Photo Update: Tete Food Distribution

Here are some photos of my 3 weeks in Tete Province doing food distribution. We were able to distribute food to ±1 300 children in 9 districts.
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 bridge across the Zambezi River dominates the skyline


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.

Going to Tete Province

I am going to Tete Province, leaving TOMORROW morning! I will be leading a team of 4, going for 3 weeks to find, feed and document over 7000 orphaned and abandoned children... I only found out yesterday that I was going, so I'm still trying to process the shock. I have never been to this province before, so I do not know what to expect! Kinda scary, but I know that it will be good and that God is in control!

Please pray for the journey - it is about 30 hours drive from Pemba, and I have heard rumors that the roads in Tete are bad!

The team is:
Nikki Wheeler
Travis Frugé
Annelie Basson
Jessie Turner
The driver of our 5ton truck - Sitoe
and his assistant - Carlitos

We will be meeting with the provincial pastor, Pastor Jeronimo, and he will be guiding us to the various villages where the kids are staying, then we will have to find and buy enough food to give each kid a 3 month supply of: Corn, Beans, Oil and Salt.

This is quite a big project (as you can imagine) and there is NO way that we will be able to connect with each of the 7000 kids on this trip, so we will be the initial team, with more teams following later this month to continue what we started! But we aim to feed and document as many kids as possible.

(Image from WikiPedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tete_Province)

Thinking Outside The Box

What you get when you have:

A projector which for no apparent reason would not focus no matter how much you twist the little focus dial; 4 guys trying to make it work; a random funny comment and a pair of glasses?

... and so the story begins:

Movie nights here at mission school is a night out, literally, a night out. I set up the screen outside one of the student's houses (house 5) and then everyone gathers round and sits under the bright African stars and watches the evening's movie.

Last week everything worked fine - no problems, this week the projector refused to focus at a distance - the largest we could get a picture that was in-focus was maybe 5cm from the lens, and then it was about 5cm x 5cm... not very helpful when you have over 40 people trying to see! A general consensus was that the projector was missing a lens - which inspired the random comment of "We should try a pair of glasses!" - Everyone chuckled, but I figured that we couldn't lose anything by trying, so I held my glasses in front of the projector and it worked! We tried several different prescriptions, but mine was still the best. One of the other ladies had an extra pair that was a tad stronger than mine, but for astigmatism, so I wore them for the duration of the movie and the projector wore mine!

We got some books, carefully positioned the pair of glasses on them, a bit of duct tape and we were all set! The picture was still a bit fuzzy around the edges, but we could see well enough, and most importantly we didn't have to cancel movie night!

I still have NO idea why the projector wouldn't work, nothing weird happened to it between last week's movie and tonight - it just sat in it's bag in a corner of my room. Who knows? But I think that the improvisation of tonight will make me smile for quite a long time still! :-)

Coming Soon... HS8!

Just a few days to go before HS8 kicks off! Things are a-buzz here in sunny Pemba as the students start trickling in AND to add to all the excitement it is Children's Day on June 1st, so we are gearing up for a busy busy weekend. (Yippee for a public holiday on Monday though!)

I have practically finished preparing all the sound systems - just a few more cables to make - and I also have to move ALL the sound stuff that is currently nicely stored in my house mate's room back to the sound room, seeing as she is coming back this sunday... :-) But all in all it's looking good, and I'm really excited to see what life changing things happen in this school!

Cool Nights

Back in Pemba and things are cooling down quite a bit! The nights are chilly enough for me to switch off my fan and snuggle up under a thin blanket! Its lovely!!!

At the moment I am busy preparing for the next Harvest School of Missions (HS8), getting all the sound systems upgraded and ready for the many many outreaches we will be doing. I am also 'on staff' for this school, meaning that I will be more involved with the actual running of the school and all the programs that will be offered. It will be a busy time (as usual), but I am looking forward to a brilliant, uplifting and encouraging school - is all kicking off June 2!

My other big job is getting the church system installed, but this is proving to be a bit of a challenge - part of the floor of the church will have to be dug up to lay a pipe with all the cables running to the stage. A fairly straightforward task, but getting hold of the maintenance guy is a like playing cat & mouse! But I hope to have that done before the students arrive...

Slideshow: Road Trip... Pemba to Pretoria

Here is a short little 'video' of the road from my recent 4-day road trip from Mozambique to South Africa!

(The name labels you see are just more or less where we were when the photo was taken...)

Road Trip!

That time of year has come again, where I have to renew my 'carnet de passage' - the temporary import permit for my car. To do that, I have to drive down to South Africa...!

I am setting off on this marathon drive early, 5am and will hopefully be arriving in Pretoria (South Africa) late Saturday evening. Please pray for a safe drive, good companionship and laughs, and that all the radar speed guns will miraculously jam just as we pass ;-)

The proposed route is as follows:

Day 1: Pemba - Mocuba

Day 2: Mocuba - Inhassoro

Day 3: Inhassoro - Lindela

Day 4: Lindela - Pretoria

So, as usual I shall let ya'll know how it goes...

Christmas in April...

Is it still Christmas? Well here in Pemba it apparently is! The last vestiges of the festive season can be seen in the lone christmas tree shaped light hanging across the road near base 1... it's kinda funny seeing as all the other light are fused, just this one is still shining brightly! :-)

Merry Christmas?

Mieze Grand Opening

Mieze is a little village just 20 minutes out of Pemba, and has been the focus of much of our activity these past 2 years: It started out as just another Iris church, where orphans were looked after by the local pastor, but it has grown into something so much bigger (& better)! So…

This past Sunday was quite a special day for Iris – our very first Children’s Village was opened! It is fully staffed and run by Mozambicans, with only minor oversight from Papa Don, but it’s really the start of the realization of Iris’ vision - to have the majority of the orphans in villages like these - and I was privileged to be part of the grand opening on Sunday April 6!

They have a chicken farm, a goat farm and good, clean, easily accessible water means crops; so in reality they are self-sufficient! The kids who live there are part of one big family, where everyone helps, nothing is just handed to them on a plate.

The day started with a shortened church service, and I think that the award for ‘most energetic dancing while singing’ goes to them,

they were just bouncing up and down, and jumping constantly in the little sauna they call a church. I do not know how they do it; it’s one of the hottest mud buildings I’ve ever been in! But it was good. (You can just just see me in the corner!)

After the service all the people were invited to join them for lunch, a special chicken meal prepared by all the kids and adults, using their very own chickens! Then Papa Don arranged for a truck to take all the kids to the beach after that, so all in all it was a lovely day for them!

Lichinga System Delivery

I had been trying to arrange a trip out to Lichinga for a while, and after our stay there with the extended outreach in December 07, I was even more excited about getting a sound system out to them. I was putting together a system for them from repaired bits and pieces, BUT most of the stuff was down in South Africa… our pilot had to fly down to SA to meet with the guy who imported his plane, and I took the opportunity to send some broken stuff down to SA, and then brought back a pile of repaired sound systems. I am so grateful for that little Cessna 206!!!

With the system now in Pemba I just had to work out when would be the best time for me to make the trip out to the other side of the country – it’s a 18 hour drive, and with the rainy season some bridges had become bit rickety… I ventured a thought – maybe we could fly there??? When I put the question to the pilot he was more than willing!!

Initially we planned to do a day trip, there and back in one day, but I really wanted to stay for one night at least and go with the Lichinga’ites on an outreach to make sure that they knew how it all fits together.

We had it all planned, date set everything, when we heard that there was a bit of a hassle with renewing the plane’s permit – so we had to postpone the trip for a week. Finally the day dawned and we were off!!





It’s only a 3 hour flight from Pemba to Lichinga by little plane, and it was a smooth ride above the clouds.
We landed at the airport and the guys from the Iris base were there to meet us and help unload the plane.



It was so chilly there! Such a difference especially compared to a hot humid Pemba, and I was glad that I’d brought my thick fleece hoody.

The house they are staying in is really close to the airport, so I walked back to the base with Jesse & Tanya, while Peter waited with the car, for Joe to file the flight plan for the next day.
I did a quick training session with everyone – they had all been to Holy Given in Pemba and had used the systems on outreach, so this was just a little refresher course.

The twins took us to see the actual base they were building on the Iris property (the farmhouse we were staying in was on loan from their neighbour), and it is amazing! It feels like you are in the middle of nowhere, just mountains in the distance as far as the eye can see. It is so easy to forget that there is a bustling city and airport just 10mins down the road.

It was great to catch up with all the Lichinga’ites, but after lunch it was siesta time – we were only heading out at 5pm that afternoon for the outreach, and it would be a later-than-usual night, so everyone got some rest.

A missionary couple that are working with another organisation were letting us use their vehicles to transport the equipment and people – they were very interested to see an Iris outreach in action…

The village was not very far away, just maybe 15mins, but they had been waiting for nearly a year now to see the Jesus film! The village chief was very friendly and the people quite respectful – giving us space to setup, and waiting patiently. --generator-- As usual the music attracted the crowd and just before sunset the pastor started to preach. Because Lichinga is at high altitude, and quite mountainous it gets really cold here at night – so outreach is flipped around: first the preaching and the gospel THEN the movie. Then some more preaching afterwards…




We were in a Yao village, a people who during the slave trading years were used by the Arabs to capture and sell other tribes in the area into slavery. They are a very powerful people, but despised.

The night air got colder and colder, and after a while I wished I had proper shoes on, and not just my flip flops – looking out into the crowd I could only just image how cold the kids were in their threadbare clothes. So when the movie ended it was no surprise that the majority of the crowd disappeared to the warmth of their houses, and only about 30 people stayed to hear the repeated message and altar call. There were a number of salvations, and plans were made to return a few days later and begin discipleship.

I love the way they work here – it’s not about hitting a village and then counting the raised hands so that the next newsletter can sound impressive, it’s really about raising up and discipling people; forming personal relationships and working consistently with them to help the whole community – because once the whole community has been raised up, and taught, THEY go out and take the Good News to the neighbouring villages, and they are the example that is followed. It is really a longer-term vision, but personally, I think it’s more effective.

Back to the farmhouse and a great meal of spicy pasta and a homemade coffee, nutmeg & cinnamon cake that was baked over a coal burner, delicious! They have no running water or electricity there, so we had good fellowship by candlelight!

We set off the next morning as soon as the airport opened at 7am (which meant we were at the plane at 6am). The return flight was just as uneventful; we were home in time for lunch!