water shortages we didn’t have much water to just waste it on flushing it down, so instead we tried to kill it with bleach. That didn’t work so we went searching for something flammable…

we came up with a lighter gas and 3 matches.

Try 1 – There was just a small small woosh of flames in the bowl and we just laughed. Roach still alive. Think it ducked underwater or something.

Try 2 – Another small woosh but its still alive, and now we are getting desperate...

Try 3 – loads of gas and the match: there were huge flames that leap out of the bowl and then the vacuum created by the lack of oxygen caused the water to rush up to fill the space - there was a pop and the water spurted up like a fountain and splashed all over the floor. Cockroach included. But it was still alive!

Luckily there was a boy around to witness this last try and he squished the roach for us. We were screaming with laughter it was so funny. Never before have I ever done something like that but it was great.

It was myself, and my 2 house mates: Cassandra and Jessie!

Who says being a girl missionary aint fun???

FRELIMO visit to our base

FRELIMO is the current ruling party and the governor sent some very important people to visit our centre and see what we are doing as a direct result of the recent accusations against Iris Ministries. This is an update to the earlier ‘front page news’ article I wrote about.

It has been revealed that there is a RENAMO (opposition party) supporting pastor in one of our districts that has been holding anti-government meetings in the name of Iris. He had been removed from the position of district leader some time ago but still had the official ‘Iris stamp’ that he used for his own purposes. The government feels quite threatened by our ministry here seeing that we have a network of more than 3000 churches across the country and could in effect topple the balance of power should we wish to mobilize all our churches.

The RENAMO / FRELIMO struggle is an ongoing story. The civil war that ravaged Mozambique for the best part of 17 years was a north/south, RENAMO / FRELIMO struggle. This war ended in the 1980’s, but there is still a delicate line. People have been murdered over it, and last week we were chased out of a village because the messenger we had sent to say there was going to be an outreach was a fervent RENAMO supporter and FRELIMO supporting villagers didn’t like that.

I had never realized that this was such an issue, but now that the government has taken an interest in the Pemba base it has become real to me.

Heidi has had some serious problems on her hands trying to convince the government that Iris is a non-political, un-biased organization. We love everyone. We welcome anyone. And a few of our higher-ranking pastors have found it hard to accept that they cannot preach politics from the pulpit.

The FRELIMO government published an apology to the article they had written, but it was not un-conditional, it still basically warned us that we are on perilous ground and have to keep a check on all aspects of the ministry.

Right now we would appreciate your prayers for the ongoing favour in the eyes of the government and that a good relationship can be built. They were very impressed with out Primary school (grades 1 -7) and they were also given a chance to speak at our ‘International Cross-Cultural Training School’ formally known as ‘Mission School’. So all in all the visit was a success and they have been welcomed to return anytime!

Independence day – 25 June

Mozambique celebrated its Independence from Portugal today! We had regular church and then everyone rushed to the dining hall/kitchen for lunch.

CHICKEN!

Georgian Banov was here, a fantastic musician from Bulgaria, so we carried all the sound stuff up there and set up the band in the dining hall. It was a blast, the drums, the guitars and the djembes. We had kids dancing in front with their coke bottles.

The Mission School students served everyone, and when I say everyone I mean everyone – Sunday lunch is open the whole community – and there were loads of people, but everyone got food – lots of food!

It was a fun day – I was thinking that if I had a camcorder then the band playing in the hall would have made the most interesting music video!