CATCH AND RELEASE

Yesterday a new baby arrived in the nursery. Georgina is fourteen months old and more toddler than baby. She was dressed in raggedy clothes, her face darkened by spending most of her days in the sun. She needed a thorough wash, a good meal and a new wardrobe.

This morning, her bright eyes shifted from one unfamiliar face to the next as she cried with all the strength her weak little body could muster. I watched her from the other side of the room, not sure whether she was used to white faces or if my appearance would upset her even more.

As I observed, I felt a twinge in my heart. What was that unfamiliar sensation beating dully within me?

I was happy that she was here, another precious little one to care for. Yet, even as I delighted in the surprise of this new arrival, I felt uneasy. Something was gnawing at my soul – a jaded dullness that whispered almost imperceptibly, “Don’t fall in love again. You’ll have to let her go soon...”

Stunned by my own reaction, I looked at the other five playing on the floor. Kenssane, just home from the hospital after heart surgery; my heart skips a beat when I know I’m going to see her. Nercia, the brave explorer, who’ll chase me unsteadily around the room on her tiny toddler feet so long as she knows I’ll eventually snatch her up and swing her high above my head. Zecarias, dimpled giggler who falls asleep while sitting up and who loves loud, messy raspberries blown on his chubby neck. Aline, calm and gentle with a smile that lights up the world; she cannot crawl yet but can clap by threes. Shelton, confident and playful with those he knows but aloof observer when strangers are in the room.

Be still, my heart! These irresistible little ones have won me over.

On a day when challenges are rife and busyness is consuming, I’ll make a quick detour to the calm quiet of the nursery and catch my breath with pleasure as I walk in the gate. I’ll get down on the floor so they can climb all over me, dribbling and drooling, leaving tracks of runny noses on my clothes, pulling my hair, mussing me up completely and catching their fingers in my earrings. There is no better down-time.

Each and every baby who has passed through the nursery has captured my heart, all twenty-something of them in the two years I’ve worked there. All it takes is a glance to draw me in. I cannot walk past them without a touch or a word. I can’t think of them without smiling. I cannot be near them without running my hand over a head or squeezing a ticklish thigh or kissing a cheek.

I work in the nursery only six days a month and yet it’s a highlight, a pleasure I look forward to and a break from the other jobs I do here. How blessed I am.

As I watch Georgina, I ponder the weariness within me and I think of all who’ve left the nursery. Five have returned to their extended families or been adopted; what a happy ending for them but a little part of my heart goes with them every time. Fragile Raquelina died after only a few months, never quite gaining the strength she needed to survive a desperately rough start to her life; I eased my grief by pouring extra love into her twin, Francisco. Most of our former residents now live in the Baby House: even though it’s right next door, my heart breaks a little every time they leave.

Today I am thankful for the chance to stand back and watch. I realise that the repeating pattern of “catch and release” has left me a little weary yet I am at peace. I think of Silvia and Xadraque, of Sheila and Inercio, Kerone and Faustina and all the others who have won my heart so easily.

I know that, by the end of tomorrow, the weariness will have been overcome by a toddler’s need for love and I will have given my heart all over again, irrevocably and completely.

THE GIFT OF JOY

 

It is the first Sunday of the month and several Iris Ministries churches have gathered together here at Zimpeto. It is also Women’s Day and the church is noisy and full to overflowing, bustling with movement, music, dancing – and joy, oh the African move-your-feet, clap-your-hands, sing-out-loud joy! Le le le le le le le!

The first Sunday of each month always reminds me of the bigger picture of life here in Mozambique. You see, I live at a children’s centre behind guarded gates and high walls. Zimpeto’s 260 kids get three square meals and two showers a day and new clothes when their old ones rip; they receive an education; they grow up amidst the love and support of a community of believers. I live in a comparably well-off bubble slap-bang in the midst of a community so poor that many people right outside our well-guarded gates eat only one meal a day.

On the first Sunday of each month, the “real” Mozambique visits for the morning. I sit near the old vovos – the grandmothers - in their traditional, vibrantly-coloured capulanas and head scarves, looking so much older than their years.

I cuddle a little girl on my lap whose skirt is held up with a safety pin and whose knees are scabby and weeping. Her big brother, perhaps nine or ten, stands next to us, his smile bright and his eyes sparkling with good humour even as his light hair and dull skin wordlessly reveal his malnutrition. While the music plays, his ripped, buttonless shirt flaps open and falls off one shoulder each time he copies the vigorous slide-stamp-clap movement of the older boys near him. As the dust clouds rise from their feet and beads of sweat are flicked away, he pulls his shirt back on, determined to keep up with his heroes, the big boys in their big boy shirts with their big boy haircuts. Everyone needs a hero.

The longer I live here, the more desensitised I become and the less I notice the poverty and its attendant suffering right on my doorstep. I no longer rage loudly at the injustices surrounding me but simmer quietly instead. Perhaps I have run out of words. Perhaps my heart grew weary from feeling too deeply, too often. Or perhaps, somewhere along the line, I decided to stop feeling because it was too hard.

A year ago I used to pray each Sunday with a young woman who was too sick to sit up in church. She would drag her emaciated body onto the back of our flat-bed truck, ride to church with others from the community, make it in the door then lie down, having expended all her strength to get there. Each week I would sit on the floor or on a bench and pray with her, flicking the flies away and desperately pleading for healing and life to flow back into her wasted frame. It has been a year now and, somewhere along the way, she stopped coming. I didn’t notice until today. How could I not notice?

Indifference is grey. It is dull and tasteless and it is deceptively powerful. I need the sharp stab of conscience to move me once more, to guide me, to have its painful way in the apathetic corners of my heart. If not, what am I doing here?

I want to carry with me always the jagged pain I feel as I look around me now. This is my church. This is where I come to worship. It is a gift I cannot fully fathom. This is a world so different from the one from which I came. God, keep my heart soft to the needs around me, to the suffering of my brothers and sisters as I serve You here.

The music ends and we all sit, my young friend with the buttonless shirt fingering my shiny new silver watch, entranced by its glossy exterior and by the hands moving within. To me it is a cheap watch, to him it’s worth a fortune. He glances at me with a huge smile, expecting me to pull my hand away. I don’t, and he is thrilled to be able to run his finger gently around the smooth glass. We both laugh and my heart begins to feel once more.

Suddenly there is a crash from the right as a bench collapses under the weight of too much wriggling. A bunch of children roll harmlessly onto the floor and onto each other, arms and legs flailing. Each looks around for someone to blame and, finding no one, they all laugh and shove until they’re told to settle down and find new seats. I laugh with them.

Two teenage girls from the community are called forward to sing. The African harmonies in their song make my heart sing with them. The beads in their hair click rhythmically as they sway, singing unaccompanied and with perfect pitch, the rhythm starting at their toes and working its way up until, towards the end, their whole bodies are moving, their eyes closed and their arms raised in worship. It is a loud, exuberant peak, a holy celebration shared even with those of us who do not understand Shangaan. When the Spirit moves, language is no barrier.

And then it begins... Pastor Nico calls all the women and girls forward: it is Women’s Day, after all. The littlest girls rush to the front, vovos help each other off the floor, missionaries line up, the teenagers shuffle, embarrassed, and the visitors glance around, wondering if they’re included. I feel drab and dull in my black blouse and dark denim skirt as I kiss on both cheeks one of the vovos dressed in diverse patterns of greens, blues and reds. I wish her a “feliz Dia das Mulheres” – happy Women’s Day! I’m proud of myself for saying it so fluently in Portuguese then remember that she only speaks Shangaan. We smile and hug, sharing the language of celebration instead, our womanhood bonding us despite differences in age, culture and language. Oh, and the colour of our clothes.

All the men and boys form two lines facing each other along the front of the church, then out the front door, up the long footpath and in the back door. They raise their arms and hold hands to form a tunnel, the littlest boys reaching to raise their arms as high as they can.

The music plays, the drums beating out a rhythm as my vovo friend sways in time, elbows bent, her arms swinging steadily as if to propel her forward. She bends low to walk into the tunnel and I follow.

Hands touch our heads as the men pray for us, hands on our backs and shoulders, hands pulling us forward, hands pressing us through. This is no time to be sensitive about one’s personal space. I feel my hair clip fall and don’t care: there are some moments in life when messy is good and this is one of them. My back aches from bending low as we pass the small boys, laughing as they mess up my hair on purpose. I laugh with them.

It is hot, sweaty work, making our way through that long, long tunnel. It is loud and joyous as we stop and start, shuffling slowly and getting completely mussed up. As we exit, everyone is laughing, hugging, kissing cheeks and high-fiving (yes, even here).

I sit down, still chuckling at the chaos and the noise and the bodies bumping up against each other and at how untidy I now am, and I’m thankful. Perhaps this morning is a gift to remind me that, while sharing in the suffering of others, one must remember to also share their joys.

We celebrate together and perhaps the bright, colourful, patterned clothing of the Mozambican vovos can teach me a thing or two about the colours of life here.

Perhaps the joy of dancing through a tunnel of hands fills them with the strength they need to get them through another week and, as I dance with them, my heart feels strengthened once more.

Perhaps they need my laughter more than they need my tears and this is a gift I can give while, together, we sway to the heartbeat of the African rhythms of life.

WEDDING BELL BLUES

When Binario asked me to photograph his wedding to Valine, my first reaction was one of excitement. I had been wondering how I could bless these two young people and I now had the opportunity to give to them in a way I’d not expected. These “kids” who grew up here at Zimpeto own very little and, of course, we want to bless them however we can. The week before, we’d invited them to Home Group to surprise them with wedding gifts: the most practical, useful gifts we could think of. Tupperware, glasses, pans, mugs, and cash – metacais – stuffed into the pots and plasticware.

To photograph their wedding was another opportunity to bless them. I could give them a gift that will last a lifetime. So I said yes, enthusiastically and with great assurance. Then I thought about it and the anxiety began, the “what am I doing” moment (a whole day, really) of thinking, “This is the most important day of their lives. There can be no do-over. What if something goes wrong? What if...? What if...? What am I doing?” The excuses flowed and I was ready to pull out.

I have photographed a lot of kids and animals and weather; flowers that will grow again next season; suns that will set again tomorrow; views from a flight that I’ll be taking again soon. I have never photographed a wedding, not officially. So, to be the one person, with the one dodgy camera, documenting the one special day, with no chance of a repeat performance, felt like too much of a stretch for me.

I’ve photographed lions from four feet away through a window unwisely cracked open. I’ve snapped birds in trees while I lie flat on my back in the grass, whales from a shifting boat deck, dolphins from the slippery rocks as the waves crash around me. I’m the one climbing up onto the table at the school reunion to get the shot with the light just so. When I want a good photo, I commit. And I’ve ended up with some great snaps over the years.

I’ve also gone to Niagara Falls without a memory card in my camera. I’ve toppled face-first into the sand while trying to get just the right angle of a toddler playing. I’ve almost fallen off a bench in the middle of church, a couple of times now, as I photograph over the heads of the tall people in front of me. The last sunrise at which I aimed my lens, I ended up backing into a four feet deep ditch, having to claw my way out by digging my fingernails into the dirt and crawling on my stomach. Maybe that’s when the sand got into my zoom lens.

I photograph instinctively then edit, edit, edit. I am no technical expert. What if the conditions are too difficult for my limited knowledge? What if it’s too sunny, or too cloudy, or too wet or too dry? Again I thought of cancelling. Did I mention that my Portuguese does not yet include terms such as “bouquet”, “registry” and “can you all do the hokey pokey now”?

My camera is eight years old and the flash doesn’t work properly. I have three batteries, none of which last long and sometimes die completely in the African heat. Occasionally the zoom lens doesn’t zoom – a minute or two of gentle manipulation helps. I’ll be saying to the groom as he holds his bride aloft in his arms on the beach as the tide turns and the sun disappears quickly below the horizon, “Hold that pose... just another minute... hold it...”

I was now on an excuses bender. I thought about my feet. Mozambican Church can be too long for me, let alone a Mozambican wedding. It would begin with the civil ceremony at the registry office in town, move to the park for photos, then to the beach, out to Zimpeto for the public church ceremony, and back to town for the evening reception. My feet ached and the rest of me panicked just thinking about it.

I looked at my calendar and saw the busy month I was heading into. The wedding day came sandwiched right in the middle of three weekends out of five that I was working. Now that right there is a good excuse. All my reasoning was fair and understandable. Then I began to think of the joy of the day and of this young couple’s trust in me, my abilities and my camera that, to them, was really fancy. And I thought, “If I don’t do it, who will?” I knew, aside from technical disasters, I could do a reasonable job. I’m no pro photographer but I could turn out some sound, if not dazzlingly amazing, shots. The bride and groom would like the results. It was, after all, all about them.

When did taking photos at a wedding become a huge faith step, akin to quitting a job or moving to another country, or actually getting married? I realised I was - to use a well-worn psychological term – totally freaking out. I would do this, I would do it as best I could, and I would trust God with the results. God cares about such things! Now... just breathe. And go clean the sand out of your camera.

So, it would be me and my faithful, battered old five megapixel, 12x zoom Panasonic (yes, I hear you photographers chuckling). I cleaned and wiped, flicked and fiddled. I massaged the stiff lens mechanism, I laid hands and prayed. I truly did. I packed, repacked, unpacked and packed again. And the more I prepared, the more excited I became at the possibility of giving a gift to this young couple that would make them smile for years to come.

By playing photographer, I was able to document the wedding of two of Zimpeto’s own. They both grew up here. They’re the first two to marry “within the family” and they are both very special, gifted young people who love God and each other.

To think, I nearly missed it. I had the honour of witnessing each step of this long, wonderful and very Mozambican day. My camera worked (mostly), the photos turned out (generally), the bride and groom were blessed (totally) and I had the time of my life.

SWEET HELENA

It has taken nearly two years for me to write about Helena. Delightful, feisty, joyous, moody Helena, with a smile as big as the sun and a loud laugh that always held mischief in its depths. Last week at our missionaries’ home group, we talked about disappointments we have faced here in Mozambique. Of course, Helena’s story came up.

It is time her story was told.

Helena (centre, above) was becoming a beautiful, bold, dare I say mildly defiant young woman who, at the age of twelve, was a favourite with many of our visitors who loved her strength. Me? Well, I was sometimes quite intimidated by her – such chutzpah in a child is a sight to behold.

Helena came to the Centre as a baby and those who were here say her smile was as bright then as it was as she grew into womanhood. Her mother and grandmother had both died and the only family she had left in the world was her great-grandmother. The men of the family were gone.

First in the Baby House then the girls’ dorm, Helena was thriving here at the Centre. This had been her home for all except a few months of her life.

Then, in May 2012, she became sick. She was taken to the hospital with fevers and head pain but received no diagnosis and was sent home. The next day, she was sent back to the hospital as the pain worsened and the fevers would not break. Again, she was sent back to the Centre. By this stage, the nurse missionaries here had informally diagnosed cerebral meningitis but were not equipped to treat it. So, to the hospital she went again and, this time, a misdiagnosis of pneumonia, a useless prescription and still no hospital admission.

Helena grew sicker by the hour and her pain grew worse. She cried her way through the days, dozing often from the illness’s effects and sleeping fitfully through the nights. Her body dripped with sweat, eyes squeezed shut, hands tapping at her head in a futile attempt to chase the pain away.

By her fifth trip to the hospital, Helena was in agony, suffering indescribably. She was slowly dying before our eyes. There are no words to express the agony of a child in unspeakable pain or the depths of despair we felt as we watched her.

I live in a developing nation which, by its very nature, has some growing up to do. Mozambique still has a long way to go to mature her systems and structures: healthcare is improving by the year but it is not yet what we from “developed nations” (such a dryly arrogant term) are used to. Every now and then estrangeros, or foreigners, must tackle the great divide between “developed” and “developing”, which is confronted most desperately in the area of healthcare.

This time around, we were fighting a life-or-death battle for one of our children. The divide was just too great to negotiate.

On her fifth trip to the hospital in a week, Helena was finally admitted. She was officially, and accurately, diagnosed this time around. Treatment began. Too little, too late.

A few hours later, Helena’s carer (employed by the Centre to stay with her in hospital) phoned, desperate. Helena’s chilling screams could be heard in the background as the tia pleaded over the phone. “I need help! I can’t control her. She’s running around, she’s making no sense. She won’t stop screaming!” She cried into the phone as Helena continued to shriek hysterically.

Within a few hours Helena had fallen into a coma. Not long after this, she died.

There are no words, no neat explanation to make us feel better, no closure to be had. I had touched her face, wiped her tears, held her clenched hand in mine. I’d cried and begged, demanded, pleaded. So many of us stormed Heaven on her behalf. Yet still, she died.

Now, almost two years later, this helplessness continues to jab sharply at my soul. I want it to stay sharp. I do not want closure. I need to stay stirred up, to remain angry in the face of such injustice. I want to remember the depths of helplessness that left me speechless as I listened to her desperate whimpers. I want to stay unsettled. Perhaps that jagged frustration within will press me into action and chase away the shadows of complacency that try to disempower us all.

I wish Helena’s story was the only one I could tell. It is not.

I am here, living in a developing nation, and it seems a powerless offering in the face of overwhelming injustice. Ironically, it is the very helplessness I feel that keeps me here, determined that, somehow - God only knows how - I could see change. Sometime, some way, in the future, just maybe...

I will not taint her memory by trying to explain why this would happen. To a child. To one of ours. She was meant to be safe here, saved from her suffering, given a bright future. Yet still, she died.

Sometimes the world is a dark place and injustice seems to have the final say.

In the face of such helplessness, all I know to do is release her to her Heavenly Papa’s arms. I cannot even ask “Why?” These moments and this release are too deep and her precious life too sacred to ask questions.

Sweet Helena, we were privileged to love you for a season. Sleep well, at rest in the forever peace of Heaven’s arms.

FIT FOR A QUEEN

I live in a room. It’s not a house, it’s a room with a bathroom and a bit of extra space in the back. Calling my room a “home” sounds just a little grand but my home and I have delusions of grandeur and we’re happy with that.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my room. I’m a bit of a homebody and the introvert in me finds rest and restoration in my own personal space. I’m grateful for it and I like being in it. From the outside it looks like a concrete block. On the inside, it’s very me: all whites and beiges and just a touch of purple, with clean lines, gently wafting sheer curtains and no clutter. I’ve been able to make it mine and it feels like a sanctuary, a retreat right in the middle of the busyness of this amazing, crazy place in which I live.

I’m thankful and just about every day I breathe a sign of pleasure in my little home. I don’t hanker after very much more than this. Ah, sweet contentment!

So, when I came to Sydney in December with the promise of a place to stay and a car to drive, I expected a bed, a set of keys and time to retreat for a few weeks from the daily grind.

How fully and completely did I underestimate the goodness of God and the generosity of friends. I could not have imagined such blessing, let alone asked for or expected it.

I arrived in Sydney after a 14 hour flight from Johannesburg, welcomed by my parents at the airport. They drove me straight from the airport to the home I’d been lent by friends who were overseas. Food, water, shelter, a soft bed for the night – these were my expectations.

Oh my. Speechless doesn’t cover it.

This frazzled, jetlagged, crumpled missionary gal with the Mozambican dirt still stuck between her toes lugged a battered, half-empty suitcase up the steps. I’d brought with me one book, one pair of shoes, a few clothes that would be thrown out before I left, and the magical three-monthly deworming pill in my bag for my first night in civilisation. Some things follow you wherever you go.

Six months earlier, when I was planning my time away from Mozambique, I’d quietly pondered with God (I wouldn’t even call it praying) that I needed a real rest – a holiday that only feels like a holiday if I can see the ocean. But that costs money and I don’t have money for such luxuries these days. I also processed (I don’t think I was whining but, well, perhaps just a little) that I missed swimming, one of the most relaxing pleasures of my life where my body suddenly wakes up and says, “Hey, we’re on holidays – woo hoo!” I whispered it all to God and left it at His feet.

Now, here I stood, mouth agape. I was standing in front of the most beautiful house, next to the most beautiful pool, looking out on the most beautiful ocean view I could imagine. Beyond my wildest imaginings, this place would be my home for the next three weeks as I rested and prayed, read, spent endless hours looking out at the view, saw friends and family, ate good food, dreamed new dreams and – swam!

God surprises me often – He is so good to me. This time around, He blew me away with such perfect generosity to this Aussie gal from Mozambique who is just trying to do life with Him the best way I know how. He gave me “exceeding abundantly more than I could ask or imagine” and, in the midst, He gave me rest.

Now that I’m back and sitting in my little room, my Mozambican home, with a fan blowing at me on high speed in opposition to the heat and humidity, with children playing outside and with music blasting loudly from somewhere nearby, I am at rest still. I was blessed beyond measure with a palace while away, and I’m blessed to be here, living the dream one day at a time, looking forward to the adventure each day brings in the perfect will of God.

Now, what will I dream about next?

DAYS LIKE THIS

There are days when it’s hard to be here, when life is Just Plain Tough; when the noise of 300 kids feels too much to bear, when another worship band practice strikes up in the church at full ear-splitting volume, when someone in a house nearby starts drumming and goes on for hours, when the visitors are playing “Spoons” at midnight. Again.

There are days when the heat saps my strength and my head spins from dehydration because, once more, I forgot to drink water. On a hot day, drinking is a full-time occupation.

There are days when the sand thrashes my face like hot pins in the wind and all I want to do is go into lockdown behind closed doors. Even then, somehow, the sand finds me, covering everything indoors with a layer of dirt: plates, pillows, books, the lot. At the end of a windy day, even my bed needs to be brushed down before I climb in.

There are days when there is no running water because the bore has run dry and, once more, I’ve forgotten to refill the five litre spare bottle I keep stashed away. There are days when the electricity goes on and off again and again, which means the fan goes on and off. I’m happy to live without electricity except when my fan is plugged in.

Last week I had one of those days. I felt sorry for myself and did not want to be here. I cried. I hid myself away. I threw myself a massive pity party and I whinged and whined to God. He didn’t correct me, or discipline me, or tell me to just get over it. Neither did He pander. He heard and He answered, by giving me just what I needed: perspective, revealed in the form of two tiny lives.

Late in the week we heard of a baby out in the community who was desperately ill, whose family could not care for her. They had reached the end of their ability to cope and had nowhere else to turn. The team that investigates potential new admissions visited the home, met the family, saw the baby, and knew she needed to be here.

Then, somehow, red tape wrapped itself around the process and her arrival was delayed.

She died over the weekend.

I was angry. I was devastated. I sobbed out the sorrow and the fury at such injustice. I raged at Heaven and at the God who let this happen. Just a few more days; she needed just a few more days...

I really can’t say if she would have lived, had she come to us sooner. I didn’t meet her; I don’t know her name, her age, the colour of her eyes. All I know is that, for one brief moment, we were receiving a new baby into our care and she had hope. Then she died.

I found no peace, heard no gentle words of comfort. My heart was shattered and I felt more helpless than I have in a very long time.

Then we heard of another baby needing help. All went smoothly, no red tape tangle this time and she arrived yesterday, four months old and 4.6kg. She is small and malnourished but otherwise healthy. Her name is Nercia. She is here and she is beautiful. She is alive. And her eyes are bright, sparkling, deep dark brown.

God heard my cry – my whining about the discomforts and the inconveniences of life here – and He answered by bringing perspective to my week. We fight many battles and some we lose. The only way to keep going is to keep perspective, rejoicing in the battles we win and quickly releasing the ones that defeat us.

So, now, when I am tempted to throw myself a pity party, I think of Nercia and of other battles won for the lives of Zimpeto’s children. I think of Sina who was close to death as a newborn and is now a healthy, confident, opinionated seven-year-old ready to lead the world. Yuran, labelled a hopeless case by another children’s centre in Maputo, now chatting to anyone who’ll listen and walking with only a slight limp after five years of therapy.

There are also many success stories among the young adults who spent their growing-up years here. I think of beautiful Valene and her fiancé, Binario, who both grew up at Zimpeto and are now planning their wedding. Ramito, humorous and intelligent, now studying in the US. Mpedge who saved up through many years of working for pocket money in the Centre’s gardens: he paid his own way through driving school and has just received his licence, his doorway to potential employment.

And, every day, I think of Milagrosa: her name means “Great Miracle”. She was found a year ago in a rubbish skip in the city. Yes, she was thrown away with the garbage. God saw her and He saved her. She was found by a passer-by who heard her crying and brought her to Zimpeto where she thrived in the nursery. She grew strong, ate fussily, giggled often and began to walk. Just a month ago, a visiting family fell in love with her at first sight and adopted her. Now that’s what I call a great miracle!

Every one of Zimpeto’s kids, whether babies or all grown up, is a miracle, a success story beyond our understanding. God is raising the poor of this nation from the dust and is giving them, one life at a time, a future and a hope.

So, on days like this when the wind whips the sand into a blinding cloud and the water stops flowing through the taps, when the fan goes off and I feel like one more drum beat will rob me of my sanity, I think of Milagrosa and Nercia and of all the lives we have been privileged to love.

We don’t win every battle but we’re winning more with each year that passes. I am so thankful that I get to be a part of this extraordinary adventure in a place where miracles happen and dreams, so very often, really do come true.

TRANSPORT MOZ-STYLE

A shapa stop from the air

Last week I drove around the city trying to get some keys cut. I was unsuccessful - three times - but that is a story for another day. As I drove, I thought: “When I’m back in Sydney, I’ll have to remember to stay in my own lane when I’m driving.” Yes, I did actually think this, word for word.

Then I thought, “How is it that I am able, when in Australia, to trust other drivers to obey the road rules and, in Maputo, equally at peace assuming no one will obey the road rules? Are there road rules in Mozambique?”

In Sydney, when I am driving on a four-lane road I know that, aside from a blown tyre, earthquake or heart attack, the cars flowing predictably in the same direction as me will continue to do so unless they tell me otherwise with plenty of warning. It is peaceful and unsurprising. Last time I was there, I found it just a little humdrum.

Shapas waiting for passengers

In Sydney, it does not occur to me that the car in the right lane will suddenly cut across in front of me to pull in on the left to pick up a passenger. No indicator, no warning, missed my vehicle by inches and only because I slammed my foot on the brakes. In Maputo when this happens, I hardly blink. In fact, it has made me laugh often.

Welcome to traffic school, Mozambique-style.

Once, I nearly lost a side mirror when I was stuck in a two-lane traffic jam. All was well until a shapa (a public minibus) swept between the two official lanes, creating a new lane all for himself and missing my mirror by millimetres. I watched while, as if in slow motion, his side mirror came within a whisker of mine. He did not slow down and I didn’t gasp. I didn’t honk the horn, I didn’t panic. I just watched, more interested than concerned, as his mirror whispered past mine, close enough for me to give it a bit of a spit and polish.


Repairing my side mirror during a border run

Now the floodgate had opened and more shapas used this newly-created lane: more vehicles squeezed through a gap I could not see until a family sedan got half-way, became alarmed and stopped, the passenger’s big brown eyes just inches from mine.

Shapa drivers are renowned in Mozambique as the revheads¹ of the road. Their vehicles often lean precariously to one side, are rusting away, thumping out loud music, and regularly displaying silhouette-stickers of semi-clad women on the back. Shapas often have no window-glass, handy when someone needs to stick their bottom out the window to make room for one more person on the bus.

Personal space is an oxymoron when it comes to shapa travel. Be prepared to get close, then closer, then closer still. Plan ahead so you will not need to scratch your nose or look at your watch. In fact, don’t wear a watch – it may not be there when you disembark.

At shapa stops, groups of hawkers run wildly alongside moving vehicles, selling water, peanuts and bread sticks to the passengers within. They hand an item through the window then run, run, run to keep up as the buyer within tries to wrestle change from his pocket, hand it over three rows of heads and out the window. There must be unwritten shapa etiquette that allows for the honest exchange of money on the move. There must also be protocols for who gets on first and last, who sits on whose lap (seriously) and how many people is just enough.

The city of Maputo owns about a hundred full-size buses that run mostly in town. For everybody else, shapas and utes (small, flat-bed trucks) are it. For me in a squeeze (pun intended) I’d choose standing with thirty other people on the back of a truck over a shapa ride any day. At least I can see the sky and know that, if worst comes to worst, I can do the sheep-in-a-pen thing and go up and over the heads of other people to get off. The unwritten rule is that everybody on the outside links arms and holds on to each other, forming one big, secure square, so nobody falls off. Ingenious, really. Until you’re standing in the glaring sun hugging someone you’ve never met before, it’s 45 degrees celcius, there’s metal under your feet and the traffic is at a standstill.

Taking a shapa is neither easy nor quick. Yes, shapas could be safer, more roadworthy, and a whole lot better organised. For now, though, shapas and trucks are all that the people of this developing nation have to get to and from work each day: there is no other option.

I have never been the hard-core missionary-type and shapas are just a little beyond the capacity of this mildly adventurous spirit to conquer. Being the wuss³ that I am when it comes to enclosed spaces, I’m grateful that where I work is where I live, so my daily commute is just a short, pleasant walk through the sand.
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¹Revhead: Australian colloquialism for a hoon².
² Hoon: Australian colloquialism for someone, generally young and male, who drives recklessly, dangerously. Not a wuss³.
³ Wuss: Australian colloquialism for a person who is overly careful and unadventurous.