Busy Weekend

This picture depicts those who attended church today and witnessed the formation of the official Quelimane Branch of the LDS church.  It was a good day for all of us here. 

We look like we could be brothers don't we?  Here are President Osborn and his two counselors (newly ordained to the MP along with four others).  Amizade and Rui here are coincidentally the male half of the only two couples whose marriages I have performed here in Mozambique.  The focus of our mission here for the next 5 months became a little clearer today as we learned that there are no new couples known to be in the "pipeline" to come to Mozambique.  We need to somehow transfer a lifetime of church leadership experience to the saints here in our remaining time.    The faithful members here have a great thirst for learning both the doctrines of the gospel but also the manner, customs and culture of the gospel.  Our strongest desire is to not screw it up--but to teach them exactly right, with nary a single stray or non integral teaching slipping in.  Wish us luck.



On Saturday, we finished the final touches of the painting of the chapel and I installed a couple more fans for cooling.  The project was not perfect, but it looked pretty good and was an addition of about 60% more space.  Note that the ceiling is covered with sleeping mats--as an economical decorating choice.

The chapel exterior whose color I selected but missed the desired shade by a few degrees.  Oh well.  The chapel is surrounded by eight large screened windows to provide some air movement on very hot and humid summer days.

I thought that this picture was beautiful.  Debbie organized a woman's choir complete with matching capulanas and hats for the special service today.  The choir was awful but they looked  very good.With Debbie are our dear young friends Edma and Aissa.  Debbie feels like she looks just a bit too much like Aunt Jamima here.

We had a lovely baptism on Saturday for Arlinda and her daughter Dyna.  To my surprise they asked me to perform the baptism.  Arlinda is an impressively strong and capable woman (who even has a car).  Her husband works in Maputo way down south where he too is being taught the gospel.

We took president and Sister Kretly to the Island of Idugo to let them see the progress of the clean water humanitarian project.  Here is a nearly-completed well. which lacks only the cement slab that will surround the well.



We passed these sleeping children, who, like sleeping children everywhere, look angelic (though they may be more demonic upon awakening).

These men on the Island ofIdugo are not smoking skinny filterless cigarettes--but rather consuming something that is only slightly less harmful--candy suckers provided by Sister Osborn.  They loved her.

We had a very nice crab chicken, and duck feast prepared for us at the close of our island tour.  Pictured are President and Sister Kretly and Amizade and Lurdes.

Forward momentum

Several times on these pages I have made mention of the Quelimane phenomenon of bike taxis.  They are everywhere here and one of our most-prayed-for things is to not run over one in our truck.  Bike taxis are the young missionary's most common means of transport.  They cost between 20 and 50 cents depending on how far you are trying to go.  I have always intended to take a ride on one some time, but a year in Quelimane had passed without taking the opportunity.  Well, our mission president, President Kretly, is in town (more on his visit later) and finding ourselves on foot and a distance from home, he decided that he wanted to give the bike taxi concept a try.  They do not defy the laws of physics--so there are a few challenges for a skinny 120 lb. guy on rough roads to lug a 220 lb. guy around.  But once they get up some speed, it is pretty smooth sailing.  We arrived at our destination intact and enlightened.

The Wheels of Justice

I had a surprise visit towards the end of last week. It was a process server and I was subpoenaed to appear in court here in Quelimane on the matter of the robbery from our car the previous week. We have had some previous experience with the Mozambican justice system. It has a reputation for being anything but swift. One young man of which we are aware spent over six months in jail awaiting a preliminary hearing on the validity of the charges against him. I was somewhat amazed to find that there was a hearing so soon--but much  more so when I found out that it was the final trial- only-ten days after the crime. It was later explained to me that I am a foreigner (I really a hadn't forgotten) and they wanted to impress me with Mozambican efficiency.

The photo (undoubtedly quite illegal to have taken) is of our robed judge on the bench. She was actually quite bright and impressive I thought and  moved through the trial with some real speed. It took about an hour. I was most impressed that she used the Latin phrase "flagrante delicto" a few times to describe the thief's apprehension (it means "red handed") and we use it in English with some additional nuances. The thief argued that he might possibly have committed the crime but he was drunk and should therefore be excused. The judge responded that he couldn't have been too drunk as he ran away at full speed for several blocks. He was sentenced to two years in prison with all but two months suspended. His mother and other family members in succession had all appeared at my door over the preceeding week, begging that I drop charges.  The thief was in jail for his final exams of high school so he also must repeat the year.

We had a nice beach outing on Monday--saying goodbye to Elders Berg, Gibson, and Williams who have all served here for about four months.  All good missionaries that we will miss.

This mother and child were in the surf, ten our fifteen yards offshore dragging a mosquito net agains the current (this section of the each is actually in the mouth of the river Supino)  to pick up small fish.  Their version of trawling.  Everybody needs protein and much of African's energy is spent in obtaining their daily requirement.

Location:Quelimane,Mozambique

Street Food

We were very tired one night and decided to try these grilled chicken kabobs made by the lady across the street.  Yes, mom I did eat one, but being a tad worried, I micro-waved them for another minute or so just in case they weren't done.  They were very good, and fast and easy.  There is a lot of food available on the street, so Elder Osborn dropped me off in a market with a handful of change to see what I could find.  Here are the results.  And let me say, I didn't eat anything I bought on that little trip.  I took it home to the guys painting the chapel and told them I was experimenting  in the mercado.  They were thrilled with the treats!

Little grills like this are set up everywhere.  Most cook little pieces of chicken.  Some
deep fry potatoes, both white and sweet.

With the on=set of the horrible heat, everyone is selling these popsicles.  They
have a little machine that fills the bags and then they tie them.  We
bought a couple and really wanted them, but know they are made with well water, so
we drove down the street and gave them to some little boys on the corner.

You see bag of bread for sale everywhere.  But these roll are from the
two most prominent bakeries in town, making them
more desirable.  The ones that are 2mt. each are from a bakery quite far
away, so this guy has good marketing skills. 1.5 for each roll is standard.

This were the most disgusting thin I found.  They are just made of
rice flour, formed into this soft roll. The texture is sort of like play dough.  Really gross to my mind and taste buds.

These peanut bars are sold everywhere.  Guys carry them around to businesses and
we see them in every little town.  They are hard as a rock, but cheap, 2 mt. each.

This lady had the most appealing food.  These are rolls and they looked
fresh.  The workers said they were very good.  The rolls I often see made
just with corn meal are hard and tasteless.  There are many versions of
donuts sold as well, but one questions how old the grease is that is used for them.

These drink are for sale outside the Mercado Central close to our
 house.  Notice that nothing is in it original container.  Suspicious?  You
see the lady pouring cold water into one bottle, milk (probably goat) is in
another and they buy big liters of soda and pour it into smaller bottles.  Old
plastic bottles are a valuable commodity.  People search the trash for them
daily.

The most common item sold seems to be coconuts.  There doesn't seem to be
a season for them, they are always available.  The cut them open with a big knife
called a catana and drink the milk and then dig out the soft fleshy part.  Anybody hungry???

A case of mistaken identity

Yesterday, a woman came to the door (and the back door of our home is next to the front door of the chapel) and told Debbie that she was there to speak with Pai Celestial--which is Heavenly Father in Portuguese. Well, metaphorically, isn't that why everyone comes to church, to interact with God in some way? Debbie responded in a supportive way and pointed out that our services were on Sunday at ten a.m. The woman, however insisted that she was there to speak with Pai Celestial right then. To help Debbie understand, she added further description: "you know, the fat, white guy".
Well, as the only fat white male in residence, I came out and spoke with her for a few minutes on the veranda (a nice woman, a widow with small children, who has been to church a couple of times and to whom we have given some food in hard times). After much insistence on my part that I was actually more accurately referred to as "Elder Osborn"' she made a small concession and began calling me Elder Pai Celestial.
Other than this bit of confusion, we had a nice discussion with her.

Location:Quelimane, Zambézia, Mocambique

Das Kapital

We have noted that here in Quelimane, labor is extremely inexpensive. I have crew of workmen, laborers, carpenters and stonemasons who are working on our chapel expansion project. The six of them will be here about a month--working hard,( if not always efficiently). They will be paid about $500 dollars for that month--for all of them.   Really, labor is just about free here which creates some interesting economic conditions--incentives and disincentives.

The picture above was taken in front of our house as workers unloaded a truckload of sand by hand.  They first loaded it by hand.  A dump truck would cost perhaps ten thousand dollars more than this cargo truck.  But with labor as cheap as it is, what would be the incentive to automate the unloading process rather than using men with shovels?  Likewise, there is no front-end loader at the yard to put the sand in the truck--there are men with shovels who take a much longer time, but they require no large capital investment.  We also bought crushed gravel a couple of days ago for the well project.  I am familiar with gravel crushing operations in the states, which are very capital intensive and use little labor.  Not so here, laborers use sledgehammers or a very arcane heating/cooling process to fracture rocks into smaller pieces rather than using expensive rock crushing equipment.  I am not criticizing the approach--it makes perfect sense where labor is so inexpensive.  And it is so inexpensive here because there is so little industry demanding a labor force.



This picture was taken on Idugo Island of the very first well from our clean water project.  It went very well with the labor provided by those who will use it and producing cleaner water than anyone on the island has ever seen.  We still have a concrete apron to construct around the well and a concrete cap with a more permanent frame and pulley system to lower a bucket.  A hand pump was briefly contemplated but ultimately rejected as a piece of technology that the people there do not really need--nor do they have the capacity to maintain a simple pump to keep it operational.  We are proud to have had a small part to play in this worthy project. Ten wells are to be created and four are currently in various stages of completion.
It is Idugo where the rainy season has historically brought deaths from cholera from well contamination.

Here is a view looking down.  This particular well is only about 5 or six meters deep.  The concrete ring walls were poured in place, one meter at a time with workman digging down under the ring and having it thus slip further and further into the earth--then adding another one-meter ring on top of the previous one.  The process worked well.

Debbie spearheaded, organized, taught, and cajoled the children of Quelimane into putting on the first ever primary children's program in our sacrament service on Sunday.  It turned out wonderfully.  The kids are pictured in the new addition to the chapel, where we were able to have them sit up front and separate.  (floor was still dirt and walls were unpainted, but it is approaching completion).

Road Weary

We made a quick trip to Beira the last few days to pick up some things.  We took the "jungle road" and visited Marromeu and did a little church work on the way.  We saw our fill of our known three species of monkey and, for the first time, saw a couple of wild deer-like creatures.  There is wildlife here after all it seems.  On the trip down, we were waved to the side of the road by a cop who informed me that he had a couple of people there with him who needed to get to Beira, and would I please give them a ride.  Not wanting to explore the consequences of refusal, I let them climb in the pick up bed for a very miserable six hours on dusty and bumpy dirt roads.  They seemed not to mind.

Our purpose in the trip was to pick up some extra chairs for our chapel and a new amplifier/speaker system as well.  We accomplished both in record time and were back on the road home.  You can see our expertly packed load here in the shadow of one of the more peresonality-laden boabab trees.  I liked the shape of this one.

This is an enormous termite mound from which has sprouted large trees over time.

Back home in Alaska, you can see occasional warning signs for bears in certain places.  They lack the mutilation graphics like this crocodile warning has however.  Our Humanitarian missionaries told us that they recently received a request for a well from a village which used as its justification that people kept getting eaten by crocodiles when they took water from the river.  It seemed like a pretty good reason for a well to me.

I couldn't get this picture to lay on its side, but you get the point I'm sure.  How many goats can you fit atop your minivan?

When mom has a bad day.

The young man in stripes (appropriately) came --to a youth activity tonight at the church, or rather, showed up at the tale end.  He asked for some water and attempted to enter the house--rebuffed, he demanded a cup of water then threw it down when it wasn't cold enough.  A few minutes later, our guards caught him in my car.  He ran, dropping many of my possessions as he did so.  The guards apprehended him after quite a chase and brought him back.  It was interesting to see the public participation in the event.  Our yard was full of law and order supporters.  Had there been a rope handy, we could easily have had a lynching.  He denied having come to do anything but pray at the church (or was it prey?).  We then spent some time at the police station and have to return tomorrow as well.  I had an internal debate about how to deal with this.  The items were of little value.  But he struck me as particularly nasty so I thought that some aversion therapy might help more than turning the other cheek.  I actually don't know what the right thing to do was.  But he is going away.

The twins spent time in our car as we helped their parents more on the endless process of getting marriage documents.

 

Colorful market in Beira.

 

One year gone

Tomorrow marks the completion of the first twelve months of our mission.  Don't take this wrong, but we feel like we have experienced every single minute of it.  I really can't say, "where has the time gone?", as it feels sometimes like we have been here for almost forever.  All that being said however, we are loving our mission thus far.  It is miserably hard, richly rewarding/enjoyable, and fairly easy--all on alternate days.  Actually, the rewarding and enjoyable part is a fairly constant--but some days are definitely easier than others.  One couple here in Mozambique recently extended their mission from 18 months to two years.  We take out hats off to Elder and Sister Banks, who are far more noble and faithful than are we.  Also,like most of the other senior couples,  they are retired and lack the necessity of getting back to mercurial tasks of making a living upon their return.  We think that eighteen months will be about right for us--but who knows, perhaps we will feel differently in another six months.

We are healthy, happy, and obviously not starving to death.  We have learned to figure out the culture and Mozambican logistics and find the things that we need far better than when we first arrived.  Debbie continues to claim no Portuguese proficiency, but she converses every day with tons of people-- she teaches classes, inspires, contributes, mothers, and endears herself to all around her. Her biggest regret is perhaps the haircut shown which I gave her (using scissors and not my leatherman, nor an axe)  I think that I did fairly well, despite her complaints, and may use this skill to put food on the table when we return.  I can speak and think pretty fluently and can generally communicate well--but from time to time, people still look at me funny and ask me to repeat things--"but in portuguese this time".  I speak alot in church--ours and others and I find that if I am missing a word, I can hesitate and even ask the audience and they will in unison help me out--which actually engages them in the message and works pretty well.  I learn new things every day--like today I learned that my use of "interruption" in the flow of water through a pipe or drain has always been wrong.  There is another verb I am told which sounds very similar, which means to plug or block the flow (intupir instead of interromper).  School never ends.

Our new chapel is well past the half way point.  We took out the old wall today (unfortunate that we must leave the three pillars in for support).  The roof is in over the new section (And I mentioned to the contractor that it actually needs to cover the whole space instead of missing that little corner like he thought we might not notice.  I also mentioned to him that I would prefer the walls to be square and straight (side to side and up and down) rather than the interesting variety of slants that he has given us.  In the end we will get it I think.  The timing is somewhat perfect as we had 121 to church on Sunday (and the existing chapel seats only 85). 

Our exciting news is that we were finally approved by Salt Lake this week to become the official Quelimane Branch--removing us from the limbo-like status of being an unofficial group.  The change will require more work, but will allow/require/encourage the growth of our Mozambican saints much more effectively.  I think that it will be a wonderful thing.  It is interesting, that in LDS congregations accross the world, attendance is measured as fractions of actual ward membership--with "good" generally being when a ward can achieve 50% attendance.  Last week, our attendance was 484% of our membership.

 About thirty five people showed up at what was a late night (for them) direct broadcast of the LDS General Conference from Salt Lake City.  It is tough to describe the feeling for the saints here as they watched and listened to living prophets and discover that they are part of something far larger than they can see in Quelimane.  It was a great experience.  Our recent decision to double our bandwidth so that we can do this (as well as teleconference with the mission president and download episodes of Bones) has been a good one.

Elder and Sister Wollenzien have been here for the last ten days or so, getting our Idugo Island clean water project going.  We did the easy part of the project which was to conceive the idea and identify the need and the Wollenziens have moved it forward through design and approval and planning and now are beginning implementation.  It has been a delight to have them around--many an enjoyable dinner together--one of which was a large fish cooked on coals in our wheelbarrow.  The fish was good, but I was the cook and forgot everything that I learned about cooking salmon on the barbeque at home.  I overcooked it horribly but no one died.

Girls just want to have fun!

This past weekend was our monthly women's meeting.  We had a grand time  We are preparing to sing a song in Sacrament meeting. One sister, who sings especially loud, has her own version of the song.  We will continue to practice!  Also this week, the Wollenziens, our humanitarian couple arrived for about ten days.  Donna and I have found a few common weaknesses or should I say interests this week.  More on that below.  Then there are just the constant, uniquely African ways that women have fun in life here.  The grand adventure continues.  Here goes a glimpse into life in Quelimane this week.

I read about a group in Zimbabwe making no-bake cookies for an activity,
since few women have an oven.  So, even though they look like doggie do-do (according to my daughter),
we tried it out and the women loved them. 

I had asked a sister to show the women how to crochet.  She made the sample on the table (yellow),
but the instruction part was sketchy.  Women who knew how jumped right in and  others
tried to caste on and make a circle with little success.  But they enjoyed talking together.

This is my all-time FAVORITE picture of our women's meeting.  Aren't these women beautiful!  Note that one
women has her hair in big rollers.  Women wear these rollers everywhere, on bikes, in stores, to meetings.  Being
a person with thin hair I have never seen such big rollers.

Yes, another women who loves to buy capulana's  She has bought more than I
have and my quilting friends will find that in and of itself amazing.  We cut this
one into two panels to use when we have to give a fireside sometime.  She also loves tablecloths and
bread, so we would see a store and literally jump out of the car to run in the store while
the men tried to find a place to park one day.  Yes, it was a slow missionary day, but
everyone reads our name tags and I did get my fresh, hot bread faster because I am so tall
and could call out my order over the tiny Africans who were butting in line in front of me.

Today was a huge national holiday called Peace Day.  Women all over were
dressed in native costumes downtown and drums were played
everywhere.  There is simply nothing these women cannot carry gracefully on their hands.
  I am so jealous of their perfect posture.

Driving through a village today we saw this girl on the right.  Her hair has to
be one of my favorite hair styles so far.  Most women change their hair about
every two weeks.  The braids come out or whatever they weave in comes
undone, or they tire of the straight wig.  No women keeps the same hair style
all of the time.  I love seeing what will come next.

This is a three generation picture.  Tinoca, on the right, was baptized last weekend.
Next to her is her avo or grandma.  In the yellow shirt is her aunt who raised her.
The other woman (who, of course, ran to be in the picture) is a cousin.  These three older
women have one thing is common; they are chain smokers.  The lady in orange has the worst
teeth I have ever seen, or what is left of them.  Tinoca lives with her grandma now while she
goes to High School.  She is what we affectionately refer to as a "machamba mama".  They
are tough old birds who work and walk around with cigarette butts in their mouths.  More women than
men smoke here and they are mostly of the older generation.