Early morning visitors

     In Alaska, the only thing I usually saw on my porch were squirrels and birds and the neighbors dogs..  I loved our deck in the early morning hours when it wasn't winter.  It was one of my favorite quiet places to observe nature and to just be happy.  I am having a little different experience in our home here in Quelimane in the mornings.  We awake to the sound of the guard sweeping outside the house with his little brush about 5am; the neighbors car alarm going off and in my quiet times, here is a sample of what I have seen, just this week.....

A picture is worth a thousand words, right?  Right outside the door!

This guy didn't get the memo about sticky fly paper. It was sad because
his heart was still beating. These ghost lizards are my least favorite
as they have red eyes and seem translucent.

These snails are so big and so slimy.  After a rain you can see them on
the front porch, the side walls or along the street.  I asked about
eating them and the locals laughed and said "no".  I am so
grateful.

It all flows downhill

I had a great education on Mozambican life on Christmas Eve and I could hardly wait to reduce it to writing--but i stifled my excitement about it in deference to the delicate sensibilities of those who might not have considered it appropriate fare for Christmas day reading.

Houses produce waste--both of the liquid and solid variety.  I had been under the impression that the sewer pipes that I see in the back whisk it away in a flash (just like the wind does to the fallen leaves of Camelot--at night of course).  Well, apparently not.  They use what might be called a modified septic system here: Pipes leave the house, bearing liquids and solids and run to cement boxes buried in the ground.  The pipe to the sewer flows from these boxes near their top.  Solids stay in the boxes and the liquids drain off in the sewer pipe.  Well, after a period of time, those boxes become full and those solids begin to back up into your home (no more description needed I believe).  That necessitates removing the cemented lid of the box and emptying it out (into a hole in the yard which you have dug for this express purpose).  Then the box cap is cemented back into place and life goes on pleasantly as before you became aware of the issue.  This entire process played out at our home on Christmas eve.  It took six hours work for each of two men and cost about a hundred dollars.  I believe that it was money well spent (as I just don't think that Debbie would have gotten it done in time by herself on Christmas Eve).

The plumbing site described above.  Visible is the sewer pipe and the two caixas or septic boxes that are about six feet deep. 

Part of the whole water system is the water tank on the roof which is the actual source of water for the house.  Everything is gravity fed so at least we still have running water for a couple of days from this 1500 liter tank when the city water runs out.  And since gravity does not require electricity, we have water when the power is out too.

This tank on the ground receives water directly from the city system (irregular at best).  A pump will send water from this tank to the tank on top of the house.  That is subject to electricity availability of course.  All in all, the system works fairly well and we are rarely without water (not since the week we arrived and yesterday).  Now, water pressure is another matter--we have only what gravity through small-diameter pipes will provide--which is simply dribbles.  We do not use a massaging shower head.

unsilent night

We had the young missionaries over for lunch and dinner on Christmas day and facilitated  their calling home using our skype and internet connection.  (for the uninitiated, lds young missionaries only call home on Christmas and Mother's day)  Judging from the reaction of young men and parents, the exercise was a success.  There were a few tears on the Mozambican side and I suspect a few on the Brazilian and US sides as well.  I continue to marvel at the technology that makes videoconferencing between multiple people in multiple countries easy and nearly free.  I was expecting poor connections but it was mostly very clear.  The only trouble was lack of time and we finally had to give up on our own calls at 2 a.m. and go to bed.  We did have a delightful talk with our own missionary son though  "Elder Osborn, this is Elder Osborn").

Opening christmas gifts at the dinner table--Debbie was of course uncontrollable and has been shopping for little treats and trinkets for the missionaries for weeks--as well as reaching into her stash of precious baubles that she brought from home.

Among Debbies creations for the occasions were Mozambican capulanas trasformed into very manly-looking aprons.

My gift from Debbie was a pair of Muslim hats (neither of which was large enough to fit my misshapen head--but here appropriated here by Elders Brogan and Barlow.

My gift to Debbie was the one thing that she wanted more than any other--though she didn't quite know it.  A couple of days before Christmas, I found a place that fumigates houses for to kill insect infestations--guaranteeing three months of relief.  I gave Debbie a gift certificate for one fumigation (call me a hopeless romantic).  As promises are always easier for me than actual delivery, I also gave the elders a certificate for a shoe shine. 

Dashing through the snow

You may or may not have heard me mention that we live in Mozambique--whose culture is quite a bit different from that to which we are accustomed.  I am a little bit sensitive about being or becoming an "ugly american" who tries to impose my culture.  I am particularly sensitive in the church, where we have too many (imho) cultural trappings which we ignorantly assume sometime to be "gospel" truths.
Well, we decided to have a church Christmas party--with some cultural trepidation.  I asked one of our strong investigators to head it up--but she had to travel and put it back in my lap. 

We went very simple, planning to sing, show a christmas movie (on the TV that we bought ourselves this week for the purpose because the church physical facilities process is endless in Africa). sing some more and eat.  Between Debbie and the young missionaries, I lost the cultural battle.  We were decorated with paper chains and snowflakes (it appears that Elder Barlow possesses a snowflake gift, creating spectacular ones--some featuring embedded fish and Mozambican maps).  Santa hats were worn and English christmas music played from ipods as background.  We worried that people might not come--as the holiday is just not done here as elsewhere.  The evening however went wonderfully, with about 75 coming(remember that 56 is the most we have ever had at church) (interesting that a few men came after leaving wives home to tend children).  Debbie had made gift bags for children over my strenuous objections ("you just don't DO that here)--which were of course a wonderful hit with the kids).  A very very nice evening. with cakes provided by Debbie and Elder Derrickson and the bakery--though Elder D's pineapple upside down cake was widely recognized as the best).  It ended about 9 pm (2100 here) which is a problematic time for families with children to get home--as bike taxis are mostly gone by then--so I volunteered to take mothers with babies home.  All in all, a very nice evening that the local group absolutely loved--we drove them home to the strained strains of them trying to get the long "glorias" right in Angels We Have Heard On High.  A lot of fun it was.  Wishing you and yours a very Feliz Natal.

You will note Debbie was ordered by the women to look a little more African tonight so she put on her capulana and head scarf. 

This is perfectly in keeping with all Mozambican transportation laws.

The joy of cooking..

     I am really grateful to have a good kitchen.  I have a refrigerator, a propane stove, a washing machine, a micro-wave and even a portable mixer.  But cooking in this humidity is draining.  This morning, thinking I would beat the heat, I started a cake for the group activity tonight.  I actually had sweat pooling down my back, pouring down my face and pooling in places I won't mention here.  That was in the first ten minutes.  You have to pre-heat he oven for 15 minutes.  By then you are dead.  But here are the results.

The only plug in the kitchen.  It's either the fan OR the mixer.

It actually looks like a real Texas sheet cake; success at last!

Thirty eggs for Christmas breakfast.  The flies went nuts over the
chocolate cake batter.  They are good protein aren't they?

...was the son of a preacher man

We have such a fascinating thing going on here in Quelimane.  Among the many people to whom we are teaching the gospel (and I have alluded to this before I know) are several people who are pastors (or holding significant responsibility) in other faiths. They are among the brightest and best of those being taught.  There are about six of them in total.  Three of them in particular I spend a fair amount of time with and have met with regularly--they are very very impressive people with honest and sincere hearts, inquiring minds and, great faith. I  am, by nature, a cynical and skeptical man--but I really like these guys.  They attend our services generally on Sunday--balancing time with their own pastoral responsibilities.  I don't know how things will turn out in the end, but I am currently optimistic.

These three, with whom I am well acquainted all share a common concern: "how can we get our congregations taught and converted as well"?  As I say, it is a fascinating issue and challenge.  One has a congregation here in town and two satellite groups some distance away.  We have committed to come preach to the local group in January, but I have challenged him to begin to teach the new truths he has learned to his flock (he says that he has already begun--but will begin to do so in a more direct and systematic way).  His group is about 200 in town and smaller groups outside.  Another, who also leads multiple congregations has already brought his assistant pastors to church with us.  He also has three groups but they pose a bit more of a logistical problem.  His largest congregation, which allegedly consists of 600 (with 300 attending) lives on a little island (a 10 minute canoe ride off shore--which likely means an hour by my american watch).  I have committed to him to come and teach his group (at least once).  Our young missionaries , however, are forbidden to take non-commercial watercraft (the church doesn't care quite so much about their geezer missionaries) and Debbie expresses that this is not her idea of what she signed up for), so I will go alone or await the next visit of another senior couple sometime in January to make the trip. 

Teaching a large group of people from a Pentecostal-type tradition poses a number of challenges, limitations and difficulties--which I am wrestling with and trying to figure out.  These distant congregations are logistically problematic--but I have generally promised to visit once to get a feel for things but I proceed with caution and realistic expectations.  There is generally a large element (not trying to be critical), in these groups which is attracted solely to the emotional component of the pentecostal worship experience--which is not likely to be attracted to us nor able to engage in the gospel experience that is our objective. 

We have another group which sends members from 300 km away on the Malawi border--and begs weekly us to come.  I have likewise promised one visit, but that one will take a while.  I try and be completely skeptical--but I am so often very very impressed with some of the people who come into town and meet with us, that I continue to have some hope, despite the odds and logistics.

Like I said, it is a fascinating thing we have going on here (well, at least it is to me).  Now if we didn't have a house overrun with ants, life would be almost perfect (well, except for ...)

This is the"caju" fruit--or cashew.  The nut that we call a cashew comes sits on top of the fruit--so when you have a pound of cashew nuts, that represents an awful lot of fruit that had to be harvested.  The fruit is good for juice, with a lot of sugar.  Just taking a bite of it, it is extremely astringent and will make your mouth pucker more than anything you have ever tasted.

unchanging as the sea

We celebrate our thirty-fifth wedding aniversary today.  I can see a couple of changes in me but certainly none in Debbie.  We are planting a mango tree today (part of the wild celebration) that we are told will bear fruit within the next 16 months before we leave.

rowed the boat ashore

Monday is what in missionary lingo we refer to as P-day or preparation day or our day off from normal labor.  It's the day when the young missionaries write home, do laundry and shopping and try to see the local sights.  We try and facilitate that day for them as much as we can.  Yesterday, after letters and shopping, we piled them all in the truck and went exploring.  We had heard that one north/south road in town, if followed for a ways, take us to the ocean.  Well, it didn't.  It took us through interesting country--much of it primitive, but it became rougher and rougher, then a footpath, then less than that and finally ended up at an awfully wide river over which we had no hope of crossing.  We retraced our steps--going off on a another wild goose (or actually crocodile) chase or two before deciding to use the last couple of hours of the day to take the real road to Zalala beach.

When we got to the river we found how the locals traversed was in these dug-out canoes, which seemed to have had plenty of use and wear over the years.  Not all were sea-worthy.

On the way out we discovered this project underway.  It looks to me that one will have to be pretty skinny to fit in this canoe--and I worry a bit about the center of gravity.



The church ladies.....

     I thought I would introduce you to some of the ladies at church today as well as a couple of surprises we had this weekend:

This is Esperansa.  She heads up the women's group.
Yesterday she gave a talk on dressing modestly and encouraged the women
to sacrifice for the two hours of church on Sunday to dress in their best.  She is
so strong and was hoping to go the temple next year, but her husband is
falling in to inactivity, which is so very sad. She joined the church in Maputo last winter.

This is Dina.  She is the one investigator I have met who really understands the
gospel.  She understands repentance and having a change of heart. She had a dream
that she would teach the gospel principles class, so today we gave her that chance.  She
did such a great job.  She is 18 yrs. old with two kids and a partner who isn't
that interested in the church.  She is full of faith.

This is Madalena.  She comes to church with Dina.  She had a lot to say about what to wear to
church in the women's meeting.  She came today in a brand new capulana and head scarf.  She
is from Nampula, where they always where the head scarf.  She looked beautiful.  She has a
husband who doesn't believe in God, but allows her to be taught.

This woman is  the wife of an investigator who has a church on an island
off the coast near Quelimane.  She came to the women's meetings yesterday and
although she doesn't speak much Port. she seemed to enjoy it.  Today when I took another
woman's picture, she took my hand, showed me her nice clothes and asked for me
to take a picture.  So I guess she understood part of the lesson.  She speaks a local dialect.

This is Velma.  What a story.  The Elders met her at an investigators home yesterday.
She is 17 and grew up for five years in Alexandria, Virginia.  She speaks great English.  Her father
was a diplomat who left his wife (her step-mother) and abandoned the family, so she
got deported back to Mozambique.  She has had a very hard adjustment coming to this
African lifestyle after living in the US.  She lives far away from the city and it is
expensive to take a bus in  The Elders gave her some literature in English to take and read. She is
someone we will worry about a lot.

In Africa, you can hardly get one person in a picture.  I was trying to get one person and all these people joined in.  I love it.  On the left is Sister Bonini, from Brazil.  She and her husband spoke today about the importance of following God and getting married and not following the traditions of their fathers.  The woman next to her
has a husband who works for the fire department close to our house and is learning abut the church.  You never know
who will show up from one week to the next.

Santa does exist and he found us in Quelimane.  Elder Bonini bought our furniture
this week and drove it up this weekend.  He put on this hat and said he was
Papa Noel, bringing our gifts. We have two chairs and a love seat.  We all took
turns sitting in them and relaxing in comfort last night.

i

This was our present to ourselves, a grill.  We have been looking at them along side
the road for sale for about a month.  You might notice that it is made of a wheel.  Yep, it is!
Others are square and made out of other car parts.   We have to buy a big bag of carbao, or
charcoal and we are ready for burgers!!

beginning to look...

This is our actual Christmas tree--shown here in its actual magnificent size.  Below it are three mangoes, currently in the height of their season.  There are so many different types of mangoes (manga in Portuguese) (and three different varieties shown here), all of which I love and Debbie tolerates.  I try and eat least one a day and currently the fridge is full (they are even better chilled on a hot day).  Below is a little market on the street which demonstrates the current abundance of mangoes.  A you drive down the highway out of town, you find the road littered with orange colored mango seeds--as everyone walking on the road (which is EVERYONE) is picking mangoes, eating them and discarding the seeds on the ground.

This is Santos Gideon--our temporary guard/gardener.  Our full timer, Bernardo, lost a brother and asked for 40 days off to go to the jungle to be with family.   He brought me a relative to interview and hire in his absence.  I liked Santos and hired him for the 40 day period.  After 3 days he came to me with hands cupped in front of him (the Mozambican begging pose that we know oh so well).  I asked him what he needed and he responded that he had no food (and hadn't for three days). You can see that he does not have alot of excess meat on his bones.  But apparently, he wasn't going to last until month-end when he would be paid.  We gave him some bread and bananas and mangoes (of course) and a little advance on what he had thus far earned--and today he seems to be a little more energetic with a few calories in him.

Back to Christmas, the holiday does not pack the punch here as it does in the states (of course--who can commercialize and secularize like we Americans can)?  But even the underlying religious significance of the day is not widely known, recognized nor celebrated.  It is a bit comical to see commercial establishments here with western decorations which feature snow and sleighs etc.  Not one in a hundred Mozambicans have ever seen snow and most have no idea what it really is.  We are not likely to have a white Christmas this year (unless you count most of my hair).  I recall my first mission to Brazil which featured no gifts nor traditional trappings on Christmas--yet was one of the very best of my memory.  We have been working with the young missionaries to plan an activity for the church group--not quite sure how to address it culturally--though we are told that food is always a hit--and they do love to sing--so we have much of it covered there.  Sometimes it is hard for us to both realize and accept that some cultural things of ours things don't translate readily to Mozambique--no matter how much we want them to.  Debbie desperately wants to go caroling--but it is just something that I can't quite see happening here. 

bless the beasts and the children...

We whimsically decided yesterday to drive to Marromeu, perhaps the most inaccessible city in the mission--situated on the Zambezi River and reached via a 150 km dirt road.  It will, in a few months be among our areas of responsibility and we were a bit curious about the lay of the land there.  We took Elder Gee who was transferred there from Quelimane (we have enjoyed Elder Gee--a good man--of few words, but in Portuguese they are all spoken well).  The trip to Marromeu is shorter than most journeys we take from here--about 350 km in total and we made it in about 4.5 hours each way.  We spent a couple of hours visiting with the Elders (and Debbie doing a white glove inspection of the hovel in which they live), taking them to lunch, delivering an abused (not by his parents) young boy back to his parents, and also meeting with the Marromeu branch president and his wife.  We made it home just before dark.  The road to Marromeu has been known to give up some wildlife to visitors from time to time (Elder Brogan allegedly saw some impalas on his last trip (the four-legged rather than four-wheeled variety)--but we were blessed only with an abundance of babboons (or is it a bevy?) and a long green snake which slithered by.  Elder Gee appreciated the air conditioned luxury of our back seat (as there is no bus service to Marromeu, hitching a ride in the back of a truck is the normal method of delivery for a missionary.  The missionaries there spend half their days working on a construction project at the chapel site there--so it gives them an unusual schedule and workload.


Our farewell meal (chicken parmesan) for the departing elders Gee and Humphries.  Elder Humphries speaks the most beautiful and comprehensible Mozambican portuguese of any missionary I have heard.

This happens to be the only restaurant in Marromeu--within the locked compound of the sugar factory there.  One only has to wait an hour and a half to get served.

This is Presidente Bata and his wife of the Marromeu branch.  We were very very impressd with this man.  He is a bit overwhelmed by his responsibilities--he is s school teacher by day.

We are not quite sure about the meaning of this sign.  Any ideas?

We have small frogs here at the house which climb walls and most everything else.  I remember reading about a very very poisonous African tree frog at one time, so I have been somewhat hesitant to pick these up and move them--though death would not likely be instantaneous.

One morning this week, I heard a scream coming from the bathroom.  It did not come from the spider.

We saw probably about 40 baboons in the trees next to the road as we drove.  They like bananas we discovered.

Though warned by this sign to not run over any hyenas, we saw none.

...and show you things I've seen

Yes, we do look like twins, but you can tell us apart by Debbie's lack of a tie and her shorter hair.  We are standing in front of our lime tree full of funny bumpy limes. I don't think that we are looking nearly as old as some people here seem to think we are.  In a discussion with some 20-somethings the other day, i invited them to guess my age.  The first guess was 67.  It must be a just a racial thing (I keep telling myself)..

This a coraco do boi  or bull-heart fruit picked from the back yard--well yess, picked from the back yard but belonging to the neighbor's tree.  The picture below is of the same fruit sliced open.  It's texure is a bit gross but Debbie thought that it tasted like sweet texas pink grapefruit.  Note the exceedingly boring tie--I am hoping that my children are sending me ten with color for Christmas.

On the small cross street that we take to and from our house, there is a deep depression (Prozac would not help) in which forms a deep lake after it rains.  The puddle (about 18 inches deep) stetches fully accross the street (lined by fences) eliminating the possibility of someone on foot passing on dry ground.  People either wade or await a good samaritan like me to make the back of their truck available for passage.



At the side of the road outside the city are vendors of everything--including, in one area, woodworkers and carvers.  This carved chest (and many more like it) was not terribly expensive and I really coveted it--but couldnt quite figure out how I would be carrying it home.  I dickered over the small carved box on top but just couldn't deal with the $14 price tag.  We will go back another day and try and get it for $12.

We recently obtained a long-awaited sign on the front of the church.  I hung it first with parachute cord--but since improved it so it can now swing freely (and without noise) in the wind.  It's remarkable to note how much walk-in traffic we get because of the sign.  Purists will note that we do not have the logo typeface precisely right in a couple of ways--but I would remind you that this is Mozambique--and everything, including the author, is a bit off here.

This is Pasqua (or Easter), our maid whose dress I loved.  I suggested the fabric and design to Debbie.  We seem to have a difference of opinion on what constitutes acceptable missionary atire for a Sister in Africa.