Day 1 - The Afton Guest House (Jo'burg, South Africa)

Photo from careforlife.org. Some original photos to follow shortly!

***A bit of background:***

Allie has convinced me to chronicle my and her adventures in Africa this Summer by contributing to the blog. She had to twist my arm pretty hard, but I finally gave in. As any good husband would, right? So what are we doing in Africa? Well, I'll be spending the month of June in Mozambique with an NGO called Care for Life working with their Health Director on health development in the villages surrounding the city of Beira. 


A little background on Mozambique: Moz was first colonized by the Portuguese in the early 16th century and remained that way until the late 1960's when, like the rest of colonized Africa, they started pushing for their independence. The head of the independence movement was a Marxist group called FRELIMO which today continues to be the predominant political party in the country. In 1975, FRELIMO was able to negotiate (as in negotiating with their guns...) and achieve independence from Portugal. While independence was great, the exit of the Portuguese  left a significant void in political leadership and FRELIMO was unable to maintain any sense of political unity in the country. This opened up the door for a right-wing rebel group, RENAMO, to challenge their authority as leaders, and long story short, this led to twenty-year civil war which left the country in shambles. Eventually the UN got involved in peace negotiations and was able to instigate a democratic electoral process with both FRELIMO and RENAMO serving as political parties. The peace negotiations were surprisingly successful and since 1994, Mozambique has been war-free. Despite the "peace", Moz has had an extremely difficult time recovering from the crippling effects of the two decades of civil war. Consequently, Moz is consistently named as the poorest country in the world.  


This is where Care for Life comes in. Care for Life (CFL) is part of this rebuilding effort. CFL uses a multi-faceted approach called the "Family Preservation Program" which seeks to provide sustainable, long-term solutions to many of the most significant problems facing the country. What does sustainable mean? It means no handouts, no top-down reform changes, no one-size-fits-all initiatives. Basically no more of the programs which have crippled Moz even more and have made it completely dependent on foreign aid for the past decade. Sustainable means identifying key indicators for physical, mental, and social health and helping the people create goals and plans for achieving those indicators. It's about behavior and lifestyle transformation in a way prescribed by the people, for the people. I will be specifically involved in training the health promoters in each of the villages on some of these indicators which make the biggest difference in quality of health (e.g. water sanitation, principles of hygiene, sexual health, disease communication, etc.). The health promoters will in turn teach the individuals in the villages these principles and create systems of plans and goals for their implementation. I am both excited and anxious at the responsibility! 

***

I'm officially in Africa! After two (very) long days of traveling, I finally made it to Johannesburg. I'll be here for a day and a half while I wait to catch up with the rest of my Care for Life group heading to Mozambique. The place I'm staying at is a bed-and-breakfast-style place called the Afton Guesthouse. It's been pretty interesting sharing all of my meals with a bunch of big game trophy hunters--there stories definitely blow the old "big fish stories" out of the water. And they have pictures to prove it! Not to mention that stuffed animal the size of their living room they'll be shipping home. Elephants, lions, buffalo, wildebeests... you name it! A couple of guys at my table even talked about the zebra they hunted today. Sorry Allie...

While it's been fun getting cultured into the world of hunting today, I CAN'T WAIT to head to Moz tomorrow. I promise the posts will get more exciting :)