Here's us flying along the Zambezi River about 30 miles from our destination...
YWAM have been based in Marromeu for many years and Mercy Air has been regularly flying teams up to help them with various aspects of their work. About a year ago they started building a training centre about an hours drive out of Marromeu and three of the team, Paul, Azalja and Tim, went up to help complete some work on one of the buildings. While they were there Cathy and Christina stayed in Marromeu and helped with other things - more later.
Due to the heat we slept outside on the porch in a tent made out of mosquito netting...
Showering was a bucket on a rope with a pipe and tap attached top the bottom...
There is still much work to do at the centre so the boys set about attacking certain projects. As we arrived on site there was a short sharp downpour which highlighted exactly the many places where the roof was leaking. As we were there during one of their hottest and most humid weeks they had had in ages, each morning we had to get up before dawn to allow us an hour on the roof before the sun came up.
The lights and plugs had been wired in but never tested. We took along a generator but when we connected it up - nothing happened. Tim then spent the next day and a half working out what was wrong and putting it right, to make this:
look like this...
 |
| Tim proving the fruits of his labour. |
The next job was to put the kitchen doors on the cupboards. Initially this seemed quite easy but there were many doors and almost all of them needed fairly major alterations. We tried to repair a table saw...
but the windings of the motor were burnt out so in the end we had to resort to hammer and chisels...
Another day and a half's activity saw the kitchen looking a lot more user friendly.
One of the highlights of the stay was when the girls popped over from Marromeu to see how we were getting on - and bought us an ice cold Coke!
We completed various other jobs, some of which required some woodworking techniques that were never covered in school...
Then we returned to Marromeu to join the girls who had also been busy.
Cathy had made 18 curtains for the training centre...
whilst Christina had worked with Caitlin on some educational material for the local schools.
Shephen and Caitlin's house in Marromeu had also had a recent electrical upgrade - that hadn't actually been tested with a generator. When we did connect one up, behold, we saw that there was no light and we said, 'this is not good'. So that night we didn't rest but instead began an evening of activity with torches strapped to our heads...
to make this look a little more professional...
Lastly there were a number of issues with our hosts vehicle which Tim and Azalja tackled (Tim being a motor mechanic by trade in Germany).
Not sure whether she got one but she did find a cafe with her name on it...
The night before we left it rained and the strip at Marromeu is always busy, so we had to a little careful with our departure.
It seems the Russians had had some problems a few years back...
After an incredibly hot week it was good to get up to altitude and relax a bit on the way back.
Thank you again.
Paul and Cathy
