Day 15-18 - Palmeiras, Aeroporto, Ngupa, & Motel Bispo

I made it! After four long days of traveling, I arrived into the Beira, Mozambique airport Sunday afternoon. However, my bag did not.... sound familiar?! Repeat of Ecuador. I at least was prepped for this a little and had packed my sheets, towel, and a few changes of clothes in my carry-on. 

However, after four days I am running out of options! So, if I'm wearing the same two shirts over and over on the blog, don't judge. I'm actually really lucky because our sweet friend Isabel takes care of us and helps out with the laundry. So nice.

I'm sure you didn't come here to get an update on my wardrobe so back to the blog. On Sunday, after arriving we headed over to Kadesh, which we have nicknamed "Never Never Land". It started as an orphanage for boys after the Mozambique civil war. The boys were mostly in their teens. Justin and I played soccer and volleyball with them. It is a really sweet orphanage. The boys were so polite and even passed the ball to me a few times even though I was terrible. They also raise itty bitty goats that are so cute! I even held one! Proof below. 

Yay for being together again! 

Monday we took no pictures! But it was a great day. We spent the morning training the main Care for Life staff on the health book at our house. The cutest thing is they start every meeting with a song and a prayer. Their songs are in Senna (a tribal dialect) so we couldn't really sing but we danced. I love listening to them sing. Seriously, amazing and so much better than any music in the States. Also, they have a song about everything. When we're teaching, they will randomly break out in songs about diarrhea or malaria. 


The staff were so excited to learn about the new book. They are the high up administrators of the CFL program so they won't be teaching it to the villagers themselves but they can follow-up with the health promoters. Dr. English teaches and Justin translates for him. The people love Justin. It was kinda fun coming late because everyone automatically loves me when I tell them he's my "marido". 


In the afternoon, we went to town to shop and exchange money. I bought a cute "capalana" (the traditional skirt for women) to wear to church on Sunday. I'm realizing now this was a pretty wise purchase seeing that it's Wednesday and I still don't have my bag! :) 

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So it's Justin now... Allie and I decided to divide up the blogging since we had a few days to catch up on. This week we are doing round two of the health curriculum in the different villages. It's been so fun to see how much the people have learned from one week to another. They have done quite a bit of studying on their own and come back with lots of good questions and ideas! As a part of this week's training, we gave out books to the health promoters in each village. Each health promoter is responsible for 20-35 families in their communities, with each community having 250-350 families. That's quite a responsibility for each of the health promoters, but they do a great job with it. 


The health curriculum we are teaching is very "basic" by most standards, but it treats most of the top causes of death in the third world--diarrhea, cholera, malaria, HIV, etc. The interesting thing is that most people "know" about these diseases, but have never really learned about them. What I have noticed as I have been here is that a fragmented understanding about these diseases does more harm then good--it causes a lot of fear and misunderstandings which cause other, more severe health problems in the community. What we are providing is not a deep, scientific understanding of these issues, but rather the essentials--how to prevent the disease, how to recognize it, what to do when they think they have it, etc. It's incredible to see that by doing a few small things, they can basically eliminate these huge problems from the villages that cause so many deaths each year. 

Us singing a song with the health promoters in Ngupa about diarrhea :) They are such awesome singers and dancers. 

Dr. English handing out the health books. 

At the end of the second training, we have the health promoters practice delivering the books to the families in their communities and giving a brief introduction to the book. Ana Mikas, the local nurse that we work with for the trainings (in the blue shirt/pink capalana), decided to call over a neighbor that was outside doing dishes to be the "first" family to receive the new health book. The pictures below are of the health promoter in charge of this family presenting the book to her and teaching her briefly about what's inside. 

The long-term plan with everything we are doing is to train the health promoters so that they can be self-sufficient in delivering the books to the families and watching over the health of the members of the communities. Seeing the health promoter in the pics above deliver and explain the book so well made me so excited to see the difference this will make in the future. As I mentioned in a previous post, doing all of this has really confirmed for me that much of the suffering that exists in these third-world countries is not because of a lack of resources, but rather because of a lack of knowledge. When we provide this knowledge, the people embrace it, and more importantly, we empower them to continue this improvement even after we have left the villages. 


At the end of today's training in Motel Bispo, we did some role-playing scenarios with the promoters to help them practice for when they visit their families. I was blown away by the amount o


Here are some more pics from the trainings:

Making a rehydration solution with some of the health promoters. 

Manoel was brave and wanted to try some. It's basically like gatorade without the flavoring. Yummm... ?

A lot of times we have free time in the later afternoons once we have finished up our trainings in the villages. When we do, we normally meet up with the HELP team. We got to visit a couple of orphanages over the last couple of days. The kids there are so cute and so fun. It's so sad to see how many have lost parents either to the war, or HIV, a different kind of war I suppose. At one of the orphanages, Casa de Anjos Inocentes (House of Innocent Angels), the girls asked my name to which I responded, "Justin, like Justin Bieber." I didn't even finish my sentence before a couple of them started singing "Baby," one of Justin Bieber's songs. There are a few in our group that are a little obsessed, so it didn't take long to have our entire group singing along. We spent the next 15 minutes or so singing pop songs with them. It was cool to see the language barrier break down a bit for those in our group who don't speak Portuguese. Speaking of Portuguese, Allie is doing so well with it! Yesterday at the training, they had her introduce herself and she did the whole thing in Portuguese. Such a great job! Kinda funny though, they thought she said she was Dr. English's wife, so then I made it clear that she was indeed my wife and they all laughed and then started chanting, "beija, beija, beija!" (kiss, kiss, kiss...) So I gave Allie a kiss in front of all of the health promoters and they were so happy :)


It is so fun to watch Allie with the orphans. She is such a loving person, and these kids are in such need of love. She has made so many little friends so far. She's a great example for me.

Buneca, one of my friends.

The Justin Bieber crew.

Carlos, one of my favorites. He is only 2, but he can sing and dance like you wouldn't believe. On top of that, he LOVES having his picture taken.

One of the kids had the idea of taking a picture flexing... haha... Please excuse Carlos' "Italian hello..."

One of Allie's friends named Davi. He is such a cute kid who suffers from cerebral palsy. Here Allie is helping him make a paper bead necklace.

He was so happy to have her there. After finishing he was just glowing. He gave Al a huge hug and ran off to show everyone his necklace.

Allie also headed off with the HELP group to help (no pun intended) with a vocational training while I headed to the airport to try and figure out her luggage situation.

Thanks for reading! We'll be posting again soon!