Blogs from Beira, Central, Mozambique, Africa

The TCO bus is an anomaly in African transport, like a readable passage in a Harry Potter book. Though not hitting Argentinian heights of comfort, it makes the 16.75 hours to Beira pass in a trauma-free fashion. The promised toilet and AC are present and correct, and the secret to reaching our destination in just one day lies in infrequent stops and certainly none for fruit and veg shopping. I wonder if the ripping sound I hear is the tearing apart of the very fabric of African travel. There is one cause for concern, however, and it unexpectedly revolves around Westlife. The bus has insufficient DVDs to last the duration of the journey and, though we only get one showing of "Operation Delta Force 2:Mayhem", the Westlife Greatest Hits DVD gets repeated. I consider myself as ... read more

We’re coming into the homestretch of the trip. This morning as I was getting ready the lady who cleans the place mentioned that it was her last day. I said yep. She said she had a favor to ask. I said what. She said he son doesn’t have shoes and could I give her some. I thought that was a little forward but of course it’s impossible to say no under the circumstances. And she’s a nice, poor lady. So I said sure, and gave her the choice between my sandals and my running shoes. She took the sandals. I also took her picture and printed it out for her. She really liked that, and I told her that if she comes back tomorrow, I’ll take one of her whole family. She also said, you ... read more

Big day today. We went to an orphanage called Nhamantanda, about a 90-minute drive north of here. There were some pretty interesting things to see on our way there. One thing we saw was a government office along the road that looked like a weigh station would look in the US. There were six or eight speed bumps in the middle of the road, so we were crawling along for a quarter-mile or so. A bunch of guys trying to sell bags of cashews ran along the car for the whole time, trying to get us to buy. I probably would have if I hadn’t been so surprised by the whole thing, didn’t have my money out, etc. One of our group was taking pictures of them as they ran along. I thought that was ... read more

This morning Warner Woodworth, a BYU professor in international development, left for home. He’s been here with us the whole time, although usually doing different things. When I went to the meetings with villagers, he was the one I went with. He’s a pretty interesting guy. Remember Oulessebougou, Mali? He was instrumental in starting up that whole thing. He is involved with the church’s international aid and with various microcredit organizations, and similar stuff. He lives on half his BYU salary and gives the rest to similar kinds of organizations. Hmm, I remember when I was planning on doing that. The guilt-meter is starting to buzz. The only problem with the guy is that he’s a Democrat. In the morning we went to Dondo. We helped repair a decrepit swingset that has probably injured as ... read more

Today was fairly uneventful. More of the same, really. In the morning we worked on a machessa, and in the afternoon we did some work and played with orphans at the Dondo orphanage where we’ve spent time several times before. At the machessa we tied grass into long bundles that will go on the roof. There were a lot of villagers who showed up, which is a really good thing. The more they put into it, the better it is for them. If it’s just white people showing up and doing stuff for them, there’s little or no long-term benefit. The downside of having so many villagers there was that there were kind of too many people for what needed to be done, so we didn’t have a full morning of work. Which was okay, ... read more