light at the end of the tunnel

A while ago I promised more chapters in our never ending visa story. But I think I will spare you the details. It gets boring. The brief summary could be: We still don’t have proper visa.
But there is light on the other end of the tunnel. Maybe not the expected light, but anyway.
So the first part of this diary entry will sound will sound somewhat negative again, but I hope the end will make up for it.
Erik and I have been frustrated, disappointed and even desperate so often over the past few months. About 2 months ago we moved to the guest house at the Seminary, outside Maputo so we could be closed to the place where we should work and were supposed to live. We though as well that this way we could speed up the non existing progress in getting our own place to live. Well, we have not been very successful in that and by the end of last week work had not even started yet.
And there have been so many other drawbacks, so many changes in the plans, so little time left to achieve what would have taken much more than the 2 years that were planned to do so.
Therefore, we decided to leave earlier than planned.
That feels very strange: We have the idea as if we didn’t do our best. We feel like we have failed personally and towards the project. The knowledge that this is only partially our fault, and that all parties involved in the project have their share in it, doesn’t help a lot. It still feels like a personal failure. And maybe we are just not cut for that kind of work. S we just hope that our decision will be accepted and that we can use the next months to find a happy ending for us and the people here.
So we decided that the money for restoring the house could be saved and we would like to just continue living in the guest house for the remainder of the time. I did rearrange the furniture, we moved our kitchen stuff into the huge living room (the kitchen was always so dirty, rat pooh everywhere, cockroaches, and sharing it with the seminary activities and the women’s association that comes for cooking classes). Now it feels a bit like “our place”.
After insisting for a while the chaplain also made sure that the maintenance workers cleaned the rain water drains (first the bees had to be removed. Which was very interesting as the groups kept hanging around and I could observe there social life and interactions from nearby. For example some bees will form bridges by “holding hands” and others can then walk over these bridges) and the branches of some trees were cut so that no new leaves end up in the drainage. Now we hope that less rainwater will end up inside the house during the rains. Actually, I couldn’t be bothered, but the house itself is (could be) very beautiful and I feel sad thinking that it might decay within a few years if not maintained properly.
Except from the bees we also share the place with a whole lot of termites which have already eaten their way through every bit of wood available (the frames of the doors, windows and cupboards in the house are paper-thin shells. If you knock on them you easily end up braking through into the hollow space that the termites left behind it) and they are mostly active at night. It is amazing how much noise those little creatures can make when eating their way through the house. Yes, then of course the rats in the kitchen which kept the cockroaches company (which are almost as big as the guys in Man in Black), and lately a scorpion much bigger than the cockroaches tried to find a spot as well. I have to admit that he did not survive it.
But we have an electric shower, which makes a big difference compared to the bucket showers we had up north in the village, we have toilets to sit on and we started to use the things we had already bought for when we would finally have our own place: nice aluminium pans and pots, electric oven (tomorrow I will back bread together with Laura, the housekeeper lady of the seminary. She wants to learn it. Maybe in exchange she will practise making Matapa with me), some glasses etc. I have put some photos on the walls.
And last weekend we had our first visitors. The Brazilian couple from Maputo took the adventurous trip with the chapas (the minibuses used as public transport) to come see us. We had two days of talking, drinking wine, eating good food, playing cards and enjoying the warm and sunny days. Ricatla can be so peaceful with the green lawn everywhere, the trees, butterflies, birds etc. And the Presbyterian Church youth had their youth day camping near to the church. They kept singing until late at night. Which was very nice back ground music.
And I keep enjoying the classes. The new first year students are a bright bunch. And today I started teaching the third years. Officially they are not supposed to have classes with me anymore, but they wanted to continue and so we found that Thursday afternoons are a good time to gather and teach. It is a real compliment that they want to continue studying n their free time and I’ll try my best to make it worth for them.
Furthermore I will be teaching the women’s group. It is a group of wives of some of the students. They get classes in bible study, handicrafts etc. So I am supposes to give health care classes. And I realized that I find this much more difficult. They are not illiterate, but some of them only went to school for a couple of years, only one has ever had a paid job outside her home and none of them has any formal professional training. So I will have to adapt to another way of teaching, another level of complexity in the subjects. I am still thinking how to do that. But I hopefully will figure out something. Simon, who trained me in facilitation method in January (thanks to KiA who made this possible), gave me some hints today. Let’s see what I can make of it.
I kind of gave up on more long term plans as the one I started last year of getting a teacher to be a kind of a “trust teacher” for cases like the one, when a fellow student died of HIV. Or what I had come up with lately: to kind of organize the garbage collection in order to make in cleaner, nicer and safer around the area.
I will just concentrate on the things that can make a difference – the teaching.
So we are setting up things to make our last months here enjoyable. We get along fine with Lee and Margret, the South African couple that teaches Farming God’s Way. They are kind of our surrogate parents/grandparents around here. And next weekend a Dutch couple that has moved to Mozambique this year is coming to visit us. So we are surrounding us with good company.
And besides that I start looking into the future: back to the Netherlands? This might quite sure be a first step. But then: I am looking around, especially in Switzerland where they seem to be looking for midwives. Kind of scary all the new things and so much organisational things that would come up with it, but I guess that will be the same where ever we go. And even in the Netherlands… things have been changing, so there would be a lot to organize and to sort out. So it is just something we will have to get started with even though it is scare and seems to be an overwhelming amount of things. And that is a lot of time going into searching for work, figuring out how to do things etc. And yes, last but not least the Master program that I joined. It will keep me quite busy. At the moment I use every free minute to brush up my research and statistics knowledge. I found a great online course from Harvard University (no wonder people are good when they studied there. The teachers seem to be amazing. They even get me (!!) to understand arithmetic and calculus) and some good e-books about the subject. My new hobby.
But any suggestions for work, living, or whatsoever of importance in Europe are very warmly welcome. If you want us nearby… find work for us  … if you don’t… make sure to convince Erik’s employer to create conditions that would keep us here for the future .
The photos will illustrate the story!

Thanks for reading through all my hobbly bobbly loud out thinking and big hugs for all of you!