From: “Brenda Lange” Subject: Blog, June 8, 2013

BUSH BUNNY AND TEAM PUSHING TO FINISH CORN BUYING THIS COMING WEEK

Our team of 90 men, 2 trucks, and 4 young ladies pushed an amaz­ing 167 TONS of corn into our barns this week! Just 35 tons remain in the field for the June buy­ing sea­son. Meluco’s price war was very intense, but Sylvia, our orphan­age man­ag­er, was able to res­cue 30 tons of corn before com­mer­cial buy­ers could get it.

 

The 4 young ladies help­ing us have been real troop­ers as it’s a dusty, dirty job. The cool sea­son is upon us, so the temps are in the low 70’s each day, mak­ing it eas­i­er on all of us to get through the intense 5 hours of corn pro­cess­ing each morn­ing. These men are unload­ing and stack­ing over 500 sacks of corn a day. Those bags weigh 140 lbs. (70KG) EACH! Moz. men are tough and VERY STRONG.

 

Lin­da Stan­ley took the girls “shop­ping at our local MALL today”. That’s our “nick name” for the local out­door mar­ket in bustling down­town Bala­ma! They bought me a new “Caplana” with a map of Mozam­bique on it. A Caplana is a 100% cot­ton cloth in vivid col­ors that makes a wrap-around skirt for the local women or in my case, a new table cloth for my book table.

 

Emma and Bre­anne have opened a “shade tree Eng­lish class” on Sat­ur­day after­noons, so they are busy teach­ing verbs to 3 of our youth who help as inter­preters when I teach in the villages.

One of our Land Cruis­ers is due for its year­ly inspec­tion in Pem­ba this week, so Danielle and Melis­sa are out “play­ing” with Eric’s high pres­sure water sprayer that turns a bar­rel of water into an instant CAR WASH! The girls came laugh­ing into the office just now to tell me they were fin­ished, and to show me how hard they worked. The LC looks GREAT! But “Mama Bren­da” sent the girls straight to the show­ers as it looked like they’d had a mud-sling­ing con­test! Guess I’ll have to hide the sprayer on Sat­ur­days as I’m sure they’ll be vol­un­teer­ing to wash the 6 ton truck next! Not sure we would rec­og­nize them after that big job. From the sounds of wild laugh­ter com­ing from the women’s quar­ters, the fun must be con­tin­u­ing in the showers!

Lin­da Stan­ley is in the kitchen, as I hear pots and pans bang­ing. She’s mix­ing up a batch of her home­made GOAT ENCHILADAS for sup­per tonight. YUMMY! This Bun­ny can hard­ly wait. That life here in Bala­ma on a qui­et Sat­ur­day after­noon, where “fun” can be found if you just look for it!

Until next week!

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Eric Dry Lin­da Stanley

Bre­anne Brammer–USA Emma Clif­ford-USA Danielle Van Zyl-RSA Melis­sa Olmsdahl-RSA