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Na een gedegen voorbereiding en 2 keer 'proeven', is het nu zover. Eind maart vlieg ik naar Mozambique, om 3 maanden later naar Madagascar te vliegen om daar met Caroline, een engelse verloskundige, een baby-opvanghuis op te richten. Een thuis voor achtergelaten baby's. Niet zomaar te vondeling gelegd, maar gedumpt op de vuilnisbelt. Hopeloze situatie, zou je misschien zeggen, maar dat is zeker niet zo! Er is altijd hoop, er zijn altijd kansen, bij God is er altijd een nieuw begin.

He raises the poor out of the dust
and lifts the needy out of the ash heap
that He may seat him with princes
-- Psalm 113:7-8 --

En daar mogen wij handen en voeten aan geven. Hoe, wat, waar? dat lees je op deze blog!

Groetjes, Rachel

zondag 15 november 2009

Living the dream!

Mo Helelia :)
= good afternoon in Makua. Typical answer is ko helelia (morning is shelelia instead of helelia... to keep it easy!) Let me just quote the lonely planet guide to Mozambique: “Mozambique with it's sublime 2500km coastline, magical off shore islands and fascinating cultures is among the continent's best kept secrets” Hmm, not bad, huh! It's an amazing country. Beautiful in it's nature, awesome in it's people and shocking in it's poverty, but on the way up.

NOTE: first part of this update is in english, last part in dutch. Voor ieder wat wils :) (that was dutch!)

Guess what... We have ongoing electricity 24/7 (no longer generator power) and running water for 4 hours every day! And as far as I can say right now, the internet problems seem to have been solved (no promises whatsoever, but for now, this is good news!). Awesome! So that's what can happen here... no news for 3 weeks and than 2 updates in a few days :) We just go with the flow.

Cassimo...is doing great! He's growing, he's cute and he has a strong voice :) Yep, he can give a loud cry every now and than, which is really funny out of such a small baby. But of course he sleeps most of the time. It's awesome to follow up on him. I wish you could see his picture... Well, it's only 3 ½ weeks left, so... sniff... (good to home, but I don't wanna think about that right now!)

Beach
Wimbi beach here in Pemba is just the most amazing beautiful white sand palm tree beach I have ever been. And it's just across the road! This morning I got up really early (5.30!) and went for a long beach walk with Tuweni, a Malawian girl. It was awesome! So nice and quiet. We came back at 8, not even realizing we had been walking for 2,5 hours :) We found many really really nice shells (some of which walked away when we tried to pick them up :) Early in the morning or late in the afternoon seems to be the best time to collect shells.

Oh, by the way. Can anyone do a little research for me? Not that it is important at all, it's just a funny question. How many times does the tide go in and out in a day (24 hours) here relatively close to the equator? In the netherlands we have 6 hours tide coming up, 6 hours tide going down etc. So twice high tide and twice low tide a day. But it seems to take so much longer here. Is it possible that we only have 1 high tide a day and 1 low tide a day? Or is that really weird... Anyway, I know there are some people reading this who would like to look that up (not naming anyone, daddy :)
The beach is just perfect!

More outreach stories

There's so much I can share on the bush outreach, you have only heard the journey part and the awesome afternoon we had with the women. Of course there were many many kids in the village. Awesome kids who just repeated everything we said. Hand clapping games quickly were very popular and we had so much fun. Carrie and Kellie brought some balloons. Succes guaranteed! And we had fun with Rollo. He's one on the guys on our team. And you pronounce his name just as you would expect: Rollo, with the first 'o' as in dog. But for some reason the americans couldn't figure out how to pronounce it (they keep saying 'Rolo') and we had much fun on the journey just about the many differences between british english and american english. Quickly after we arrived in the village Rollo was surrounded by at least 50 kids all shouting his name (correctly!). That was soo funny! I wouldn't be surprised if at least one baby boy born since we were there has been given the name Rollo!

Kitchen
The general dinner on outreach is usually sticky tuna spaghetti for dinner, a roll (een broodje) for breakfast and anything from plain rice, to rice&beans to rice&goat or whatever for lunch. The first evening the mozambicans asked me and Hilde to help out in the 'kitchen'. I was quite curious to see the african way of cooking in a bush village, so yeah, I went into the corner they called the kitchen. Basically it was just an area in the corner of the compound where there was a wood fire.

The onion story :-)
And what do you think they asked us to do? Cutting onions! Anyone who has seen me in the kitchen might have noticed that I hardly ever use onions, just because I really don't like the cutting & crying part! But we looked at each other and said, let's do it. It took us over half an hour to cut all the onions (small strong red ones, really tasty). And as I expected, I couldn't even open my eyes after onion nr three... When I opened my eyes 5 minutes later, I was surprised to see that we were surrounded by app. 25 mozambican ladies, all just sitting there and staring at those 2 acunja's who were cutting onions and didn't know how to do that without crying. Not a word was said, and they kept staring until we were finished. And obviously they had so much fun, this was something they had never seen before. Quite surreal! But even the onion cutting episode was so funny and I think I can handle the dutch onions by now if I have a sharp knife to cut them ;-)

Eyes
Sorry to all of you who like to read the stories in english, I'm going to continue in dutch for a bit... Dat gaat wel een stuk sneller, eerlijk gezegd! Hmm, wat kan ik nog meer vertellen over de outreach. We hebben geweldige dingen gezien. Er was een oudere dame die de compound binnen kwam met het verzoek of we voor haar konden bidden, want ze was al 10 jaar totaal blind. En ik weet dat dit voor sommigen van jullie trouwe lezers :) een 'ver-van-mijn-bed-show' is, maar geloof het of niet, na dat we voor haar hadden gebeden, opende ze haar ogen en ze kon zien. Haarscherp, duidelijk en ze was zo blij. Yeah Jesus! Dat zijn geweldige dingen om met je neus bovenop te staan. Leuk detail: een van de Mozambicanen bad hardop in haar eigen taal en toen ze haar ogen open deed was ze helemaal verbaasd dat er acunja's om haar heen stonden.

De Truck...
...is trouwens een verhaal apart. Op de bumpy road naar het dorp toe liet de ene na de andere lasverbinding los. (truck met een framewerk achterop de laadruimte (waar wij zaten) en daar overheen een zeil gespannen). Het frame viel letterlijk uit elkaar en het laatste uur hebben we het grotendeels zelf omhoog moeten houden, als we ons hoofd een beetje heel wilden houden. Klinkt heel dramatisch allemaal, en ik moet toegeven dat het idee dat het dak ieder moment naar beneden kon komen niet heel erg prettig was, maar er zijn ergere dingen. De bodem was absoluut betrouwbaar, toch wel fijn. Wij hadden met ons westers ingestelde brein al bedacht dat we voor de terugweg maar beter het hele dak van de laadruimte af konden slopen en als de truck verder te gebruiken als open flatback truck. Niets mis mee, maar een beetje bescherming tegen de zon is toch wel errug prettig. Maar toen de mannen van het dorp ons half uit elkaar vallende dak zagen, hadden ze direct een veel betere oplossing. Een stapel stokken en lange repen bast van een tropische boom later, hadden we een perfect stabiel dak wat prima stand hield tijdens de terugweg! Geweldig :-)

De school
is in een woord GEWELDIG! Zo veel nieuwe dingen, zo veel dingen die je eigenlijk wel weet, maar die in een breder of nieuwer perspectief worden geplaatst. Heel veel praktische lessen, bijbelstudies, worship, cultuur-stuff en nog zo veel meer. De tijd gaat veel te snel, we hebben er al 5 weken op zitten en nog maar 3 te gaan. Iedere week denk je 'nou hebben we een absoluut hoogtepunt te pakken' en de volgende week gaan er gewoon 5 scheppen bovenop. Heidi & Rolland Baker hebben de afgelopen week heel veel over hun leven verteld, eerlijk over alle ups en downs en dat is me nogal een verhaal! Zij weten wat doorzetten en niet opgeven inhoudt, ongeacht de omstandigheden. Maar ook wat het is om kinderen volledig op te zien bloeien die door iedereen op waren gegeven en om te zien hoe 'hun' pareltjes opgroeien en een succesvol leven opbouwen hier in Mozambique. Gaaf. En uitdagend.

Het weer
jaja, het maakt niet uit waar ter wereld je bent, het weer is altijd een goed onderwerp ;-) Nou, tis hier nog steeds goed, heel warm, maar ook een flinke wind van zee, dus dat compenseerd. De nachten zijn broeierig. De regens zijn nog niet gekomen (op een enkele nachtelijke stortbui na dan...), begin december verwachten ze de meeste regen. We zullen zien :-)
En owja, ze doen hier niet aan wintertijd (weinig verschil in lengte vd dagen), dus ik loop nu een uur voor op jullie.

Open Mike-night
Oftewel een ouwerwets gezellige bonte avond. 5 acts door de wat oudere Mozambikaanse jeugd en 5 acts door de mission school students. We hebben enorm gelachen en het was een goede avond voor Juntos (t cafe hier op de base). De ice-coffees, smoothies, samosa's en pizza's waren niet aan te slepen! Mijn vriendinnetje Rainha (portugees voor de queen!) heeft ook genoten, we hebben een paar samosa's (kleine driehoekige snacks) gegeten. Zij heeft foto's voor mij gemaakt en ze had echt lol. Supergezellig! En leuk om zo een relaxte avond te hebben met de mozambicans.

Tot slot :)
tsja, ik kan nog wel eindeloos doorvertellen, maar ik ga er toch een eindje aan breien. Ik ga vanmiddag waarschijnlijk met een groep mee snorkelen...!!! Supergaaf. Met een bootje ongeveer een half uur richting open zee en daar moet een machtig mooi koraalrif zijn. 2 uur snorkeltijd, de boottocht en huur van materiaal voor, hou je recht, 11 dollar pp!!! Dat zijn nog eens leuke prijsjes! Zonnebrand factor 50 of meer, absoluut waterproof gezocht!!! Komt zeker goed. Nader bericht volgt uiteraard.

Heel veel groetjes, liefs en meer.
Rachel

PS: inmiddels in het internet cafe, nog steeds zondagmiddag en geen snorkeltocht vanmiddag... Te hoge golven, niet veilig genoeg om met een klein bootje de zee op te gaan (en geloof me, als mozambicans het niet veilig genoeg vinden, dan luister ik daar graag naar!) 's Morgens om 8 uur blijkt de beste tijd te zijn om te gaan, dus we reserveren nu een boot voor komende zaterdag. Hebben we nog een week om naar dit uitje toe te leven :)

vrijdag 13 november 2009

The Treasures of Mozambique

Oiohoio!
Ehmm, this basically means ' hi! ' :) Hey everyone, how's life over there? For some reason the rest of the world seems pretty far away when you are in a bush village, 8 hours down the road, without any of our comfort stuff but with the most amazing people you can imagine! By the way, I'll type this blog entry in english on request, hope you don't mind... Next will be in dutch again. I'm going to try to give you some of the highlights of the past two weeks (so much for the Pemba internet connection :)

A Treasure arrived

Before I start talking about the bush outreach, I have to tell you about Cassimo. He's the wonderful little treasure that arrived here @ the Iris base with his mummy last friday evening (a week ago now). A 25 days old baby, born apparently after a full term pregnancy, with a birth weight of just 1600 gram. And believe me, that's TINY!!! His mummy didn't have enough milk, so instead of steadily gaining weight, he's been loosing weight and right now, he weights 1545 grams. This means he's really skinny, but adorably cute... He has a lot lot lot of hair! He and his mum came in in the evening and he was very quiet, not really responsive and dehydrated. But even over the night, by giving him very regular feeding, he improved soooo much! He's looking around, waking up around bottle time and putting up a loud 'voice' every now and than ;-)

At the moment I am kinda in charge of making his feeding schedule and weighting him every day (on a kitchen weight scale!) and this means being inventive and go with the African flow ;-) I made a feeding schedule (tnx so much to all the wonderful colleagues from t St Jan, miss you all!! You'll love the pics. And tnx to dr v Helvoirt for taking time :-). But as we have learned earlier on, this culture is not time-orientated at all, so I'm really curious how this is working out. All I can say is that every time I see him (and you know me, I'm in there at least three times a day), he's doing absolutely fine, he's even trying to nurse and his cheeks are getting fuller already! So I gave up to try to get a time schedule. Things are just different here, TIA :-) The Tia's (aunty's who take care of the children here) are absolutely amazing. The know how to take care of baby's. Cassimo weighted 1695 gram today, which is really good and he's so lively and active. It's a true blessing to see him getting better every day. I could spent the rest of my life looking after kids like Cassimo, truly, it's just amazing! His mummy loves him, all the tia's come in just to give him a cuddle every so often and they are just loving him to life!

...and much more treasures!
In the village where we went on our bush-bush outreach (savanna terrain), we met so many wonderful people! We were staying in the compound where 3 families had there houses and a shared open area with a big mango tree. They invited us to place our tents in that compound, which was awesome. So friendly, so loving, so hungry to hear what we had to tell them. It was (again) an experience of a lifetime. My internet time is so short at the moment, that I can only share some of the highlights...
The trip was a story in itself :). 4 hours on the main road in the back of a (very bumpy) truck, all our stuff in the middle and the team (12 mission school students, 8 mozambicans) somehow around the stuff. The main road was really good though, and we traveled a little over 200 km in those 4 hours. Knowing the entire trip would be 280 km, we were very optimistic. This isn't too bad, we all thought... Well, after the main road we just turned right and went up a terribly bad road. Bumpy, holes everywhere and a driver who tried to please us by driving slowly so that we felt every single bump really well! (don't know how it had been if he would have been driving faster, probably even worse...). Anyway, that road continued almost forever and it took us 4,5 hour on the bumpy road to get to the village. Have you ever been in a situation that felt so surreal that the only thing you could do was make fun out of it and just laugh at the whole thing? Well, that's what we did and we really had lots of fun in the back of that truck! Singing, shouting and joking we made it to the village. On arrival there were many people waiting for us, singing and dancing and welcoming and that surely made up for the journey. It was amazing! I just love Africans, they know how to make you feel welcome!

Phiew, my time is just flying by, so I just quickly tell you about the women of the village. We had the opportinity of spending an afternoon with a group of 5 of 'our' ladies and 20 women from the village (all carrying at least one baby). And that was so amazing. We gave them some explanation on diarrhea prevention and treatment (for there are still pretty much baby's dying of diarrhea in this particular village), which they really appreciated. And after that Pauline, who is a wonderful Kenyan girl coming to the school, shared heart to heart about dignity and self-worth and I wish you could all have seen the change in the women. They literally came sitting staighter up and it just gave them so much value. That was incredible. And it wasn't about stuff that was far beyond their opportunity, it was just about true day-to-day life, shared by an african to africans and it was GOOD! A pleasure to be around.

My time is running out, so sorry for the short and quick updates, internet is kind of rough here at the moment. Love you all, and I really hope these updates give you a chance to take a small look over my shoulder. Big hug, Rachel