From: Bush Bunny Brenda Date: February 15, 2014

OVERLOADING IN MOZ. IS THE “NORM” FOR MANY

 

This is the REAL thing, folks!

No pho­to shop need­ed in Mozam­bique, you just have to dri­ve down the road with a cam­era. If it can be stuffed, stacked, or tied on, these “taxi” dri­vers will make it hap­pen. Note the bags of food on the hood of the car, plus there are at least 2 peo­ple INSIDE the car. From the looks of the passenger’s huge bicep, plus the heavy green bananas on the roof, it’s no won­der the car is sag­ging in the middle.
OUR KIDS ARE SETTLED IN SCHOOL… In Moz. chil­dren only attend 4 hours of school dai­ly due to an abun­dance of stu­dents and a short­age of teach­ers and class­rooms. There are so many first graders in Bala­ma that they only study 2 hours/day. Our Youth Pas­tors pro­vide the stu­dents with morn­ing and after­noon activ­i­ties con­sist­ing of sports, games, and study time with indi­vid­ual tutor­ing. Por­tuguese class­es con­tin­ue to help our “Mag­nif­i­cent 7” (the 7 new boys in the dorm) to catch up. With­out Por­tuguese, they will strug­gle to pass this year’s classes.

Our Sat­ur­day AWANA GAMES pro­gram is extreme­ly pop­u­lar with all ages of our chil­dren. 52 showed up for today’s pro­gram. Sad­ly, the Youth Night has been rained out for the last 2 Fri­days. Hor­ren­dous down­pours of rain start­ed both Fri­days, about an hour before the pro­gram starts, mak­ing it impos­si­ble for the teens to walk to the church from all over town. We will keep on, keep­ing on, as per­sis­tence is the name of the game.

All the chil­dren eager­ly watch as our brick lay­ers and car­pen­ters work togeth­er to com­plete the play­ground equip­ment at our children’s cen­ter. Due to heavy rains and some chal­lenges get­ting the right build­ing mate­ri­als, con­struc­tion came to a halt this week, just as we were ready to mount our cus­tom built 8 ft. slide. It will be the only one in the whole coun­ty! Our goal is to com­plete it by the end of Feb. if the rains don’t inter­fere with our morn­ing work hours.

GOATS WARS OF BALAMA

Three weeks ago, a group of out­side buy­ers came to Bala­ma with the sole pur­pose of buy­ing up ALL GOATS that were of eat­ing size. Why? They start­ed a busi­ness where they cook the meat and sell small pieces to men dig­ging ille­gal­ly in the bush to har­vest semi-pre­cious stones includ­ing Rubies. The demand for goat meat is tremen­dous at the moment with 2 dif­fer­ent mines (graphite and rubies), and the mul­ti­ple gas com­pa­nies all work­ing in this Province (state).

Because these buy­ers were offer­ing $30/head MORE than the local price, some very bad men formed thiev­ing groups and began to raid the vil­lages in order to sell to these buy­ers. I heard that 2 vil­lages lost every goat they had. Not to wor­ry, as no one came near our place as our goats are well guard­ed (super­nat­u­ral­ly and naturally).

Sud­den­ly peo­ple began ped­dling in on bicy­cles, motor­bikes, and on foot with goats in tow to our Rovu­ma Goat Barns BEGGING us to buy their goats so the thieves wouldn’t get them. Most were very good breed­ing females. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, (duh more like divine inter­ven­tion), we’d just received sev­er­al gifts from donors to help us increase our herd. Good breed­ing stock show­ing up at our door (instead of hav­ing to find them vil­lage by vil­lage) was a real PLUS! God works in mys­te­ri­ous ways for sure!

The best goats in the District were now being delivered to our door.

This is what God means by “ask and you shall receive”. We asked, expect­ed, and then received!

In sum­ma­ry, we now have 153 females (90% are preg­nant), and 4 new males to ser­vice them. Our chil­dren will not lack for meat. One goat fed the 100 orphans in our 22 homes this week, mak­ing them a very hap­py bunch. That was our “back to school gift” to the chil­dren who nor­mal­ly only get goat on major holidays.

EVERYONE REMEMBERS CATTLE DRIVES, BUT A GOAT DRIVE?

A goat herder south of us did a “goat dri­ve” by herd­ing his goats 4 days through the bush to get them to us. No hors­es for these 2 men. It was all done on foot. Esti­mat­ed dis­tance was over 15 miles. Yep they lost 5 on the way from exhaus­tion but that is the cost of push­ing them too hard.

Thieves are still a prob­lem, but our goats are well guard­ed by a legion of angels who over­see our THREE, 3 man teams of goat guards. They work on a rotat­ing sched­ule and are as well armed as Moz. men can be. (Machetes, home­made bow and arrows, and sling shots). These men have used these tools to hunt small game since they were chil­dren, and are very accu­rate, espe­cial­ly with the sling shots. Any­one com­ing around our barns at night will get a big sur­prise. The men may be dan­ger­ous, but the ANGELS play for keeps!

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Eric Dry And the Bala­ma staff