back in Moz

 Orphanage - with local community kids

Apologies for my long absence from all things blogging...  I have been lucky enough to go away to Europe for a few weeks to visit family, but am now very much back in Mozambique.

I was very surprised upon my return to see that one of my colleagues had convinced the bakers to arrive at 3am in the morning to commence baking so we now have fresh bread in time for our 8am breakfast! what a treat, but it should have always been this way...

The Orphanage is also coming along nicely, it now has all the glass for the windows in so can be locked and secured. This means its now ready for some of the fixtures and fittings to go inside. Hope fully this won't take too long and it'll be up and running soon.

The rice is also now all harvested. Its currently drying off in a warehouse before it can be packaged up and sold. Fortunately most of it was saved despite the heavy flooding.

rice harvest

"Eish! how does this thing work?" - more rice problems

The Rice harvest is finally under way after a month long delay where we had too much rain ,which re-flooded the paddies and stopped access to the rice.

Of course though, nothing is simple, no sooner have we started harvesting than another problem occurs; the harvester! Right now I think its mostly being held together by scrap pieces of steel re-enforcing and binding wire but lets pray it holds!

April update

 Our dogs sniff out a predator in their midst - baby crocodile!

Wow, what a month its been. Starting with two late night armed robberies of our closest neighbour, some 3am snake catching incidents, almost losing the rice crop and generally being under-staffed and under-financed, we've taken some strain to say the least.

All is not lost though, things are gradually progressing at the orphanage. I've managed to find some time to help out with the painting, and although I'm no Picasso, it seems to be looking good!

I've been busy recently writing up some reports on what we do here for our parent ministry's website http://www.healingwings.co.za, in the process I was looking through some of my old photo's and found the one posted above. The baby crocodile was caught by some of the guys on their way through to our beach camp. don't worry its mouth is cable tied closed so it can't attack any of the dogs!

still wild...

 Mozambican Spitting Cobra

Moses the Monkey

Don't worry things are still a bit all on the wild side here. the above two photo's taken in the last week alone. The snake is a Mozambican spitting cobra, that fortunately didn't spit on me. The monkey is "Moses" so called because he was found abandoned in the rice paddies, and adopted and raised here on the farm. No relation to Mango though, who I hear is still doing well :)

new transport

answer to my transport woes?

Regular Mozbak followers will know I am often struggling with transport issues, broken down cars, or lack thereof etc. I think I may have found the solution (see pic above) its low on fuel, cheap to build, and the tyres - coke cans - last for ages.... perhaps its a little small though!

monkey bike

How's this for a 'pimped' ride? One of staff's bicycle complete with a monkey welded to the front mud guard, a headlight (decorative - not connected to a battery) and Toyota badges.

More updates on the way, its been an eventful last few weeks and unfortunately I've been more than a little distracted...

Bazza

I think its time I clean the ash off the walls of the inside of the bakery, any ideas on how to get it off?!