Paulo’s Home Visit

We left the baby house early Saturday morning, with Paulo dressed in his best clothes ready to visit his father’s house for the first time in his life. I wasn’t really sure how far of a trip it was going to be, but was under the impression that it would take a good majority of our day to complete the traveling.

It has been a lot of fun to share these experiences with my friend Christie from back home. She loves the new experiences about as much as I do, and for that I am grateful. Many times during this day trip, we found ourselves in situations that made us laugh out loud at the absurdity of our circumstance. It has been such a blessing to have a good friend to share these times with, and also easier to get people to believe these unbelievable situations that we find ourselves experiencing.

As we squeezed into our first chapa ride of many for the day, we headed south from the city of Maputo. It was a long ride to area called Boane, which I had never been, while here in Mozambique. It was far enough away from the city, that we had a hard time getting a cell phone signal, and it was also noticeable that life was even simpler in this area than in the city. We then arranged a ride in the back of a pickup with 35-40 of our closest friends. It ended up that because Christie and I had baby Paulo with us that we rode in the cab of the truck for this 2 and ½ hour ride.

After waiting for about 45 minutes for the driver to round up the other travelers needing a ride down this long road, we finally left this small village. It was soon very clear to us that even though it had been 2 days since it had rained, this road was still very muddy and some would say possibly impassable. These people that would make such bold statements are obviously not from Africa, much less Mozambique.

If you can imagine a minimum maintenance road in the States that has been closed because of a flood washing out the majority of the road, and the part that is left is thick, wet mud and water. Take that image and put it in the middle of nowhere, so that if you do happen to get stuck there isn’t much hope of getting out, unless you walk yourself out to the nearest town many miles away. This was the situation that Christie and I found ourselves in, and we both were having the time of our life. I found myself looking at her and thinking, “I can’t believe that I am in Africa driving toward the Swaziland border in the middle of the nowhere, I can’t see civilization in any direction that I look, and I am sharing this experience with a great friend. Can it get any better than this?”

The drive was long in distance and also in length of time. It was very slow at times because of the road conditions, but miraculously our driver got us through and to the last stop on his route which was as close as a vehicle could take us to where Paulo’s dad lives.

We started to ask around, talking to the locals, trying to find out if they knew where Paulo’s dad lived, and it soon became clear to me, that my fearless translator Luis had forgotten Paulo’s dad’s name. Here we are now, seven hours drive from home and we don’t even know the name of the man that we are trying to track down. For anyone that know my friend and translator Luis, this is not out of character for him to do things like this, and I love him for it, because it gives me things to tease him about. As we continued to talk to the people of this remote village, one of the guys thought that he knew who we were looking for, and agreed to walk with us out to where he thought the man lived.

We walked down this road for at least two miles and as walked we teased Luis about the snake that had slithered out of the tree we were standing close to in the village. He panicked, screamed a little, and ran away faster than any of the men and more importantly women that were standing in our circle under the tree. His story of what happened differs greatly from Christie and my memory of how it happened, but I think that our version is more accurate and much more entertaining.
As we neared where the man helping us said that he thought Paulo’s dad lived, I saw a man in a full suit walking down this red dirt road toward us. As he got about 50 feet from us, I told Christie and Luis, that I thought that I recognized him from his visits to the house to see Paulo, and I was almost positive that it was his father. I took Paulo and walked toward the man who stood in disbelief that we had really traveled all of the way out to his village, with his son, to visit him. He stood there, obviously dressed in his best clothes, and it was obvious then that this was a really important to him that his son had finally come to visit him.
For those that aren’t familiar, Paulo joined the rest of the children at the baby house last summer, when his mother abandoned him. His father found out shortly after, but wasn’t able to provide adequate paper work or housing to convince social welfare to allow him to take Paulo. Paulo’s father, George is a neat man, who obviously cares a lot for his first-born son, but can’t provide for himself, much less his boy. I am so glad that I have the opportunity to be a part of what the baby house continues to do for these children and their families.

As we sat in front of this man’s house and he sat with Paulo in his arms, not much was said, but it was obvious that what was happening was good, and I really enjoyed just being able to sit there and be a part of this man’s joy. He sat and just enjoyed having his boy on his lap, being able to hold him while sitting in front of his home.

As the time approached and we need to leave in order to be able to get back to the baby house that same day, we all walked the two miles back to where the pickup had dropped us off. Paulo’s father carried him the entire way, and it was so obvious of how proud he was of his son. Everyone that we passed wanted to see the boy, and when we finally got back to the little village, he showed Paulo off to everyone that was sitting around the tree.

After standing for 30 minutes or so, a mini-bus came by and we were able to catch a ride back to the main road. This driver went so fast on this road that was in such a poor condition. We made the trip in ½ the time that our ride to the village had taken. The ride was so bumpy and included Luis laughing at Christie and I as we were airborne multiple times throughout the ride with Paulo in our arms trying to keep his head protected from hitting the ceiling and windows of the bus. When that ride was finish, we were able to get right on another larger bus at the stop that was packed to past the maximum occupancy, and made really good time back to the city of Maputo.As we were walking home at the end of the day Christie and I were processing through our day and how much we love these “African” experiences. The part that we love the most about it is these situations would be so outlandish in our homeland of the United States, but are everyday norms for the locals of Mozambique. It isn’t out of the question to squeeze 60-70 people in a bus that has a posted capacity of 26 people. It isn’t hard for the people of Mozambique to imagine driving down a washed out, muddy road in a two-wheel drive mini-bus, but most Americans wouldn’t attempt to travel down this same road in the strongest SUV that money could buy in the States. We both love the fact that we are able to have these experiences with the people of Mozambique. Life is good.

Gloria's Water Project

One of my favorite people in Mozambique, shares a close resemblance to Mrs. Butterworth. She brings joy and happiness with her singing and laughter to the baby house. She is the “big momma” of the house, and it would be the same without here. Gloria is one of the hardest working ladies that I have met since being here. She works extremely hard while at the house, looking after the 10 children at the 1st baby house, and then she goes home to take of her daughter, her grandchildren, her boyfriend, and his family. She completes each of her days at home by walking an extremely long distance, at around midnight to a well that turns on in the middle of the night, to get water for her family.

I came to Mozambique this summer, knowing that I wanted to assist in making her life a little bit less difficult by installing water at her house. This last week, we spent two days digging a 2 foot deep trench through a rock and cement road, and to the back of her property. The pipe has been installed and faucet is ready for water. We are now just waiting for the water company of Mozambique to come out and install a water meter and connect the piping to the water main.

Gloria insisted that we let her swing the pickaxe and help with the project at her house. As you can see in the picture below, the neighborhood children thought it was just as funny as we all did. Thank you to the Siler Family for their financial help with this project!

Idrussi’s Home Visit

I have been looking forward to returning this summer and being able to do home visits with the children again. Our first trip was a visit to Idrussi’s grandmother and the village of Camp 2000; this was one of my favorite visits from last year.

We set out in Pieter and Rika’s new vehicle, which made our travel much easier. It also allowed us to take many people from the team to see Camp 2000. One of the neat things has come out of our first visit to this village, is that Pieter and his team have decided that they are going to start working with the people of this village that is North of Maputo. They have already been out for a couple of nights stay with the people and are building new friendships with these people.

As we unloaded bags and bags of clothes to give as gifts, many people on my team were very wide-eyed because of the drastic difference in standard of living of this village compared to where we have been staying in Matola.

We set out walking through the deep sand with our arms weighed down with clothing and also our special guest Idrussi. This was his first time to return to see his grandmother since I brought him last time. He was unable to visit with Pieter’s team last time because he had come down with a case of Malaria. Walking into a village that doesn’t have many visitors to begin with, with a group of 6 white girls causes heads to turn.

We finally arrived at Idrussi’s grandmothers house, and shortly after the majority of the village had also arrived to greet us. It was neat to return with some of the pictures printed from my previous visit. There was one little girl that ended up being one of my favorite pictures from my trip last year. As I handed the pictures and looked through them with Idrussi’s grandmother, I showed her the picture and asked if the little girl was still here, and she just happened to be standing right by my side. I was able to show her the picture of herself and she smiled so big, it was amazing to see how much she had grown from the previous year.

As the clothes were divided into piles to be passed out, a few of the girls on the team passed out candy and snacks to the children, and I tried to capture the experience through the lens of my camera. Pieter pointed out to me, the there was an extreme lack of men present in the village. The only males present, either came with us (Pieter, Luis, and myself), or they were under the age of eight. It was obvious that there must be men present, because there was not a lack of children or women that were pregnant. It was just interesting to me that they were nowhere to be seen, and I still haven’t been able to make sense of the situation.

This visit was a good one, and it was definitely worth it to see the joy on Grandmother’s face as she held Idrussi. It will be interesting to see what happens as Pieter and men that he is leading continue to travel out to Camp 2000 to build relationship with these wonderful people.

a quick update

Things are going amazing here. The majority of the team left yesterday and should arrive in Kansas City at around noon today. I am heading out to Gloria's house (one of the educators) tomorrow to start the water install, and the following day I am putting on my electrician's hat and getting one of the other educators electricity to her house.

I had the opportunity to use my camera to shoot a wedding yesterday. I got some really neat pictures at the wedding palace in downtown Maputo. It is a government building, so most of the time pictures aren't allowed, unless you are invited by the wedding party. It was a neat experience, and some quality cultural exposure.

House church was good today. I taught last week, and totally rocked the gospel groups. It was neat to share that part of our community back home with the people in the house church in Mozambique.

Pieter, Rika, and the family are taking a few days to get away to South Africa this week and leaving us in charge. The educators aren't going to be back until Saturday, so it will be a busy couple of days without much time to catch our breath. It has been good to have my good friend Christie here. We entertain each other and help keep each other sane. Last night, we walked a couple of miles in the dark, after the babies were bathed and in bed, to a little South African restaurant, because we were desperate for good food, didn't want to cook, and had no groceries.

Life in Jail

Climbing off of the chapa with four of my team members and our fearless translator Luis. We were returning to the Grandparent’s village for the second day in a row. I have been doing my best to make sure that I share as many experiences with the team that has come with me, in the short time that they are here. The experience today was unexpected and definitely unplanned.

We had many bags of clothes to share with the Grandparent’s family. I also brought a soccer ball along to give to their oldest boy, Paulo. The team had a blast playing with all of the children in the village, as they gathered in the street to chase the ball, laugh, and play. The clothes were sorted out, while Luis and I sat and talked with Mary and Jacobi.

As we prepared to leave the house and head to the next family for visit, Tiffany made these famous last words, “Playing soccer with these kids is pretty much made this the best day of my life.” Little did she know that our afternoon was soon going to change. We continued on our way to visit a little boy named Tiki and his family, we walked past a group of guys who had a few drinks and they wanted us to stop and visit with them. As we talked, pictures and video were taken of the awkward encounter with these drunken locals.

I decided that it was time for us to leave and continue on our way. As we started to leave and walk back to the path that would lead us to our next destination, suddenly Luis had a man grabbing his arm and in Portuguese demanding to see his identification card. He asked to see my ID also, but I acted like I didn’t understand what he wanted from me. It soon became obvious, that this man was extremely drunk, and also the more important fact to the story, that he was also an off-duty police officer. He was very aggressive with Luis by yanking him around by the arm, trying to retain both of us, along with the group of girls that had accompanied us to the village.

As this altercation continued, a crowd gathered around Luis and I as this police officer was trying to arrest Luis. He became more violent and was trying to head butt Luis in the face. At this point, I was very confused and didn’t understand what the problem was, and why we were getting stopped. I did understand that this officer had Luis’ identification card and wouldn’t give it back, but was unsure of the other details. As the officer continued on with his drunken rage, Luis continued to tell all of us to leave him and I needed to get the girls home.

My heart was very conflicted because I wanted to make sure that the girls were safe, but I didn't want to leave Luis to get beat up. As the officer yelled at me to stay, I ended up moving the girls up the road to safety, with Luis’ cell phone in hand, calling Pieter to come and get them and also to help Luis and I get out of this situation.

When Pieter arrived in the village, I sent him down to where Luis and the crowd were gathered in the street. He soon returned and the girls and I piled in and we were off to the jail where Luis was now being taken by the officer. As we weaved through the narrow village streets, I tried to bring Pieter up to speed with what I knew about why the officer was taking Luis away. My knowledge was very limited to why, but I did know that the officer wanted to know why we were in the village, and why Luis was friends with white people.

Shortly after pulling into jail parking lot, the crowd arrived and it had grown to be much larger than before. The news traveled through the village quickly, and it now included the majority of the local staff of the house. All of the Educator staff of the house stood among the crowd, as the police chief was now involved, along with this intoxicated officer. It was obvious that the crowd was very much in support of Luis and the outreach work that is done by the baby house. It was a stressful and somewhat scary situation, but it was also a beautiful picture of how much the community stands behind the work that is happening at the baby house.

It ended up, that the drunken officer wanted money from us because we were white. He made the excuse that we had taken pictures of him while drinking (which we did not do), and because of that he was going to arrest Luis and I unless we paid him off in a bribe. He said that he was going to press charges against us, but when we showed up at the police station the next morning to process the paperwork, he was still at home sleeping off his hangover.

hello old friends

Today, I finally had time to go visit Mary and Jacobi. These two people are the elderly couple that I worked to help last summer. We built an outdoor kitchen with coal stove, and installed water for them. Mary was walking a long distance with buckets to carry water back to her house daily. It was really great to see them both. They appeared to be in good health, and Jacobi is 84 years young. They are wonderful people, who are taking care of 5 of their grandchildren, and it was so good to reunite with them. When I asked Jacobi if I could turn on his water, he smiled and told me absolutely. It was neat to see both of them so appreciative of something that we as American take for granted most of the time. I hope to spend some more time at their house in my next couple of weeks.


I have new projects that I am working on. I have started to work on installing water at one of the educator's house. Gloria is the "big momma" of the baby house, and we became good friends last summer. Currently she is leaving her house at midnight, and walking extremely far to a well, that is only running for a short time during the night, to carry water all the way back to her house for her family. She is so excited that I am going to help her with getting water at her house. I hope that it makes her life easier.

I am also working at Isabelle's house (another educator at the baby house), to install all of the wiring and connect electricity to her house. This will improve her living situation and also create a work space for one of her family members, who is a barber. He needs electricity to use his clippers to cut men's hair.

We have also been painting a mural in the baby's rooms that has turned out beautifully. I will post pictures when I get a chance to upload them. Until then, check out my flickr account for more photos of what is happening in Mozambique.

say hello to the birthday boy!

check out this new blog

So I have a confession to make, I have been working on something else while here in Mozambique. It involves another blog, and I think that you all need to go and check it out.

Amy G. and I have created a photo project. Before I left, we set up many different topics that we would both try to capture with our cameras. It has been somewhat like a photo scavenger hunt, where she is looking for an image that represents the topic in the United States and I am trying to find an image that represents the topic while here in Mozambique.

I hope that you enjoy our work. Go check it out at this link: decidedly different. You can leave us comments with ideas for other topics to seek out in this photo cultural study.

New Portraits

Much to Do

The house is extremely busy, with so many things to get done. It is hard to not be overwhelmed by everything that is going on.

Today is the first day that all of the help in the house is on their vacation. I feel much like a project manager, making sure that everyone is completing their assigned jobs. I hope to see the house running like clockwork in the next few days.

We are working on painting both of the bedrooms. The colors are beautiful and when they are completed, they will both have murals painted on the walls. So at the moment both the girls and boys bedrooms are empty and all of the children have moved their beds to the kitchen. It seems that they think that it is a big slumber party, and are having lots of fun, but are not getting much sleep.

Social workers from the Social Welfare Office have been showing up daily with new children and families that need help. The last two days they have brought the family along with them, which helps us to assess their situation, but makes it extremely hard to not offer assistance. Finances are spread thin, everyone needs our help, and it is really overwhelming.

Baby Antonio, arrived at the house two nights ago, and is doing well. His little body was so weak that he didn’t seem to have the energy to even cry. It is encouraging to hear him cry when he is hungry. I was holding him this morning before I left the infant house to come to the other house, his body seems so frail, but can already tell that his skin is healthier, his cradle cap is healing, and that he has more strength in his arms. It will be interesting to me, to see him improve over the next few weeks while I am here.

I am also working on building bunk beds for the girl’s bedroom at the moment. I am learning to weld with Sergio, Pieter and Rika’s next-door neighbor. I gave Sergio money to go buy all of the metal supplies for the beds, and we are hopefully going to build them this afternoon. This will get the children out of the playpens that they have slept in since they were infants.

By the way, trips visit to the children’s families are being scheduled and are always an adventure of some sort. I am excited about the visits next week to Idrussi and Quiteria’s families. Both of these trips are really far away, and one will probably end up being an overnight trip, which means camping and hopefully good adventure.

The Team Has Arrived and a New Baby

After an overnight stay in Johannesburg, the team arrived at the Maputo National Airport. They seemed to have travel well, but were somewhat tired. We spent the day getting situated, unpacking, and organizing supplies. The girls were really excited when they found out that we were going to be spending our nights at the 2nd babyhouse, which is where all of the new infants live. The girls passed around the three infants for the majority of the afternoon and it was an all around good day.

Today, there is a good chance that a new three-month-old baby, named Tony, will join the ranks of the house. It just depends if the Social Welfare Office has their paperwork in order. The house has only been functioning for a few months and is already getting close to reaching its maximum capacity of 6 children. There is such a great need for people to take care of these children without families in Mozambique. The situation is overwhelming at times.

Adding the 2nd babyhouse has doubled the budget of this ministry, and is spreading the finances thin. It is extremely encouraging to see Pieter and Rika show such confidence and faith, that their financial support will continue to show up, and the needs of the children will continue to be met.

Prepare for Departure

With a few friends seeing us off at the airport, we left Thursday just after 1:00 in the afternoon from Kansas City. Both Christie and I had the thought; “I sure hope all of our bags make it to our final destination.” We boarded the plane and set out on our journey both planning to sit by the other for the next 25 hours straight. When we arrived in Amsterdam, we realized that the Dutch Airline KLM had us sitting apart from each other on totally different rows. We quickly remedied this horrific situation of separation anxiety, by a quick conversation with the help desk. As you can see, our faces say it all, “Thank you KLM, you made our flight enjoyable.”


As we flew across the entire continent of Africa to Johannesburg, I realized again that Africa is so ridiculously gigantic. The size of this continent is unbelievable. It took us over 11 hours to fly from the Netherlands to South Africa. At least three of those hours were spent fly over desert that looked like the picture below. The desert went for as far as my eyes could see in all directions. It was really hard to grasp just how big the sand dunes were, because there was nothing to reference (like cars or houses). It was also interesting to me, just how captivated I was by the monotony of endless amounts of sand. It was beautiful in an obscure sort of way. I woke up Christie to see it, but she didn’t seem as impressed as I was with the landscape.



When we arrived in Johannesburg, we weren’t sure if our bags were going to be on the baggage carousel, or if they had been checked all the way through to our destination that we left for the following morning. We lucked out and found them coming out as we made our way through the South African Customs. This was a relief because we were sure that our bags were going to spend the night in the Johannesburg airport, where bags are often looted and stolen.

We made our way out of the airport and were greeted by my friend Henry, who lives close to the airport and graciously opened up his house to us for the evening. We ate a small dinner, had some good conversation, and headed for bed. Surprisingly, Christie and I already had adjusted our bodies to the seven-hour time zone difference, and went to bed on time and slept all the way through the night. In the morning we took Henry out for breakfast at one of my favorite restaurants in South Africa, and headed back to the airport for our last short flight to Nelspruit, South Africa.

When we arrived in Nelspruit, Pieter, Rika, and their three boys were waiting with big smiles on their faces. It was like walking out to family that I hadn’t seen in almost year. It is so good to be back and sharing life with this wonderful family. It is even better this year, because I am getting to share it with many people from my community of friends in Kansas City.

The rest of the team joins Christie and I tomorrow morning. I will be at the airport bright and early, to greet them with a happy smile. I hope that they have traveled well, grown closer as friends, and are well rested, because they will be extremely busy keeping up with this wonderful household of toddlers.