Mocuba Update

We haven’t written in a while I realized today but not because not much has been happening. The Mocuba project is in the final stages and we think it will be completed in the next two weeks, or at least phase 1 will be completed. We are so thankful to have Belarmino on the job! His last report included photographs inserted in a WORD document and you can't copy them out and post them in a blog, unfortunately, or at least I can't figure out how to to it!

The roof trusses are complete and Belarmino fabricated them from scratch. We are using metal, because it works so much better than wood in this environment. Belarmino had to make these trusses at Juka’s house and transport them to the construction site because our generator wouldn’t drive the welder. I don’t quite understand that because on paper, the generator was more than adequate, but then we’ve also learned that it isn’t uncommon for things to perform significantly below what their specification sheets would say.

We continue to wait on the well-drilling people. We had a very good meeting with the headquarters people here in Maputo, but there is a disconnect between what their people are telling them from Mocuba and what “our” people are telling us from Mocuba. I think the bottom line is that there is a little water in one of the holes, but not enough to support a pump. Afrodrill does not want to put in a pump if the water infiltration is too little – and I am glad. We’ve been through that already and have a pump that doesn’t work because of this and has been a real sore-spot with the community. No pump is actually far better than a pump that doesn’t work! So we wait.

I'll try to post photos soon but Juka is on his way here for some meetings and he has the camera and his computer, which we be updating for him.

As an aside, we learned today that the church at Tenga blew down Friday night in a wind-storm. We'll be going up tomorrow to see what can be salvaged. Tenga is a very sad story and could be its own case study, but I'll save that for another time. If we don't try to recover the materials (metal roofing sheet and the like), it will disappear within days. This small church is located about an hour outside of the City in an area difficult to get to without a good vehicle. It was started before we arrived here and there have been many attempts to resurrect the work after the original leader left the area but without success. It is heartbreaking.

“Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently for him…!” Ps 37:7