I headed out to the Eden Farm today to give the cattle their worm medicine.  I set this day up with our Farm Director, Donizio, and as most “schedules” go in Mozambique, it is "do it now or never".   To most westerners, or at least to most people who know about working cattle in the US, you might picture mobile fence panels, power river shoots, lariats, etc. as part of your everyday fare for managing your cattle.  Dismiss those thoughts.  Here in Mozambique we have none of that.  The only tool that we have is a 4 foot wide “alley way” built off of a round corral made of tree branches tied together with tree bark.  Are you getting the picture?  Now, throw out the thought of using a stiff rope too.  There is no such thing as hard rope in Mozambique.  We are using ¾ inch nylon marine rope because that is all we can find.  Are you getting the picture yet?  Maybe…but there’s still more.  You see, Chimoio is a tropical climate.  They grow bananas, mangos, pineapple, etc. here.  But it is winter time right now and the temperature is about 65 degrees.  Sounds like a comfortable day right?  Well it might be if you are indoors.  Anyone who has ever lived in a tropical climate can tell you that 65 degrees can be really cold when you are working outdoors and a strong breeze comes up and brings in the rain.  Now, when this happens...and you still have five cows left to do...there is no way to avoid getting soaked to the bone.  That "It's only a matter of time before my hands fall off" feeling comes quickly.  Now, couple that with wading in a mixture of left over cow, mud, and who knows what else, while wrestling cows to the ground to medicate them, and your hands and feet are starting to go numb…get the picture now?  Such is a day in the life of a facilitator in Africa.  I would have taken some pictures so you could actually see some of what went on, but I didn’t want to ruin my camera.  In any case, the day was actually quite a success.  No one got kicked, gored, or hurt in any other way…other than we were all chilled to the bone...but it was a success.  Modern equipment would be very helpful in managing our herd so if any of you ranchers and cowboys (or anyone else) out there would like to help, please check out our Cattle Projects in the “About Us” section.  We will be posting some information on the scope and purpose of the cattle projects along with our equipment needs very soon.

Sorry I have not been keeping up with my blog articles very well.  With the internet problems over here and travel I have a couple of weeks of keeping you posted on the work here.  On the 17^th of May three other missionaries and I traveled from Chimoio to Nampula to visit some of the mission work going on there.   It is about 600 miles and the drive took a little over 14 hours.   The roads were not too bad but there was a 30 mile stretch that took us about an hour to traverse because of the massive pot holes. 

Nampula is one of the largest cities in Mozambique.  There is close to 1 million people living in this city and most are below poverty level.   I was privileged to stay with some people that Vel and I met in Portugal.   I would tell you where they live but their house is on an unnamed street and has no house number.  To get to the actual street their house is on you have to drive down what we would call an alley in the US.   It’s pretty similar to the house I live in back in Chimoio which is also sans street name and house number.  Funny thing is that every document you fill out in the country for just about everything wants your home address.  Go figure.

One of the most prevalent thing you see living anywhere in Mozambique is the tremendous amount of trash and the unsanitary conditions on the streets.   It is getting better all the time but progress is slow and it seems like the more people that move into the cities the slower the progress becomes.     

As you walk through some of the poor neighborhoods and see just how people live here it is quite appalling.  But, I am always amazed to see kids just being kids.  They are quite inventive and I see them out playing soccer with balls made of plastic grocery bags.  I even witnessed a new game I had never seen before.  I don’t know what it is called but it looked like the object of the game was to fill a soda bottle with sand before you got hit with a rock by the other participants.  It looked pretty brutal to me, and perhaps that is why I’ve never seen the game before, but the kids seemed not to mind the pain of the rocks hitting them as they filled their bottle with sand.  Now, in the US, any parent worth their salt would put a stop to such a game in short order.  That doesn’t seem to be the norm here.  The streets in these cities are busy all the time and when you head out on foot everything becomes an adventure.   If you are by yourself you will be quickly singled out by every panhandler in the vicinity.  It can become quite intimidating…if you let it.  It just another thing you have to learn to cope with here.   

I hope this gives you a bit of a picture of what inner-city like is like in Mozambique.  I will share more about this in the next few blogs.

Well last night was pretty exciting.  I was sitting in the house reading about 6 pm when I heard a car stop and a bunch of voices speaking something other than Portuguese.  One person was screaming for his life.  Soon there was a mob of people in the street in front of the house next door kicking on the gates.  They wanted in but the missionary who lived there was doing his best to keep them out.  I got up to go outside and see what all the commotion was about and to find out if could be of assistance.  Our guard promptly told me to get in the house and lock everything up (I'm thinking this is not a good sign).  The situation outside began to escalate.  It was getting louder and louder and over the top of it all I could still hear someone screaming for his life.  Over the next hour & 1/2 I continued to listen intently never being sure where things were going to wind up.  I prepared myself for a last stand defense in case the mob got past our guard.  Thank God it didn't come to that!!  Around 9:00pm everything settled down.

A bit later I found out what the cause of the whole thing was.  As hard as it may be to believe this...it is absolutely true!

It seems that someone riding on a choppa (a.k.a. taxi...usually a small pickup like the picture to the left) did not want to pay his fare.  The passenger in question apparently bailed out of the choppa and jumped the fence into our next door neighbors yard.  When our neighbor tried to call the police for help he found the number was no longer in service.  Turns out they had changed their phone number and didn't bother to tell the public.  When he was finally able to get in touch with the police, they didn't know where to go because our street has no name.  Anyway...for some reason, the entire group of passengers on the choppa wanted to kill the jumper for failure to pay his fare.  They produced a can of gasoline, from where I don't know...apparently they must carry one around with them just for such occasions, and were preparing to burn this poor fellow alive right there in the street.  I'm happy to report that didn't happen thanks to our next door neighbor.  When the police finally arrived almost 2 hours into the disturbance, they ended up taking the jumper away.  No one seems to know what happened to him.  When things finally calmed down our guard confirmed that things were back to normal again....for whatever normal is in Chimoio, Mozambique.  

Safe?  You tell me.  When our roommates move out to the Eden Farm in a few months, their security guard will likely go with them.  If he stays here, we won't have the money to pay for him.  People, especially white people, around here also have to have guard dogs, big ones, to assist with the necessities of security.  If you don't have one, your house will get broken into...and its not a question of if, but when and how often.  If they find out you don't have any security, it will happen on a very frequent basis.  So...what would you say the dollar value for the life of a Missionary is??? I think it is about $1200...that's the cost of a good guard dog around here.  Or maybe it's the cost of a 7x24 security guard.  I hope everyone else can sleep well tonight.  As for me, I think I will have to sleep with one eye open and be prepared for whatever else may come up from now on.  You can't say things aren't exciting here!!

We have lost communications with Al.  Since April 25th we have not be able to reach him by email or cell phone.  The news agency All Africa (www.AllAfrica.com) reports that on April 25, 2010 there was a serious break in a fiber optics cable owned by the public telecommunications company TDM.  In a statement released on April 28, 2010, TDM indicated the breakdown was located about 110km North of the town of Vilankulo in the Inhambane province.  This puts the break on the Indian Ocean floor at a depth of about 30 meters.  The company reported that it is seeking assistance from outside the country to effect repairs and expects those repairs to take not less than four weeks.  The outage has rendered ATMs in many regions of the country out of service and people are not able to access their accounts via ATMs or at bank branch offices to get money...that includes Al.  In the meantime, we will try to keep you updated on Al's whereabouts as new information is made available.

Thank you for your patience.

The Safari Insight Mission Team