Dara and I are with Carlos and Pascua's kids here (Carlos is our boss). We get along great with the family and really enjoy spending time with them. Last week we had a dance party at their house with Carlos playing the accordian!

The lady in this picture in Inish- she's one of the volunteers that we go out with. This picture was taken way out in the bushes- we walked so far that day! There are lots of paths that go through the bushes with huts spaced out about 500 meters apart.

It's pretty common to see trucks like this on the road. Scary. There are constantly vehicles broken down on the side of the road. They are so hard on them here.

On Sunday I'll be flying to Zambia for two weeks. I'll be going with my American friend Jean Aimee who also works with Hands at Work, and lives in South Africa. We'll be doing some teaching to local nurses there about primary health care, HIV, AIDS, childhood diseases etc. I have no idea what Zambia will be like, so it'll be interesting. I'm anticipating it'll be hot.

a few pictures

Here I am with Santos- one of our favorite volunteers. He does a ton around Rubatano- lots of administrative work. He's so friendly- we love to work with him. He can speak about 4 words of English, but he told us that this is a "special" hat. We find it so funny because the sun shines right through the hole in the brim and into his eyes!

In this picture I'm with our good friend Jenny. She is working with the Peace Corps- she's so brave- she lives in a little house all alone in a village. We have lots of fun with her. I title this picture "Christmas come early". Dara got FIVE packages in one day! Don't worry though- she's really good at sharing and I got some mail last week, so I was just as excited as she was. We pulled a mattress into the living room (we don't have a couch), had tea and cake, and opened "presents". It was really fun.

This is me with one of the older girls on an orphan day. We're playing some sort of a hand game- I don't think either of us knew what hand game we were playing, but it was fun. Last weekend Rubatano had the first meeting for just the older orphan girls- aged 13 and up. The goal is to teach these girls a skill that they can support themselves and their younger siblings with. It's also to give them a chance to talk with each other about thier challenges and to hopefully prevent them from turning to men to fill their needs. The volunteers will teach the girls how to garden, cook little donuts to sell, and once we have sewing machines-how to sew. The first meeting went really well with around 60 girls showing up.

lesson 26- watch where you sit.

Well, I’ve still got a few things left to learn about Africa. This morning I got up early to take a walk, and found a nice, quiet place on the side of the dirt road to sit and think. As I was “sitting” and “thinking”, two nice Mozambican ladies came walking along the road. We greeted each other as they passed, but instead of the normal length “stare at the white girl”, they stopped and lingered. They were staring at me and pointing at where I was sitting. I stood up to talk to them and they asked me if I spoke Portuguese. A little I said. They rattled off a string of Portuguese- I missed most of it, but I did catch the key word- “cobra”. I was sitting right in the middle of two snake holes- about a foot from each hole. Needless to say I didn’t sit back down. After thanking them profusely I decided to walk a bit and watch where I sat next time…

Cakes...

We don't work all the time here... we make cakes too. Here are a couple that we've made for birthday parties. The one cake is supposed to be a monkey, but it turned out more like a rabid bear. This is our Irish friend, John, next to the "bear" on his 18th birthday. Tom is another good friend here- he's from England and has just turned 19... we hear that "theme cakes" are all the rage with the young kids these days...

a new home for Chico and his family

Here are Joao and Luisa- Chico's children in front of thier newly built house! The volunteers in Nhamatonda built it for Chico and his family after they saw what the family was living in (I have a picture of it in an old blog of mine).

servants

I am continually amazed, challenged and humbled by the volunteers that I work with. These people work so hard.

The man on the bicycle is a new patient named Louis that Rubatano took on last month. His elderly sister stopped us on the road and asked us to come help her brother. We walked about a kilometer into the bush and found him in a tiny little shack- his wife was gone at the time to her garden- it was about 10km away, and she would stay away from home for days at a time. On Wednesday three of the volunteers went to his house at 7:30 am and brought him to the road on their bicycle as he was too weak to walk. From there he was able to get to the hospital.

The two volunteers washing the kids are Inish and Adao- in this house there are three orphans that are being cared for by their grandmother. To wash an orphans feet- this is true religion.

To bring a sick, old man 1 km through the bushes at 7:30 am on your bicycle- this is true religion.

James 1:27- Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in thier distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

made for t.v.

The last week has been a very interesting one! We have had a film crew here from Toronto filming first in South Africa, and then in Mozambique. The People's Church in Toronto sent a film crew along with their head pastor, Pastor Charles Price, to film Hands at Work and Rubatano Home Based Care.
They will be doing three, one-hour specials about Hands at Work and will be airing it on their television show, "Living Truth", in the last three weeks in October. One show will feature South Africa (where I worked the first two months of my time in Africa), one in Mozambique, and one in Malowi. I may even make it on t.v. myself. They filmed me doing some homebased care visits and asked me a few interview questions.
You may notice in the picture of me with the stethoscope that I'm not actually listening to anyone's chest! I had listened to a woman's chest moments earlier, but they wanted me to do it again to get a close up of my face so I'm just pretending- looking deep in thought about what I'm listening to! In the group photo I am with a woman who is sick- probably with tuberculosis. The two men in the picture are Santos in the blue shirt, and Fransisco- two of our favorite volunteers. They had alot of fun being on camera as well.
I'm really excited about the shows, as now everyone back home will be able to see where I work, who I work with, and what I do!
The picture of the little girl was taken by Jayme Chotowitz on one of the filming days. We've had Jayme and Lynn stay with us for the past week, and have had a really great time catching up with them.
Lynn, Carlos, and George (head of Hands at Work) have all just returned from Zimbabwe this afternoon. They are planning on expanding Hands at Work into Zimbabwe and Carlos will be a huge part of it. Talk about a challenge! I am excited to hear about their experience as Dara and I will probably be playing a small part in it as well. Lynn just showed me a Zimbabwean money bill that was for 50 BILLION Zim dollars (their dollar used to be stonger than ours). When they went to Zimbabwe on the 21st a bottle of coke cost 100 Billion dollars- now, three days later a bottle of coke costs 400 billion dollars. Zimbabwe needs our prayers!