Mozambique!

After a wonderful time in South Africa with our equally wonderful family it was time for a little service project in Mozambique.

Mosquito nets--here we come!

A family friend works for a service organization called Care for Life . He invited us over to work on a little small business consulting. Care for Life has a really cool program where local community leaders are approached and invited to participate in a project where they receive all sorts of training and in turn train other leaders picked by the village and then go out and help the individual families of the community to set goals to make their lives better. The training and goals are varied but all revolve around health, education, home maintenance, child health care, AIDS care, and small business development. Families set goals (ex: build a latrine) and local leaders follow up on their progress. Every so often the data of their goals is gathered and reported and those who have succeeded in their goals are rewarded with little things like a shovel or mosquito nets.

Our first day was spent listening to a community meeting where a micro-credit group was being formed. It was so fascinating to discover how spoilt I have been. Everything was in Portuguese and even though French is fairly similar I only understood 50% of the conversation and I looked around me and assessed the situation. Mangy dogs running amidst the concrete houses with corrugated iron roofs. Laundry hanging next to a charcoal fire, little children with symptoms of malnutrition, flies everywhere, Rhianna blasting from a dilapidated hut, rubbish and human waste everywhere. 

Everyone looked surprisingly happy. 

This woman is selling dried fish--yum

The community leaders took us on a tour of the village so we could have an idea of what kind of businesses people have. I learned that I wasn't even capable of fathoming a poverty and lifestyle like this. People don't usually live to be older than 42 because of all of the diseases and people live on less than $3.00 a day to feed their families in a country where a box of cereal costs $4.00. Life has to become simple. A lot of ambitions are smothered in the everyday practicalities of a system that doesn't allow for much growth.

That was my first day in a developing country.

Miracles in Middleburg

Middleburg is aptly named because it is in the middle of nowhere. This area of the Karoo is known for its sheep farming, windmills, and amazing food.

My dad has been doing some family history and found that I have a lot of family in this region--hence my love of sheep (what?).

When we arrived, we checked out the local cemetery, which had been destroyed by a local herd of cows. Many of the headstones had been pushed over and were thus impossible to read. We did find some family tombstones though! It was so interesting to see and be in the place where they were from and image what life must have been like for them.

To get the full experience, we stayed in the old family farmhouse which has been sold and turned into a B&B. It was so unreal to walk and sleep in the same house that ancestors lived in!

Now comes the miracle part:

Someone my dad and I really wanted to learn about was my great-grandfather. He died when my grandmother was very young, so we literally know nothing about him aside from his birth, marriage, and death certificates. When we went to the cemetary we couldn't find his tomb (it had probably been trampled by a cow or something=TIA). We even went to the local health clinic to try and figure out what part of the cemetary he was in--nothing. 

We called the local museum throughout the week but no one answered and the time we stopped by it was closed!

Our very last day in Middleburg we decided to try going past the museum one last time. We prayed and then went over. It was open! The museum staff tried to help us, but didn't find anything.  While my dad was talking to her, I had the word "bible" come to mind. I walked to a back room, and ignoring the "please do not touch" signs, started leafing through a stack of books on a table.  The second book I picked up was an old Dutch bible with a dedication written on the inside cover to my great grandfather from his students!!!! This led to great excitement, phone calls, and a trip to the local high school where he used to teach. 

When we arrived, we explained that we were looking for information about the school in the 1930's. The headmistress looked very surprised, and hurried back into her office. She came out holding a crumbling 1936 school almanac. She handed it to us and said, "I don't know why, but this morning I felt like I needed to clean out some drawers, I found this and put it to the side."

When my dad opened the book, we saw a picture of all of the teachers and a caption with my great grandfather's name! There was even a little bio about him, what he taught. Wow. My grandmother didn't even have a picture of her father! 

So in short, family history is fun. And you should never listen to do not touch signs....sometimes.