I am sitting under the shade of a wide leafy tree as a nice breeze keeps me cool and the birds chirp away. I have no computer so I am writing by hand for a change. Yesterday morning at 4:45 am we loaded far too many, and WRer’s into far too few vehicles. The 2nd 13 hour leg of our journey included a rather comfortable double-decker bus. The view from the top level looked out onto citrus farms, rows of banana trees, and fields of cacti. It took us about an hour to cross the border into Mozambique. By the time we made it into Maputo it was dark. We stopped at what seemed to be a bus lot with many people, traffic, vendors, and police. The guys decided it would be better for the girls to stay on the bus. So, the guys made arrangements for our next bus and unloaded and reloaded all of our gear. We had 26 people with at least 26 huge bags crammed into a bus that seats 24 people. Fourteen very uncomfortable hours and a numb leg later we arrived in Vilanculos at 10:00 am. We were taken on a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere. There are a dozen little huts made of reeds and palm leaves. We set up our tents in partial shade and took naps as we waited for our English speaking contacts to arrive.
I woke up to see about eight little brown faces looking curiously into my tent. Spanish is similar to Portuguese, but it doesn’t help much here, because not many of the villagers know Portuguese very well. So my Spanish did not help in communicating. The kids futbol made of plastic bags and string turned out to be the best communication tool.
Our English speaking contacts are from South Africa. They are building lodges on the beach so they spend about 60% of their time in Mozambique. We are meeting with church leaders tomorrow to find out what our projects will be.
There are still evident signs of the cyclone that hit 2 month ago with 200 km/h winds. Huge massive trees are tipped over with their roots exposed; roofs are missing, while some huts are completely blown away. I just wonder where the people were while the cyclone blew through.
This evening I watched the boys playing soccer and learned that half of them are orphans. Pastor Laura takes care of about 12 orphans while she also heads up 17 churches in the area. Pastor Laura served us coffee (the water was brown before the instant mix was added) as we enjoyed the game. We asked Laura if we could help with the dishes. She brought out ashes. We rinsed the dishes then rubbed the ashes on the dishes then rinsed them again.
This evening around 6:30 when it was too dark to play futbol, the kids gathered around the fire we had used for cooking. They started belting out songs and dancing with amazing skill.
