Our Week in Review

 This week Mozambique is in mourning over the death of artist, Malangatana. To tell the truth, I had not heard of him before, although he is apparently quite famous world over. I probably would still not know much about him except that our housemate fills us in every day on the details of his life, his wake, who was there, where they will bury him, etc. It has been the main topic at suppertime for several days and sometimes we have finished our meal and she has barely taken a bite because she is so busy telling us all about it. Actually, we learn a lot about the culture and what is happening in the news and the neighborhood through her. Now basically the whole town where he lived is camping out at his house to eat well for the next week.

 We are amazed at how much it has been raining this year. We have never experienced a true rainy season in the 6 years we’ve been here. It seems like every day or every other day we have at least one good shower. The crops should be great if it doesn’t flood, which is on everyone’s mind. They are afraid that the flood gates will be opened upstream, even to Zimbabwe and then Mozambique will suffer the consequences as they did in 2000. Today on the news they showed a mother who just gave birth to twins and went home to a flooded house. The only place she had for the babies was the kitchen table!

 We live in community within our house and then we live in greater community with the people in the flats above us. Steve has been getting to know them better as their drains on the outside of the building get clogged and affect us down below. Apparently one of them has a garbage disposal, plus they put a lot of grease down the sink so it’s been getting full really fast. Today, Steve had a show and tell right by the drain so we’ll see if that makes any difference.

 We also live in greater community with the apartment house right next to ours (20 feet away). Our bedrooms face the back side of the building. For a long time they had many little yippy dogs that would start a chorus of barking at all hours of the night and especially in the early morning. We felt bad for our visitors, (and for ourselves) when we couldn’t sleep! Well, wonder of wonders, the yippy dogs are gone. We’re not sure if the owners left as well or just the dogs, but we are very grateful for a good nights’ sleep.

 We’re starting to think Steve might have a wheat allergy so he’s taking a break from all wheat until we figure out what’s going on. Now the experiments begin with cassava flour, lentil and rice flour and who knows what else. Thankfully this house came with a grinder which we are starting to use more diligently.

 This weekend we had visitors - a couple from Swaziland who is starting to work with Ancient Paths Seminars there. We have been asked to mentor them, and will be traveling to Swazi in the next months to do some seminars with them. We had a great time getting to know them a bit. The wife even said she would get me some non-wheat recipes. She owns a health food store/coffee shop.

That's a bit of what's been happening with us on this side of the world this week. Who knows what next week will bring!