There is a time for
everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and
a time to die…
Included in this blog are some of our fun wildlife pictures
that we took while in South Africa in July.
We get lots of questions about the African wildlife…so here you go!
Here in Nampula, the cool season is over (we had a couple of
months where it was in the 70s and 80s) and now it is getting hot (it is
usually in the high 90s). It has been
extremely dry and dusty since the rain stopped in May, but this morning we had
our first rain in a long time. We will
slowly start getting more rain, and by January we will have regular rain. In a way we are dreading the rain because the
roads become a muddy mess and so do our feet.
On the other hand, right now the roads are almost sandy in some places
and there is a layer of dust on everything that you can’t get rid of. As the dry season has gone on, we haven’t been
getting water at our house and for the last three months we have had to have
water hauled to our tank. With the
rains, we can begin collecting rain water to fill our tank and water will
probably be more readily available from the city as well. It makes me hum that 80s song “the rains down
in Africa” (thanks Jess!).
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| waterbuck |
We have had some interesting cultural lessons this past
week. Both of the guards we employ had
babies in the last week and needed some of their paychecks early so they could
pay medical bills. Armando, our part
time guard, had his first baby, a boy.
Amisse, our regular guard, had his fifth child, a girl. It is a custom to have someone in the family,
oftentimes an uncle on the mother’s side, name the baby, so it will be
interesting to see how these babies are named.
During our language lesson yesterday, we heard wailing
noises pass by our house and our language instructor said that someone
died. As we left after our lesson, we
saw a group gathering at the house across the street where a nice Muslim family
lives. Later in the day, we went in to
town and I picked up some food items to take to the family. We changed into nicer clothes and walked over
(this time with some appropriate Portuguese condolences) and learned that one
of their children (a 15 year old girl) had been sick for a long time and had
passed away. And so, for the second time
in our neighborhood we have seen families lose someone dear to them much too
young.
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| Lilac-breasted roller |
Dave has been overseeing some welding work being done at the
MAF houses and at the hangar. One
interesting difference here in Mozambique when hiring this kind of work is that
you need to go buy all of the supplies and provide a lot of the equipment
needed to do the job. Dave spent many
hours running to different stores trying to find the right size metal, etc.
needed for the job. He is now quite
skilled in Portuguese when it comes to talking about metal and welding! On more than one occasion, he has gone to the
home of the welder, Joaquim, to give him a ride with his equipment. On one occasion, Dave met the whole family
and they said they would like to meet me as well. So yesterday, we went to their house and visited
for about an hour. I told Fatima,
Joaquim’s wife, that I needed to learn Portuguese first, but that I wanted to
learn one new Makua word. By the time we
left, she had taught us probably ten Makua words, but one is all I stored in my
brain!
A week from today we leave on another adventure! We are headed to Maputo, the capital of
Mozambique, to take an intensive Portuguese course for one month. We will fly to Maputo (a good three days
drive south), and stay at a Christian guesthouse run by two “retired” missionary ladies. The house is close enough to
the school to walk, and they provide most meals. Our language studies up to this point have
been very good and rich with culture, but haven’t really included the grammar structure
of the language. The course we will take
in Maputo will give us more structure but will still emphasize talking. We hope this will give us a big boost in our
communication abilities before we take on other responsibilities with MAF. Because Maputo is the largest city in
Mozambique, we will be exposed to a different type of Moz culture and are
excited about this opportunity! We don’t
know what our internet situation will be in Maputo, but we will try to post
some cool photos once we get down there!
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| African Grey Hornbill |
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| Female kudu |
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| Vervet monkey |
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| White-headed vulture |
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| Hakuna matata...no worries! |
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| Blue Wildebeest |
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| Zebra with impala |
