| 17 july 2001 Yesterday after arriving in J’burg and meeting up with another part of our team who came with a different flight we rented two cars and drove from J’burg to Nelspruit, SA. I was so tired from the long flight (like 15 hours) but enjoying the beautifull country. Its so wide spread. Holland is all small and build so packed. And mountains!! Holland is flat we dont even have a real hill. We spend the night in a hotel in Nelspruit, as wonderfull after a night on a plan to sleep in a bed and take a shower. Was gonna be my last warm shower for weeks..... Then we took the bus the next morning to Mozambique. Again the road to it showed a beautifull surrounding. The mountains remembered me off summer vacations we had in the south of France. At the mozambiquan border we had to get out of the bus and go to an office to get a stamp that we left SA. Then go to the next office, immigration to get our visa’s checked out. Then go to another office to pay for a stamp so they would elt us in mozambique. We could see we were in mozambique. The surroundings looked dryer, more poor. But it was warmer then in SA :D From the border we had to drive another 80 km to Maputo. When we drove into the town Maputo it really looked like we drove into another world. Little markets here and there, the streets and houses, people everywhere. When we got off the bus it was so hectic. We had to make sure we gotten our luguage out right away before others took it. There were dozens of ‘taxi’ drivers trying to get our attention and give us a ride. But we were picked up by someone so we refused. One man almost fooled my father that he was from iris ministries. But at same time our real driver, paul, a big mozambiquen man talked to me and a friend...... We loaded our luguage into a big, open truck and climbed in and sat on top of our luguage. We went grocery shopping and to a bank to exchange money. We felt ashamed buying so much food, but we had to last for a week with 10 people......At nighttime we arrived at the center Zimpeto. As we arrived and jumped off the truck kids came from everywhere and jumped around us, welcomming us, giving us hugs. It was amazing. We were so tired from our 3 day travel but the kids really made us feel welcome and were excited. They wanted to know our names, shake hands, give hugs. We unloaded and got settled in our rooms. Everytime we went out of the mission-compound to where the kids were they where jumping up and comming to us again. |
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| Me and my bro after a long few days of traveling......on the back of a cameo truck eager to get to the center of iris ministries |