Accommodations

I thought I would take a moment to talk about the places we've stayed in the last week here in Africa...

The first night after we landed in South Africa, we drove to Beira and stayed the night in Hotel de Mozambique... as I believe I mentioned. Now this place wasn't bad- compared to our 5 star resort here in Sena. We

had two beds, a sink and toilet, a shower (cold water only), a

makeshift closet, a thrifty television set, and last but most assuredly not least, an air conditioner! We (my dad and I) were on the 9th floor, and David and Laura on the 11th. Now the elevator to get to the room was another matter... I have never seen (and probably will never again see) anything like this in my entire life. The door to the contra

ption was a traditional door, that one would just open and it would swing out, but then the elevator itself was plaster walls on 3 sides, and the fourth was completely open - because when you started going up, the way the elevator was situated, each individual floor was pressed right up against the opening where a standard elevator door should be. So you could actually run your hand along the foundation/doors of each floor, and then when the elevator stopped moving you had to push your door open quickly, because the

stupid contraption didn't stop for long.

And we quickly learned the elevator didn't work going down. As one hotel employee said, "Only goes up." So that was awesome when we checked out the next morning and had the privilege of lugging four 50lb. bags down 9 flights of stairs.

We are now currently put up in the luxurious 5 star hotel in Sena, by the name of Nhamacherene... too complicated to pronounce. I believe I shared our set up in previous posts, so it's time for some photos here...

Photos are -

Our waiter (every morning and every night) posing near the kitchen, a chicken and her little chicks I spotted while eating this morning, the view from our restaurant looking onto the market in town.

Sena Day

Today was a blast. Tomorrow is a holiday here, and today (Sunday) was the celebration for "Sena Day". The whole community came out and there was much singing and dancing and a parade... it was a grand old time. Even the Chefe de Posto (the head honcho of the village) came out and gave a speech.... I even joined in the festivities for a bit, trying to keep up with the woman in traditional dance. It was a fantastic day - it's not often you get to take part in a village celebration in the heart of Africa and dance with their people.

Soccer Day

Today was the day we launched the Soccer Program here in Sena. Just to give you some background on what we actually did - we capped it at 4 teams total (red, white, yellow, blue) with 11 players and a coach on each team. We split the pitch 1/4 - 3/4 and had two teams engaged in a match on the quarter side, and 4 stations going simultaneously on the 3 quarters side. All the activities were fun and engaging, but at the same time had a takeaway learning lesson about HIV/AIDS. (About 1 in 4 people here are HIV positive, and that really hit home today when we figured that roughly every single player/spectator out there today (approx. 100+ people) had either lost a mother or a father to AIDS). One activity was Tennis Ball. We had two teams line up shoulder to shoulder facing each other and pass a tennis ball (representing HIV) behind their backs until the facilitator said stop. Then the opposite team that didn't have a ball had to guess which player on the other team had the ball. One point was awarded for guessing correctly, but most teams were frequently wrong... and the message was that you can't tell if a person has HIV (the tennis ball) just by looking at them. Then the group discussed the takeaway point and such...

The next station was called Fact/Nonsense... and each team was given a statement about HIV/AIDS and had to identify if the statement was "Fact" or "Nonsense".

Another was Team Handball. This is similar to what a lot of us have carried out in soccer practice - the game is played only with your hands and you have to pass the ball from teammate to teammate 5 times co

nsecutively, and the last pass must be a header. This taught kids teamwork, and that you have to work together and support each other in life...

The last station we had was Limbo/Dribble through the Cones... kids had to pass underneath the limbo stick (representing different pressures in life - pressure to drink/smoke, have sex, etc...) and then dribble through cones that represented obstacles in life.

The photos you see we

re taken today... spectators finding shade in and underneath a tree, Senore Maringue - and Activist at Kuwangisana and a coach for today, one of the players taking his penalty kick (the first match was decided by PK's), and a village kid holding his rendition of a soccer ball

Sena

(Posts are almost in real time here...)

Sena! Finally. It was a long journey to get here... 2 hour drive from Santa Barbara to LAX, 5 hour flight from LAX to JFK, 4 hour layover in JFK, 15 hour flight from JFK to JoBurg, 2 hour flight from JoBurg to Beira, and finally 8 hour drive from Beira to Sena, for a grand total of 36 hours.

Our time here has been amazing, the Lord has really made a space in my heart for the people here. Everyone is so kind and accommodating; and it constantly impresses me what giving hearts the people have. We have gone to eat places around the village, and they specially prepare a meal for us each and every time; giving up their best crops for us. One of the neatest things we have experienced here are the songs. Everywhere we go (particularly coming into the compound the first day) we are greeted with song. The kids from the program gather and sing beautifully all dressed in uniform... it really is something special to see/hear. This is my second full day in Sena as I type this (2:03 in the afternoon)...

The hotel we are staying in is really something. I won't even be able to fully explain it via blog but I will do my best. Nowhere in America would the place we are staying be considered "adequate accommodation."I laugh as I type this, but the room in total is about 15ft. x 15ft. (making a total of about 225 sq. ft.), with one bed, a shower, a sink and a toilet. The toilet has no seat, just the porcelain, and the running water has about a 30-45 second delay after turning it on. The shower has some mechanism connected to it that you can plug in and apparently it heats the water, but frankly it looks more like a torture device. I think you would have to be suicidal to plug it in... Laura tried once years ago, and the plug short-circuited and shocked her...you can imagine being electrocuted in the shower isn't the safest thing. She is surprised it didn't kill her. Literally. The best part about our hotel is that is the Sena equivalent to a 5 star hotel - 5 star! Insane...

The photos you see are of our hotel (8 rooms total), what would be the lobby (outdoor area with sheet metal, dogs, chickens, goats, and turkeys, program workers around the compound, and some village kids. They were so excited to have their photos taken - I ventured into the school house in the program (Kuwangisana) with my camera to try and sneak some photos in the back... big mistake:) The little kids immediately lost all interest in the Activists (teachers and program officials) and swarmed me and my camera shouting "Aqui!" "Aqui!"... translated "here, here!" I literally disrupted all of class and emptied the school house into complete mayhem. The kids went wild. It was quite an event...

*the kid you see sitting on the bins dressed in red - I spotted him at lunch yesterday and snapped his photo... later I found out he was blind.

Caia

The drive to Caia was long and I was getting tired and uncomfortable.... but the sunset made up for it. Since there are hardly any city lights, and no street lights, the sunsets and the night sky are absolutely striking. Those two factors alone would be enough to keep me in Africa.

Eventually we got to Caia, and it didn't take long for us to decide to continue on. We stopped at the petrol station to fill up before heading down the road... oh my BUGS. I literally have never seen so many in the same area. It was as if Satan and his congregation were holding a seance on the threshold to hell. And there was nowhere you could go to escape the attack - not even inside the service station ( I have a nice constellation of bites scattered across

my forehead). The bathroom was another matter. Crickets, gnats, moths, ants, flies, beetles bigger than my fingers, and more creatures that probably don't even have names were littered across the walls, the floor, the sink, the toilet, the light, literally everywhere. Needless to say, it didn't take long to piss and get out of there...

The sink pictured is from the bathroom in Caia (I didn't wanna stay long to set up for a proper shot, so I just snapped that one on the way out), and the rest of the photos were either taken on the drive, or in Gorongosa.

Gorongosa

One of the villages we stopped in on the way to Sena was Gorongosa. Less urban than Beira, but slightly more lush and green than Sena, Gorongosa was one of the highlights of the excursion for me. We stopped to eat at a place by the name of Pousada Azul, and the food was unbelievable. We ordered the "plate of the day," which turned out to be chicken, rice, and a veggie/coconut boiled mix called 'metapa.' *The meals here give a whole new meaning to the word "fresh" - 4 out of 4 times they have literally taken the chicken from the yard, killed it, and served it to us. Awesome.

Anyway, the food was amazing, and after lunch I wandered around

to take some photos. The subject that most captured my attention were these two little village kids who had fashioned working kites out of old skimpy trash bags. They were more than happy to play around with me and let me take their photos. The one kid holding up his watch - we had a great time comparing watches, he was very intrigued by mine haha. Cute kids.

After lunch, we continued on down the road with 4 hours to go till Sena. At this point, we were faced with a decision to make - stop and stay over night in Caia (a village 60 kilometers outside of Sena) or make the drive all the way to Sena in the dark for last 100km or so. It is pretty dangerous to drive at night because the roads are so bad and animals run rampant in the brush, and could do some serious damage to the vehicle. We decided we would meet up in Caia (We were traveling in two vehicles - Myself, Ryan, Laura, Grace and Perpetua in the double cab, and My father and David in the single cab) and go from there.

The Drive - Beira to Sena

I am trying to post as much as I can here in Sena to get up to date. I am still about a day and a half off between real life time and these posts...

We have been in the village of Sena for 2 days now. It is 9:26 in the morning as I type this, and already about 80 degrees and very humid. Last night was my first full night of sleep, which I am very thankful for. Prior to this I had woken up both at 3 and 5am, and not been able to fall back asleep. Stupid jet lag.

Anyway, after staying the night in Hotel Mozambique, we embarked on the 8 hour drive to Sena (regarding distance, it should only be about 5 or so hours, but the roads are so bad that it takes 8 including two stops for gas and food). *Little did I know, but the reason my upper back has been in so much pain these last few days was because of being cramped in the back of a pickup truck with my shoulders hunched over driving through potholes for 8 hours*

The drive through the countryside (if you could call it that) was absolutely beautiful. Green plains littered with thatch roofed huts for miles.

My favorite part was the shopping we did along the way. This was the coolest thing ever: Ryan was driving with Laura van Vuuren in the front seat, and Perpetua and Grace (two unbelievable African women from the Kuwangisana program) and I were sitting in the back. Anyway, every once in awhile Grace and Perpetua would announce that "The coconuts are coming up"or, "the prawn kids are up here," or "Here come the cashew nuts," etc... So we would stop alongside the road and these kids would come sprinting up to the car and start shoving their wares in our faces. Every stop was different. We bought coconuts, cashews, assorted fruits, prawns, tomatoes, potatoes, charcoal etc all by stopping on the side of the road whenever we saw these street vendors.

Essentially, what they do is set up their produce along the road, and go wait underneath the shade of a tree (or some just stand there waving their arms about with their produce in hand). But then we would stop and they would go crazy - cause "Mizungo" although it directly translates to "white skinned", might as well just translate into "Money". Everywhere we would go, village people would look at us in hopes of receiving money.

You might as well have a nice big target on your forehead that reads "$$." Most of these photos are the vendors we encountered along the way - who were more than happy to pose with their products. Everyone loves a white kid with a camera here.