Weekend with our Padre

We've been so busy with family visits, traveling, and teaching, it's been a while since we've been able to spend some time in our regional capital Tete, except driving through with Janet's family to see the science fair. With Luc's dad still here, we decided to take a little break from village life and show him a little more of Mozambique by spending a weekend down in the city with Padre Ricardo at our parish headquarters in Moatize. Padre Ricardo is a Chilean priest in the Salesian´s of Don Bosco order serving as the director of the Missão São João Bautista here in Mozambique.
He always has activities going on in the community, building churches and schools, running a carpentry shop, computer lab, community radio, and agricultural project, and organizing groups of international volunteers to carry out projects, as well as all his normal priestly duties, like celebrating mass and attending to the spiritual needs of his flock. He is an inspiration for us and it was great to spend a weekend with him at the mission relaxing and having pleasant meals and conversations. Padre Ricardo took us on a tour to see some of the schools in various states of completion he's working on, and some of the churches he's trying to resurrect.


Moatize is the site of one of the world´s largest coal reserves, and we saw the part of town the Brazilian mining company Vale simply cleared out to make way for one of the mega projects, including the demolished church Padre Ricardo is now trying to get rebuilt in the new town built for the displaced community members thirty kms from the original. We also saw the old Portuguese mining town and the very unique open air church they built dedicated to Santa Barbara, the patroness of coal miners. We had a chance to take Luc's dad into Tete, the hottest city in the country. Luckily its cold season, but that doesn't mean we didn't sweat plenty walking to do our favorite shopping, eat pizza, and tour the different old Portuguese fortresses to get the best views of the majestic Zambezi and the suspension bridge, which is looking quite dapper after its two year renovation.


We also got money from the bank. We were critically low, and there are no withdrawal options anywhere within 100 kms from our house. Adrienne, one of our Peace Corps friends, threw a Mexican party at the home of one of our Brazilian friends. They live in the Mozambican Leaf Tabacco housing, which is a verdant oasis of green on the outskirts of town surrounded by arid baobab desert. Needless to say their housing situation is not Peace Corps style, so we enjoyed catching up with them and our PC buddies, cooking fajitas, and experiencing a timeout from everything African in this posh gated community.

On Sunday we attended the Padre Ricardo´s early morning mass, which we could actually understand since it was in Portuguese unlike our service entirely in Chichewa. Janet tried to make a quiche for our host, but the electricity kept failing at crucial moments in the cooking process, and you can't bake quiche on the charcoal barbeque. That afternoon we drove out along the Zambezi to the historic, but sadly dilapidated Boroma mission.


The church is the oldest in Tete, built in 1885 and stands high on a hill looking out over the Rio Zambezi. This weekend has been relaxing and fun, a nice break from our fast-paced, very intense lifestyle at site. Plus we have great internet access here so we've put up a bunch of pictures and done some much-overdue facebook-ing.