Hero Rat

How often do you think about landmines? I've heard about the landmine problems in news stories from time to time, maybe on a news program in the States, but here in Mozambique the problem is real. We see people everyday that have been injured by landmine explosions. We recently went to visit an organization that has a unique way of finding and deactivating landmines. The orgainazation is called APOPO and is a program that Belgian and Tanzanian researchers have put togather. They do is train African Giant Pouch Rats to search and find landmines...by smell . The rats are trained to detect the scent of TNT, and when they do, they will scratch the ground. The trainer then flags that area and a removal crew comes in to detnate it safely. The rats are not heavy enought to set the mine off so no need to worry about loosing one that way. Check out there web sight http://www.herorat.org/ there is also a video on line you can watch. It's a Frontline stoy about the rats. If you go to http://www.pbs.org/ and search frontline hero rat you should find it. Check it out.
The rats are huge...about the size of a cat. They have really long noses and even longer tails. We visited the place where they are kept and trained in Inhambane. There were about 20 or so at the station at that time. When they go to train, they go out to a field where there are low lines runnning parallel along the length of the field. There are inactivated mines buried there. The rats are attached to the lines by a collar around their neck, and then they are coaxed to the other end of the field by food. So they toddle along, on a leash basically, and weave back and forth until they catch the TNT scent. All of the demining efforts are funded by foreign organizations that work in multiple countries. While we were talking to some of the trainers...they mentioned that some of the rats are being trained to detect people with TB(by smell!). They have the rats working at ports to detect people coming from other places by boat that may have TB. Until next time, CHEERS.

Update (4/10 through 4/25)

The past couple of weeks have gone by very fast, but I'm not sure why. Jon went on a class trip to a camp in Hekpoort, South Africa. It sounds like he had a good time. The camp was on a large game preserve that had many animals. On one of the walks he took through the bush, he came across a skull of a Wildebeest that had its horns on it. Jon was able to bring it home with him which was very cool. Maybe we will be able hang it up on a wall somewhere in Jon's room or perhaps somewhere else.

We have had a visitor this week from Stone Mountain. His name is Flat Stanley. You may have heard of him...he gets around =). We are very happy to host him here in Maputo and want to give a big thanks to our friend Caleb Stansberry for sending him to us. I can't wait for Caleb and his class to hear about all that Flat Stanley did here.

I rode down to Nelspruit, South Africa last week. A friend was going to have his landcruiser worked on and invited me to go along. Nelspruit is a very american type of city; you can find just about anything you need there, and the cost of goods is much cheeper than Maputo.

The Fish Lady

One part of living here that is taking some getting use to, is having people working for us at our house. Don't get me wrong, I think I will be able to adjust to it fine =). We have three men that work at our house as security guards. They are employed by a security service that contracts through the U.S. Embassy. These guys work 12 hour shifts and rotate so the same guy is not here at the same time each day of the week. They are not paid much by the company they work for. One of the guys told me he's paid 2,500 meticals per month, or 100.00 u.s. dollars. The guys we have at our house are good, hard working men that are look for opportunities to earn extra money. None of them speak English so we(or at least I)have to talk with our hands or draw pictures in the dirt. I'm sure anyone that sees us would think we were having an argument with all of the arm flailing and body motions that we do. I don't know how, but somehow we understand each other. I will sometimes tell Beth about what these guys are doing, where they live, or about there family. She always wonders how in the world I can understand all of it. We are glad to be able to help these guys out. They always wash the car, clean the pool, or do yard work, and sometimes just stand next to me while I try to enjoy a little peace and quit outside, which is usually strange.

We also have a man that comes three days a week and cooks for us. His name is Americo. He speaks English as well as Portuguese and has been a great help to us. He works for a few other American people here and has been full time cooking for around ten years. He was here late one day so I offered him a ride home so he wouldn't have to wait for the bus. It was great to go to his house and meet his wife. He was telling me how excited his children would be to meet me, but it was late, and they were already in bed when we arrived. Americo has been a great help to me by translating for the guards. Maybe one of the most times he did this was whenthings was when this woman that came by the house one day. This lady came by, and I wasnt really sure what she wanted. The guard had opened the gate and said a couple of things to her and then turned around and looked at me. I was thinking "what?" He said "camarao?" I looked at him with a puzzled look, walked over, looked in the bucket, and let out an "OH! SHRIMP...hang on a minute let me go get Americo". He came out of the house and first thing he says to the lady was "*!^%$#@#^ ?" (That's what I heared anyway). He was speaking to her in a language called Shangaan, which is a tribal language that was spoken before the portugese colonized here. I was standing here thinking "Great I only know a few Portuguese words I can say and now I have to figure this out?" So, I bought the shrimp, the lady asked(translating through Americo)when I wanted her to come back with more. America said to just get here cell phone number and call her when I was ready. I put in her number and asked for her name, Americo was speaking Shangaan, she was speaking Shangaan, and I was trying to type on my cell phone. After a few minutes, Americo gave up and said, "Just call her the Fish Lady".

Spring Break

Spring Break in Mozambique. A first! We were invited by some friends to go camping/diving in a small town about 7 hours north of Maputo. There were five families altogether: 11 kids and 10 adults. Our destination was a camp on the beach at Praia Da Barra. Most of the road was good and the drive up was beautiful. Check out Google Earth and look at Mozambique. You will see many of these inland lakes that are along the coast line. They are cut off from the Indian Ocean by large sand dunes that are covered by vegetation. I have heard people call Mozambique the "Lagoon Coast" and to see it with our own eyes was amazing. To look out over a big blue lagoon and then just over the dune is the Indian Ocean, it was incredible. Jon and I went diving while we were on the trip; at a dive center in Tofo (about 15 minutes from our camp). The reef they took us to was not very big, but was full of life. One reallly interesting part of going to these places is the people you meet. As we were talking to our dive master we found that he had recently finished a road trip from England to South Africa. I know a guy who drove from Snellville to Minnesota to harvest cranberry's, which is pretty awesome too! : ). The funny thing about this guy is he is leaving his job at the dive center in Mozambique to go to Tucson, Arizona to be with his American girlfriend. Sam and Spencer love being at the beach we all had so much fun playing in the warm water and hanging out on the beach.

Update (3/18/08)

We should be moving into our permanent house very soon; there is just a few more things to get finished and we will get the green light to move. We thought we would have moved in well before now, but we are being patient and trying to make the best of it. Beth and I worked in the yard at the new house all day on Saturday. We had a good time making it feel like it is ours.

Orphanage of Catembe

This past weekend we had a chance to visit an orphanage in the village of Catembe. We went there with a group from the Church we have been attending. The trip to the orphanage is an adventure of it's own. We met at 7 am to ride the ferry across the Maputo river(you have to arrive early to get in line to load your car on the boat). We rode over with a friend so that was great. The orphanage is called The Family House of Hope and it consist of five newly constructed houses on a large piece of land. There plan is to have a married husband and wife live with twelve children in each house. Right know there are twenty six children living there ranging from one year to sixteen years of age. All of the kids love to play, laugh, and to be loved. Many of the kids wanted to hold hands with us and set on our laps just to have the contact that they have been missing. We planted several trees and other plants for them and then took a ride down the road to a small school that the Church is helping to run. There was four classrooms about the size of a class room at home with one exception: they're class sizes are about 45 kids per class. Many share a desk with two or even three kids per desk, and thats just the first group of students! They have three groups that come for three hours each day. Thats about 530 kids everyday in this school with the same teachers all day from 8 am to 7 pm everyday. Beth and I have been thinking of a way we might be able to help the teachers out with visual teaching aids or even writing paper. The day was topped off with a great lunch with the kids at the orphanage. We took a few packs of baseball and football cards to give out they seemed to like them very much. We will make a trip back out again soon.

Inhaca and Ponto do Oura

We've had a chance to get out of the city on a couple of weekends. We went with a couple to an island called Inhaca. It's across the bay from Maputo. We went there by boat and stayed overnight at a small camp. It was nice to be the only ones at the camp. The water in the bay was very warm. We spent a lot of time just floating around and enjoying each others company.

We also went to Ponta do Oura, this is truly a hidden jewel. It is in the most southern part of Mozambique, just a few miles from the South African boarder. Jon and I had been taking a scuba diving classes and this was the weekend for our open water dive. A friend loaned us his Land Cruiser to drive there because you have to have a good 4x4 (and liscense plates). The roads are very rough outside of the city and mostly barren of people. We made five dives, three on Saturday and two on Sunday, the reefs we dove on where beautiful. They had lots of life: we saw two sea turtles, a large sting ray, many lionfish, a large star fish, several giant potato bass, and even nemo and his family. Very cool.

Update (2/5/08)

Our sea shipment arrived! All of our things now have now arrived including our car. We can't drive it yet because we haven't been giving our diplomatic states, but the folks at the Embassy are working on it, so we hope it won't be to long. Until next time, cheers.

Welcome to Maputo!

My plan was to have this blog up and running well before now, but those of you that know me shouldn't be surprised that it has taken this long. So much has happened over the last few months, as you might imagine it has been an emotional rollercoster ride for all of us. The support and encouragement that we have received has been overwhelming and the Skaggs family is very thankful for all of you. So, now here we are in Maputo Mozambique. We arrived on Jan. 5th and were welcomed at the airport buy two family's that we already new, that was great. They escorted us to the house we are staying in until our other house is ready for us. We had a week to hang out before schools started, so we were able to explore the area we live in, and go out and see the school. Sam has sixteen kids in his class and a wonderful teacher he's getting along just fine. Spencer has adjusted well to his new class and is involved in basketball, and tennis after school, he's really enjoying that. Jon has made many new friend and the group of them hang out and seem to always be going somewhere out to eat or playing paintball or something really fun.
We have learned to navigate around the city pretty well now. Don't get me wrong, the language is not what I'm talking about, just as far as finding places to buy groceries and things. There are many places to chose from but each seem to carry slightly different items. Going to the butcher shops have been fun. There is one shop that the guys seem to get a real kick from me trying to speak Portuguese. Most of the fruits we buy, we buy from vendors on the streets they have carts setup with there produce on them, They are fine people just trying to make a living.