2 CFL celebrations, Gender Equality and Holidays!

Well, I can't believe that the time has flown by!  It's been 9 days since my last blog....shame shame Kevin...I hope I don't give my family a bad name haha.  Shon and Giovanna have been working hard with the new curriculum for the childrens club.  They have been attending the classes and have been deciding what are the best possibilities and ideas to rearrange the cirriculum so that more of the children will be able to participate.  They have been doing a great job!  Karen has been enjoying her gender equality survey a lot!  It's interesting to see how people view equality among men and women here in Mozambique!  It is actually a lot more equal among people here than what I had previously thought, which is a good thing!

I have mostly been helping where I can.  I don't have a specific responsibility, but as team leader I have been able to help with everyones projects in any ways that I can.  I love this country so much and it's been amazing to work with such great people from Care For Life.  We had 2 celebrations.  Ngupa 1 and 2 have both finished the Family Preservation Program and we celebrated with dancing and presentations of awards.  Every family who fulfills their goals with CFL will each receive 2 bags of cement and some tin roofing materials.  It was great to be apart of this!

 The leaders from Ngupa each presented a theatre piece as to how CFL has helped their village.

Sabados and Mariamo, both CFL field officers put together a little skit as to why CFL is an important program!  

My white boy dance moves came out on the dance floor and Adilson and I had our own little dance off! Haha Adilson and I have grown to be good friends

What's a picture without a child, right?  This little girl "Dolly" was one of my buddies I hung out with often.  Haha I think her name is great!

These centipede thingys are all over here!  Apparently they are not poisonous so Adilson grabbed one while I snapped a picture

Karen and I made the most amazing cinnamon rolls the other night!  Okay, okay, it was mostly Karen who made them, but I did help mix the dough and stuff.  She has taught me lots of cooking skills and other stuff since I've been her.  She is great!

Today we were walking in a village called Motel Bispo and we found this coconut three that had fallen down, but somehow still managed to grow upwards at the top!....Follow the trunk of the tree all the way to the end and those leaves on the tallest tree at the top of the picture is the top of this coconut tree! Crazy eh!?

Oh my, these kids are seriously my greatest friends! Haha yesterday we went to a village called Jean Piaget.  When I was driving the Landcruiser, I rolled the window down and the kids were chanting..."Kevin, kevin, kevin" hahaha.  I guess they have gotten used to me since being here.  I have also shown them how to make goofy faces too---love these kids!

Well, time is flying by and hopefully I can post some more pictures before I head out!  

Tchao! 

Kevin

Canada Day, July 4th and new volunteers!

Well, to be honest this last week went by a lot slower than most of the weeks I've been here.  Mostly the reason being that it was our "break" week.  We didn't have any specific projects we were working on so it allowed for some more relaxation time than work time, which I didn't mind either.  I've used my time effectively by starting my application for optometry school!  I'm not setting myself up for any big plans or anything, but I thought I would try and open my options up and seeing what my potential is.  My desire to do optometry has grown since I've been here after seeing many people with poor vision and eye care.  Shon (Utah) and Giovanna (Brasil) both arrived this week and they will be developing a new curriculum for the childrens clubs in all of the villages!  They will be great assets to the CFL team. Karen will be starting her gender equality project this week, so I will be helping a bunch out with her in her study!  So I feel like these last weeks will probably go by fast since we will be outside for most of the days working in the villages :)

Can you believe how fast the time has gone by?  Man tomorrow will be 3 weeks until I come home! and only 2 more weeks till I travel to Maputo!  My time has been well spent here and I'm so grateful for the chance I have to be here!

Here is the great Canadian cake that I made on Canada Day!  I figure I would show my canadian pride and make a cake for all of the workers.  Cremildo and I were both impressed and decided to cut the cake together, haha.

I figured the cake I made was worthy of a picture at least!  Here's to you Canada!

 Joao Bueno (him and his family live with us in the Care For Life building) married Kelly from Utah.  They have 3 boys Connor, Caelin and Chase and they are so great!  To celebrate July 4th Joao (actually from Brazil and works for CFL) decided to make us pizza!  It was super delicious!  Kelly even added banana and avocados to one of the pizzas.  It was surprisingly good!  I had never tried that before!

I'm sure you are all thinking what is going on in this picture!  Well, the bugs couldn't resist my lovely feet I guess!  These bugs are called "Matakenhas"--- mut-uh-ken-yas... they are basically almost microscopic in size and they live in the dirt and soil.  They get into your feet, bury themselves and then live and lay eggs.  That's about as simple as I can describe it.  Pretty gross!  I had 2 of them, one on the top left and bottom right of my foot! Haha

Here's a close up of one of the bugs!  Can you see inside the little white ball that there is like a tiny strand of brown?  That's the little bug that gets into your foot!  

Adilson was a life saver as he was kind enough to take them out of my foot!!  Haha everyone had a good laugh because originally I thought they were little tiny rocks that had been embedded into my feet, but later found out that they were not, haha.

Sorry for the backwards picture, but here is a picture of different eye diseases common in the human eye.  Anamicas who is the nurse at CFL gave me a little "optometry" lesson about vision and the various problems that people in Mozambique face.  I was so grateful that she was able to teach me what she knew because I told her that I was planning on doing optometry!  I love the people here and also working for CFL.  It was has been a very rewarding experience so far!

I hope you all have a great week!  and I will talk to ya next week!!

Love, Kevin