Tomorrow morning at 5AM we bid farewell to Mozambique and its beautiful people. We'll be traveling into Kruger National Park tomorrow and most of Friday before we head back to Joburg and the airport. Connectivity and all that will be sparse at best in the Park, so our last update may just be our goodbyes at O.R Tambo Airport in Joburg. We'll keep you posted...these guys have been incredible! Everywhere we've gone people have commented on their commitment to love people and to working hard when asked to do so...
Later
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Masana
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| The boys from Masana |
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August 1, was a great day, today we went to Masana, which is
a home for street boys who have run away from home and live on the streets.
It’s an awesome program, the people who work there work with the kids and
families to find out why they ran away hoping that they can get back home and
live with their families. So yesterday we had a little preview of the kids that
we were going to see today. We went there to go and have a cultural experience
by killing some chickens we would have for lunch with them today. It was a very
different experience since it was pretty crazy to watch your eventual lunch die
right in front of you, and I helped plucked one of the chickens, which was
really weird, but oddly fun for me.
Today
was one of the best days I’ve ever experienced with the Masana Olympics we did
today. So pretty much what we did was show up this morning as school started
for them and we got all of our stuff and waited for school to end. Then once
school ended we walked about a block up the street to a field that was all
dirt. I was a little skeptical at first, especially since when we got there we
saw three policeman walking off the field with AK47’s, but then I thought, when
am I ever going to get to play soccer in a third world country with a bunch of
street kids. So we played a couple of games, one of which was a game that was
the Mozambiqueans vs. The Americans. This was a game in which every member of
the team made the equivalent of a human knot and everyone had to pull the kids
apart. When I sat down to get pulled apart I was thinking, this is going to be
the dirtiest I’m ever going to be, and I’m wearing a white shirt. It turned out
being a great time, and getting dirty and being able to roughhouse with some
kids was a great change of pace today. Then after that we played soccer on this
complete dirt field with rocks and glass, and half of the kids were shoeless
with was crazy since I couldn’t imagine doing that. Playing on that dirt field
was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever one, but easily the most fun
thing I’ve done, and I’d love to do that again. So around noon we went back to
the home and we hung out for about an hour and played lots of different games,
learned Portuguese, and roughhoused until lunch was served. When lunch was
served we had chicken, rice, salad, and beets. The chicken which we had watch
been killed yesterday, was so fresh and delicious, and the rice was so amazing,
I’m not sure why but it wasn’t just the usual boring bland rice we usually
think of.
So
after lunch we hung out for about an hour or so, then we had to leave and the
goodbye was really difficult for me because even though I could only understand
about two of the kids, it was one of the most fun filled days I’d ever had, and
I want to go back there sometime. After that we went to a market that looked
very similar to other markets we’d gone to, and at the end of that we parted
with our good friend, Rafael. This was a really difficult goodbye since he had
been so good to us, with translation, learning Portuguese, showing us around,
and just having fun with us. He was a great friend who I’m going to miss and
hope that he and his new fiancé do great things for themselves and everyone
else they meet because I’m sure they will. After that we got a tour of downtown
Maputo and went to an Old Portuguese fort, learned some of the history of
Mozambique, and went to the Indian Ocean. It was a great day and will be one
that I’m never going to forget.
-Pearce 
Project Purpose
July 30th, and 31st
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| At Project Purpose |
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| At Project Purpose |
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| At Project Purpose |
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| At Project Purpose |
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| At Project Purpose |
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| At Project Purpose |
On Monday we had our first day at Project Purpose. It is a
center for women working the streets and their children. Right now there are no
women living in the center, only kids. So today was our VBS day for the kids.
We spend a little bit of time in the morning playing with the kids and getting
to know them. We read the Bible story and did crafts with them. The kids had a
great time. I was surprised at how receptive the kids were. I can tell they
really love God. On Tuesday we went back to Project Purpose and did some work
for them. We started off by packing boxes of bras into the storage crate. Then
the group split and a few of us went to go and paint a mural on one of the
walls. They painted a beautiful water fountain. The other group built a sand
box and a jungle gym of tires in the yard for the kids to play on. I didn’t
work on the mural so I don’t know what they went through, but I did work in the
yard and I know it was very hard. It was hot, and there was a lot of digging in
hard ground. We worked as a team and pushed through to make an awesome play
area for the kids. As we were working it was hard to get past the fact that we
were tired and sick of working, but when we were working on the tires and
turned around to the finished sand box, all the kids had jumped in and were
having a great time. It really made all of our work worth it seeing the smiles
and joy on their faces. The sense of accomplishment was enormous after both
groups finished working. Before we left the kids decided that they wanted to
pray for us, so two little boys said prayers over our group. We couldn’t
understand much because they were speaking Portuguese, but one thing we could
pick out a lot was thank you. It was a magical moment having little kids
praying over us when we are normally praying for them. After we left, the group
had a choice of two activities to do. One was shopping for fabric, and the
other was killing chickens for the next days feast at Masana. I went with the
boys to go kill chickens and everyone else went shopping. I didn’t kill a
chicken, but I did pluck the feathers off and it was one of the oddest
experiences of my life. Overall our two days at Project Purpose were amazing
and I will never forget them.
-Mandi
Mozambique...
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| Leah, Max, Kim and our new friend James |
The
past three days have been a blur of new people, places, and experiences that
are unlike anything any of the team encountered while in South Africa. The
beginning of our adventure to Mozambique began with nine already exhausted
teenagers being stuffed into a van with eleven humongous suitcases full of
donations to the family we were staying with while we were in Mozambique, on
top of our entire personal luggage. So just take a moment to image all nine of
us in a van, fitting eight people in the back with luggage to the ceiling on a
six and a half hour car trip to Mozambique. As you can image all of us were
ready to jump out of the windows by the time we made it to the Terpstra’s house
in the heart of Maputo. By bedtime all of us were exhausted and excited to
finally have time to rest since the next day we were told we would have a
“cultural experience” that none of us would forget.
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| James, Hannah, Mandi and Eric |
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| Titos, Pearce, Ashley, Katie and Francesco |
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| Trying to learn some new dance moves |
On
Sunday the team was woken up so that we could go to church like any of us
typically would on any normal week in the U.S. except for the fact that this
service was spoken completely in Portuguese, the primary language in
Mozambique. The language barrier at this church was so prominent to us since in
South Africa all of us could communicate perfectly to the people there. From that
moment on the team realized that talking with people here might be a little
harder than expected due to the fact that no one in our group knows Portuguese.
After church we headed back to the Terpstra’s to find ourselves being greeted
by three of their close friends that are native to Mozambique. We then found
out that this was going to be our cultural experience that was talked about
yesterday by our host family. Our mission for this “cultural experience” was
for all of the teens to be broken up into three teams and given one of their
friends as our guides for the day. Our guides were to take us through the area
in which they lived, and let us walk a typical day in their lives here in
Mozambique. The area in which our
guides lived was considered a working class barrio, but by the our standards in
the United States it looked way worse than the poorest parts of Denver. The
barrio was a lot like my trip to the barrio of La Chureca in Nicaragua last
year because this barrio was also located within a trash dump. As my group
walked next to the massive trash dump, little children looked through the trash
so that they could find plastic or tin to sell later, it broke my heart to see
such small children sifting through trash so they could make maybe a couple cents
per can. As we went on in our trip in this barrio my guide James took our group
to his house. James’s house was a
small concrete building that fit his mother, father, grandma, brothers, and his
sister; he also stated that if you wanted a room of your own in his family you
could build a new concrete room on your own. By the standards of America, James had next to nothing
compared to all of the things we own, however his family actually had all of
the necessities that one needs in life. They had food to feed their bellies
every night, a room to sleep in, and they even had a small TV in the corner of
their house; they were the perfect example that in the United States we have so
much excess that we don’t need but they survive on just the necessities of life. After walking through James’s barrio
for another hour or so we weren’t quite done with our cultural experience yet!
We had to ride a shappa back home, which is the equivalent of a taxi in the
U.S. except for the fact about 15 people were shoved into an right person van,
so personal space was not an option. At a shappa station change Mandi and I got
to see first hand just how crazy Mozambique could actually be due to the fact
that a drunken man followed us through the entire market on our way to the shappa.
I was so glad to have the protection of James in this moment for his knowledge
of Mozambique and his ability to remain calm despite the panic of my group.
This moment made me realize just how different I really was in this country,
and how most people in Mozambique aren’t used to seeing white people walking
through their markets or using their tradition way of transportation. Seeing
the way Mozambicans truly lived opened my eyes to just how neat and tidy the
U.S. is, not just in the way of hygiene, but in the way Americans don’t
typically live outside of their bubble and put themselves in sometimes trivial
situations.
The
day ended with an amazing dinner made by our host family surrounded by all of
our guides (aka our new best friends) and amazing stories of the other group’s
“cultural experience”. While doing the dishes, our guides attempted to teach us
how to dance in their own personal Mozambican way. As laughter of our failed
dance attempts with our new friends erupted we continued the dance party for an
entire hour. I don’t think I have ever met a group of people such as our guides
who have so much love of life and laughter even though their life situation may
not be ideal. Despite the fact they may lack the material objects people have
in America, their lives are so much richer than ours in pure happiness for the
little things that we American’s may not appreciate. The Mozambican way is
truly different than our own and it took a true “cultural experience” for all
of us to see just how different we really are. Our guides are amazing friends
we will never forget and the day they let us experience was a perfect
introduction to Mozambique.
Hannah
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