Don’t have the time or the bandwidth to upload pictures right now so words will have to suffice.
We left Alabanza at
4:30 am last Thursday morning.
I have never seen so many people in a Van in my life!
We were literally piled on top of one another (sorry, AIM…that’s just the way it was.)
We boarded an awesome Greyhound double decker bus (The World Race took up the whole upper level) for the 10 hour ride from
Pretoria to
Maputo,
Mozambique.
We arrived in
Maputo about
7:00 PM… in the dark… in the middle of a really sketchy makeshift bus terminal that was teeming with people…mostly vendors and apparent vagrants.
Our
Mozambique guide, Zacharias, hopped off of our bus and fairly quickly negotiated for two busses to take us on up the Coast to Vilanculos and Dondo.
Now…when I say bus…I mean an RV with bus seats.
More of an inner city commuter bus than a long distance carrier.
We found out after the fact that most people thought we were crazy for traveling at night into upper
Mozambique.
We didn’t really have any problems though.
It was a 14-hour ride or so from
Maputo to Vilanculos.
Squad B continued another 8 hours north after we parted company.
Did I mention that all of our gear was INSIDE the bus with us?
The Squad B bus had a trailer.
We didn’t!
Anyway, we finally arrived in Vilanculos about
10:00 am the next morning thinking we were staying on a beautiful
Indian Ocean beach next to our contacts’ resort development.
We shoulda known better.
We are actually staying about 12 miles inland from Vilanculos in the middle of a small village with stick huts.
I really want to learn how to build one of these huts while I’m here!
Some of the people speak Portuguese.
Most speak their own tribal dialect.
There is a lady Pastor (Laura) that is our host and she speaks very little English.
Her son Rafael speaks English very well and was our translator in church Sunday morning.
So far, I have preached in church and gave a “devotion” of sorts during a church leader meeting on Saturday.
We really don’t have a “set” ministry to do… but that’s ok…we are World Racers and we’re getting used to ATL’ing and figuring it out as we go.
Several team members have thrown themselves into de-sheathing the bamboo reeds that are used for the huts.
It reminds me of a bunch of people sitting around shelling peas when I was little.
There are perhaps 20 orphans that just hang around.
They were sort of shy the first few hours after we set-up our ”
Tent
City” in their yard.
Now they are in our laps or singing and dancing for us all the time.
Who needs TV?
We are splitting up this coming Wed-Sat. to spend a few days in 4 different villages.
We have no idea what we’re doing.
We were told to just wait until we get there and see what the Pastors need and what the people need.
We might assist in rebuilding; we might conduct some sort of outreach or children’s ministry.
Who knows?
We will all come back to our ”
Base
Village” on Saturday and go to church again with our host Laura.
The next day we will send 2 teams to another village/town for the whole week.
The other two teams will stay at our base and do some day-trips into villages that are close by.
The hurricane damage is not nearly as severe as it was after Katrina.
I don’t think they had near the storm surge here as we did back home.
The results are probably more severe though.
Many people here live in those small round stick huts.
Obviously they were blown away, creating masses of homeless people.
But these are very resourceful people as well.
They were probably in recovery mode almost immediately.
Semi-significant structures like wood frame buildings were heavily damaged.
Significant structures like concrete buildings are still standing but lost their roofs.
There is electricity but it probably doesn’t extend very far beyond that.
It probably didn’t in the first place!
The people here are very friendly and hospitable and beautiful.
They smile constantly.
They are happy to see us.
Church was so alive.
The singing was awe-inspiring.
They clap on-beat and they sing in perfect harmony…in parts!
No offense to the places we’ve visited up to this point: but we haven’t heard anything like this anywhere else!!
I helped some 10-11 year old kids carry water from the well to our campsite yesterday and it was amazing.
I was trying to blend in by carrying the water on my head!
It was all I could do to hold it up there with both hands and here is this 10-year old boy with a 5 -gallon bucket of water on his head and he’s just barely grasping the bucket and then he is kicking his friend while he walks!
I was dying.
He was just grinning.
Rumor has it that we will get to spend part of our last week here Marlin fishing,
Island hopping and swimming.
We’ll see.
