Farm hands

While the Great Whyrley team were here they also helped out on the Mercy Air farm. One job we had was to demolish an old house that was infested with termites.

It used to look like this
But now looks more like this.
We were able to recover a lot of the fittings (roofing, pipes, electrical etc) and will clear the area and likely offer the area for future staff to build a new house. Other than that it was a handy source of firewood for a while.

Another group gave our main office a paint face-lift.

Mercy Air team

Chimoio

The day after the Durban flight (below), we set off with another team from Great Whyrley to Mercy Air's remote base just north of Chimoio, Mozambique. During the four days we were there we did many things including helping with food distribution to orphans that ASAM had placed with 'Grandma's' in various locations in the community. Each orphan is given oil, rice, maize, beans, salt, dried fish and soap.

One of the Grannie's used to live in a grass house similar to the one in the picture, but ASAM helped with the building of a brick house. The grass house is now the kitchen.

ASAM have various agricultural projects, one of which are a series of gardens that grow food for the orphan programe.
One lady we visited had lost a leg to a land mine a few years ago. She lives with her daughter who was born blind. ASAM had also helped with building a brick house and one morning we visited her and helped her grind some maize.
The next day we painted the inside of the house for them.
Many of the kids we met had Tinia Capitus which is a fungal infection which prevents hair from growing.
As usual we stayed at ASAM and one day we found a Green Mamba that had been killed.
Or so we thought. Turns out that it wasn't very dead, as we found out when he curled up after we pulled his tail.
We visited the area that has been cleared for an airstrip. 1.2 km long and 100m wide. Still a lot of work to do.

On the last evening we got a call to help a man that had had an epilectic fit, rolled over onto the fire and burned his legs - a week previous. He'd been to the local witch doctor who had put some black stuff on, but his legs didn't get any better. We had to walk quite a way into the bush to get to his village but Cathy and Lynne (both nurses) managed to help him by cleaning and dressing his wounds.

His condition was serious enough that he might even lose his legs, so we picked him up the day after and took him to a hospital 80km away.
It was a very packed few days and we managed to grab a bit of scenery and fly back past a particularly nice bit of Mozambique coast appropriately called Paradise Island.Next blog should be in a weeks time about our next trip to Western Zambia and Mozambique.

Mercy Air team