Mercy Air: April 2010

06 April 2010

Chimoio visit

Last week we went up to Chimoio again with a team from the

and

South Africa

, and visited many of the projects that ASAM and Mercy Air are involved with.

While we were flying up, Bill and Lu (Barbara’s brother and his wife who were visiting from the US) drove up. It took them two full days with a relatively swift 2 hrs at each border and they arrived hot and tired. In comparison we spent 3 hrs in the plane with less than an hour on the ground in Beira to refuel and do customs and immigration. No night spent in a dodgy bat infested B n’ B in Zim, no police roadblocks, no sweaty border queues to stand in.

The next day we took some doors to the clinic that the Harderwyk team had roofed only a month earlier and which has now been plastered.

We visited some of the schools that the mission runs and helped serve food at lunch time. They feed 260 children every day and for many it is their only meal. Some of the children walk up to 10km to attend classes.

In comparison we also visited an overcrowded government school. The mission has just obtained permission the local Government to allow them to paint it for free.

We saw the area that has been cleared for a runway that will enable us to fly directly to the mission in the future as well as another area where they have started to build a training centre.

We went to a very lively and hot (35 deg), African church on the Sunday.

Desire had a pensive look at the vastness of Mozambique on the flight back.

I'm sure we'll be up there again very soon. Mercy Air team