The Bike Project Resumes

Our first week was spent acclimating, adjusting and planning. With that done, we are taking action on the bicycle project. There are essentially three parts to it. The biggest is doing some additional training with the older boys on care and maintenance of the bikes here in the center. On our last visit, we left 15 bikes for the boys to use for travels back and forth to school and for recreation. Upon our arrival, few if any were still in working order. The tools that we left available for them to use are also few in working order. So we are beginning the teaching again with an emphasis on respect and responsibility of the gift of bikes and tools.

The next priority is to get the unassembled bikes, 55 of them, assembled and ready to distribute and to whom to distribute them to. We plan to distribute a good portion of the bikes to Iris Children’s centers in the towns of Chimoio and Tete. We will let the missionaries there determine who needs them the most. We will keep some of them for the workers here in the Dondo, Sofala area. Today one of the missionaries left for a village near Inhaminga with two bicycles which will be used by members of two churches to reach a community garden that is some distance away.

The third priority is to repair the broken down bikes. Some of these repairs are fairly minor, flat tires and brake repair. Some are quite extensive as most of the parts were stolen for other bikes so we’ll need to do some shopping, always an adventure to me here in Mozambique.

There are 16 boys who signed up for the classes, a number of whom where in the class two years ago and quite mechanically inclined. Tomorrow we begin the second session of classes.

Back in Africa, My Dear

11/5/09

Papa Ronaldo! Mama Jane! Boa tarde Joao!, Boa tarde Nelson!, Boa tarde Vito!, Zito!, Mariano! Oh, Lord, help us figure out the names of all these boys who are two years older and two heads taller than when we left the Dondo Children’s Center 22 months ago!
Then at dinner some other familiar faces greeted us as well. Fish heads floating in yellow broth and white rice. Ron’s least favorite dish was the first on the Dondo menu. Welcome to Mozambique, Brunk.

Ricardo and Maninho, two boys special to us were the first to greet us. It was good to see them. When we left in February of 2007 our Portuguese and their English was equally rudimentary. Now their improved English had to make up for our forgotten Portuguese. Here hugs go a long distance in bridging the communications gap.

Within hours of arriving at the Children’s Center the base director came over to tell us that one of the boys who had been sick with TB for some time had just died. So our return to Dondo has been very bittersweet. Sweet seeing Maninho and Ricardo, bitter in the death of one of the Dondo famiy boys.

We are settling back into the same house that we were in last time and already we are beginning to feel at home, although, this time we have a couple of wicker chairs and a wicker couch to replace the bunk beds, so it feels more like a home than a bunkhouse. Cockroachs still poke their heads out of the shower drain, a march of minute ants is making their way across the kitchen wall and a lizard (the same one we were neighbors with last time, I’m sure) just scampered behind the droopy kitchen drapes.

We’ve been here too a short time to have any good photos, but for the sake of curiosity, I thought pictures of missionary housing on the Dondo Base might be of interest.

This is our home. Please come in and have a seat on our couch. The little pile of dust under your feet are bugs dinning on the couch legs, but it will hold you up for a short visit! This is the kitchen, when you visit us what we have to offer is cold water out of a refirgerator. On a hot day in a village where few houses have electricity and fewer have refrigeration, I think cold water is a treat. Maybe not; it is for me! Turn 45 degrees and you are in the dinning room. These two chairs and coffee table (where’s the coffee! Ron wonders) is the sitting room. We have a VERY nice bathroom, but the plumbing, exposed galvanized pipe draped with wire carrying 220 and water. Wow. And this is the bedroom. The body is Ron who has been acclimating to the heat.

Thanks for stopping by. We hope you come again. Next time I’ll have something more interesting.