September 1, 2007

Hi everyone;

First off – for those of you who have given me new emails – and there’s a bunch of you, I’m sorting out my email list so please be patient as I adjust the mailing list. Please let me know though, if I’ve sent it to you twice.

Now, on to the fun stuff… I took a week off!!!! Can you believe it? I found a small hotel with clean water and a swimming pool and sat and read spiritual books for a week while drinking cappuccinos- Thanks God!!!!! It’s amazing what goes on in the northern part of this country. Anyway, I feel much better and got to experience some funny things I will share with you.

First off – American Television – translated into Arabic in Mozambique – you can watch – “Are you smarter than a fifth Grader?” Can you imagine what these people must think of us? Okay, you can also watch CSI and the Young and the Restless. There’s just something too freaky about it. I’m sure I saw some version of Bat Man and the Princess Diaries. I didn’t spend a great deal of time watching television but I scanned it a few times to see what was on and I was just blown away by what THEY (the network) or WE would choose to send to a country like Mozambique. They are already hooked – totally hooked on Brazilian soap operas so at least the Young and the Restless is tame in comparison but it’s bizarre to watch US t.v. here.

Then I went to the airport in Cuamba on my way back. I think maybe airstrips are like this in South America. The airport is in the bairro or local village with houses on both sides. The kids run across the runway in front of the plane (I’m going to have to put a new chapter in our survival skills training manual). The best part was the people are lined up selling things on the sides of the runway… like you might stop the plane and reach out the window to buy something. Now, I’m sure they don’t really think we can stop the plane to buy things…but maybe they think we’ll see something as we’re landing and then run over (across the runway) to purchase things while we are dropping off passengers.

There’s no waiting 28 days for British Air to find your luggage here. They never lose your luggage. You simply go to the back of the plane and show them which bags are yours to make sure they get off the flight in Cuamba or stay on to get all the way to Chimoio.

You know, it’s just such a refreshing flight system here anyway – the check in thing is totally an “honor-system” thing. You can go through the metal detector …. Or not….
If it goes off it’s not a problem, just keep going. They will ask you what’s in your purse and then not look in it. You can just show up at the airport and ask to get on the plane and you can fly. It’s really a whole new way of travel. If you’re flying one hour – you’re eating – period. They wouldn’t dream of letting you pay that $150 for a plane ticket and not get a sandwich and a juice. They also hand out the local paper for you to catch up on the daily news. Liquids? Not a problem. Ziplocs? Never heard of them. Limiting anything going on the plane? Get out of town… not going to happen.

And the best part is … it works. Nobody tries to smuggle anything onto the plane. Nobody takes weapons or sneaks a swiss army knife in their boot. It just is incomprehensible. We are all just traveling – getting from one point to the next. Nobody would disrupt the flow – it would be rude. If you don’t want them to look in any of your bags – the going rate is a coca cola. It all seems fair enough. Anyway it’s a lovely flying experience.

So, on our list of lovely things we also had Bob from One Child at a Time come to visit us. Poor thing, our car broke down on the way back from the airport – rattled like crazy for three hours back to Chimoio in the pouring down rain and then we were carless all week but he and his nephew Michael were real troopers. They got to be intimate with the public transport system… and Bob is a big guy. Really tall with those big “football player” shoulders so squeezing him in a van with 20 other people was a hoot.

What a great blessing. He’d never met me… only heard about me and our program and our kids through a friend of his who I met briefly in Pueblo, Colorado. Even so, he offered to pay for our new kitchen/bakery, which was $5000 and he and his nephew came out to lay a few bricks and watch the construction and help where they could.

What a delight! He was one of the last off the airplane and came in with a big smile and kiss and a hug and we were instant friends. The bakery is now pretty much up – has about one more week of tweaking and then we are going to teach our older boys how to lay bricks to put up the new gate (thank you Simon) and to put in a serving table for the bread and food in the kitchen (thank you again, Bob) so it will be finished in no time and the kids are really excited. We actually have to look at how we will facilitate all the kids once the bread starts coming.

While they were here, Bob brought more toothbrushes and mini toothpastes that his brother, Michael’s Dad had put together in little Ziploc kits. Michael took on a project of making paper mechet balloons, which the kids then painted into globes of the world. I’m going to try to put a photo here. They did not look so nice in person, but I tell you what – well wait till you see the photo.. It’s absolutely my very favorite photo from TIOS that we’ve ever made.

It is really fun also as our art kids are doing a poster for Jim Lord in America. He wrote the book, “What Kind of World do you want?” and now we have a photo of some of our older kids with all these globes of the world. Really very fun.

Can you tell I’ve had a vacation?

Anyway, Bob and Mike stayed here a week and had just a brilliant time and were such a huge help. I also had talked them into bringing pocket mirrors for the kids. You know, I’ve told you before how our kids never get to see their reflections and that’s why I buy dark colored cars so they can see themselves in the side panel. But now they each have their own mirror at home. They were so very excited as they ran home with their little hygiene kits of toothbrush, mirror, toothpaste and a protein bar. Also, Bob was brilliant – he brought a Polaroid camera so they each got to take home their own picture of themselves that day in their Ziploc. Absolute – Christmas!! And you know I don’t advocate handouts to kids ever but this was such a hygiene – self esteem building little kit for them, it was really a joy to give and kids that we haven’t seen since February showed up that day – oh surprise!!

You know it really is such a great blessing to have 200 kids run up to you in the morning crying “t-Tia, t-Tia, t-Tia” (Auntie) and racing up with their latest art work or the latest song they’ve learned or the latest first aid thing they’ve learned how to do. Really, it’s just great fun.

We had the U.S. Embassy come to visit and it was a fabulous visit. They hadn’t realized we were creating the bakery as well. Or perhaps they had forgotten and they were so very impressed with our kids’ ability to do first aid. The kids were total “hams” – they practiced with Bob and Mike first. They showed how to evaluate an accident victim; how to inspect your hands to make sure you have no cuts or scratches so you don’t get infections or give infections; how to splint our skeleton, Larazus; how to bandage a cut, a head injury, and treat a snake bite and then the finale ---- how to check the accident victim for a spinal injury and then move the victim while keeping him/her immobilized. Trust me, they were duly impressed with our 4 – 9 year olds.

They loved the doll project and could clearly see the impact it was having with the sewing girls and asked if we wouldn’t like better sewing machines and more electric ones, as they’d like to get us more funding in the future. They were blown away by the practicality of the program and the effectiveness. The one man from the embassy kept asking if we were nurses and we said, “No, this is just basic stuff you learn in school in the States.”

They were so very full of compliments and it was a great day of kudos for the kids and to improve their self-esteem. The director from the Embassy told us how last January during the big AIDS crisis with the Bush administration wanting to cut back funding – a team had come out to evaluate making funding cuts and then they saw our project and a couple of others and said, “We are going to give you guys more money” These are the kind of projects that are really necessary. Ones that are making new innovations in HIV awareness and are actually creating an impact. As I said, it was a very fun visit.

We also received a grant to help to pay salaries and rent for the next six months, which will help us out as the embassy project and its funding ends in November so this will bridge us until I do my next fundraising tour in the U.S. this winter. Also we’ve received a grant to hire my replacement in Mozambique so I can give a bit more time to some very necessary advocating in the U.S. and getting our AOSCI organization more established and some of our materials published, etc.

Then we had a boy from South Africa who goes to some boarding school and needed to do community service. His name was Francois and I think he was 17. Last year, he had blown off his community service and his mom had asked me if we could give him something to do. So, I asked what he liked and he was a bit non-commital but then I talked to him about doing some safety training – the new stove in the new bakery, how the capulana skirts can catch on fire when they are cooking over a stove, safety with the well (water) and other holes, electricity, more road safety and the best ….. Francois new how to do self-defense – (not Karate but sort of martial arts) and we made a plan that if the kids were really good during the other safety courses they could learn self-defense. They LOVED IT!! And Francois left with the biggest smile of all – he had a great time – went straight from hating having to do community services to saying he was really looking forward to coming back to work with us on Monday. Imagine our kids doing the whole “karate kid” wax the car, paint the fence scene – as they were blocking punches, and learning to do self defense. Even our female employees and sewing girls attended as they felt it was really important. It absolutely brings me to tears of laughter when I remember size 2 Berta (our petite, perfectly dressed, quiet sewing teacher) demonstrating Karate- type moves to our sewing girls to explain to them what we were going to teach. Tooooo hilarious. They also thought it was funny as I swung punches at Francois and he blocked every punch to demonstrate to them also what we were going to teach them. Was great, great fun!! And again goes to show – everybody, everybody, everybody has something to teach in this country – with or without language skills.

We also had a Portuguese woman who had heard of us, come and bring rice, and painting materials and ceramics, and protein bars. Gouda Gold brought us some Yogurt for the poster we had done for the president’s visit and a man from an organization called, VAC came and they are going to try to find us some college interns.

The director from Horizon 3000 (the Austrian Organization) stopped me on the street yesterday to say she is going to come visit us to get us a professional financial planner – summer of 2008 who can help us with our transparency and to write a five year business plan, etc.

Who else?
Oh, yesterday an American woman from Rotary who was investigating about how some organizations are working in HIV and others in other areas of human rights, etc. and why and how organizations choose and put their programs together came to visit us. She had heard about us while in Beira. Anyway, she is facilitating me doing a presentation in Beira for Rotary this week and then in Chimoio the next week and then hopefully we will be presenting to her Rotary club in Gaynesville, FLA this winter.

Which brings me to my next exciting news: I am starting to put together my winter fundraising tour. I will be coming to the States in December to have Christmas with my family for the first time since 2002. We will meet in Arizona and have Christmas there and then I will be doing a tour to speak about our work an our programs across the southern states until the end of March.

We now have 12 employees, and about 200 kids a day at our center and our one funded project (the embassy) is ending the first of November, so we need to get stabilized. With bread sales, and doll sales and training we should be getting really close to being sustainable. Also, WFD – a German capacity building Organization wants to fund us but it will take them until summer 2008 to get everything put together so we must get through until then which means we need to sort out more funding. So, my plan is to stay warm and speak at churches and Rotary’s and other community’s or press During Jan – March – Florida; Houston, TX; Phoenix, AZ; Carlsbad and San Francisco, CAL are in the plans. .. though I’m open to anywhere warm.

So, if you have contacts in any of those states or (anywhere warm) MS, AL, LA, NE, NM, etc. that you think would be interested to hear about our work, please let me know at your earliest convenience. As I’d like to start setting up the tour and I want to make it organized so it’s a comfortable program. As you know, in the past I’ve had some pretty hectic tours that weren’t necessarily my brightest move or our most productive fundraising.

I think that’s all for now – there won’t be anything left for the quarterly report the end of this month. I want to thank Nylene again for her lovely letters she writes me from Madelia. They always such a joy to receive at the post office. Also, Sofia, we are still receiving your boxes of donations so we can take some photos of the kids opening them. We have about five more to receive.

To all of you – thank you for the many blessings you have brought our way. There is nothing that comes our way that is small, whether it’s a prayer, a contact with another potential person to assist us; or just telling people about us. You are the reason we’re here and you are the wind beneath our wings and we wish each and every one of you great blessings and health in your personal lives!!

Amy and the kids

Blessings and Grace from Mozambique,

Amy