Today we went to Granada. The trip there was about two hours on the highway here. A pretty serious climb into the mountains from the coast, followed by a whole lot of olive orchards. I was pretty tired, because I finally had the jet-lag issue--up at 5 and unable to sleep. UGH! Today was the most beautiful day we've had. The weather was so perfect! Always sunny and never too hot and the leaves were just beginning to change. Just the kind of day I miss every fall in Mesa. Anyway, we got to Granada, and I think we were all [View Full Entry]

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Hello from Marbella, Spain! Brad, Janie, Greg and I are here for a few days, enjoying the Spanish Riviera. All the vegetation is the same as in Mesa, just healthier and bigger. Maybe that's what it's supposed to look like at home! We drove to Gibraltar today, after sleeping 12 solid hours to overcome the jet-lag (kinda worked, kinda didn't). We had the greatest cab driver, a Gibraltar native named Douglas. He drove us all around the island, telling us stories of Gibraltar's history and what it was like to grow up there. We loved him , and he was worth [View Full Entry]

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Everyone’s getting ready to get the heck out of dodge. Today, all we had on the schedule was to take the bunk bed parts to Dondo, assemble them, and spend the rest of the day cleaning, packing, and preparing to go. Our vehicles were all gone, either in the shop or in use by other Care for Life people. All we had was a small covered pickup. So we had to pack the beds tightly in the truck to take them out to Dondo. The truck was way beyond bottomed out. And we strapped a bunch of mattresses to the [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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A couple days ago, Ryan received a text message saying that Care for Life had won 85,000 metacais (about $3,500) and a motorcycle from the phone company. We figured it was probably not legitimate, but it didn’t have any of the normal earmarks of a scam. It wasn’t asking for money, and it told us to go to the phone company rather than some other address. So we thought it was worth checking out. That’s what we did this morning. Unfortunately, it wasn’t legit. While we were out we visited several places looking for a Mozambique t-shirt. We saw a [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Today we went back to Casa Banana to finish teaching sewing stuff. Before we did that, there was a brief Care for Life lesson on “the rights of children.” It’s interesting, I’ve seen several references to the “rights of children” here. They talk about it much more than we do in the States. Maybe that’s because as a practical matter children do not have many rights here. Among the rights they listed were the rights to “freedom from abuse,” “free time and toys,” “health,” “education,” “hospital [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Today was Sunday, and we went to a nearby branch in a place called Inhamizua. The rented “chapel” is in a pavilion sort of place, with open-air rooms mostly surrounded by netting. It was pretty cool, though if the weather was bad that wouldn’t be the case. The branch is small enough that they meet for just two hours, basically omitting Sunday School. When sacrament meeting started ten minutes late, I counted 17 local members in attendance, of whom 14 were men or young men, one was a woman, and two were children. I understand that’s very common here—that th [View Full Entry]

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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. [View Full Entry]

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