After recovering from our soccer game the group was on their way to go hang out at the farm till lunch time. Everyone but the micronutrient team that is.. We had our own special plans. Ebrohimo had arranged for our team to go and eat a "real" Mozambican meal in the village. So the 6 of us girls went with Ebrohimo and drove about 45 minutes out to a village we had been at before when we were interviewing. We pulled up the house and to my surprise I saw a man leaving on his bike wearing an Arkansas T-shirt I had given away during my time here in Africa. It was really cool to see immediately people taking use of the things we are giving them. So we walked in to the house and they had a bamboo mat laid out with their nicest plates and goblets and chair for us to use. The mom and dad came and introduced themselves to each of us greeting us worth the biggest smiles and cheek kisses. Then the grandmother came around with a bowl and cleaned all of our hand for us, it was so sweet. So the meal we were prepared was called Chima which is a combination of maize flour and water in a dumpling shape served with a vegetable sauce on the side. We found out the sauce goes on the side after we poured it over our chima and they started laughing at us. We enjoyed a nice lunch with the family and then got to take a look of their house. Surprsingly they had one of the "nicer" homes in Mozambique. They had cement floors, electricity, cell phones, and a motorbike. They were the nicest family and we really enjoyed our time with them. It was such a special experience that we will probably never get to do again in our entire lives and we were very thankful for the opportunity.
So yesterday was filled with presentations and our last day at New Horizons, today is our last full day in Mozambique! Boy do we have a full day ahead of us too! Our day started with all us going to tour the Rapale International School. This school has about 60 students total and teaches grades 1-8. We got to tour the school and it was actually really nice. This school is filled with the "rich" kids of Nampula, but they have students from across the globe. They have kids from Switzerland, Sweden, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Mozambique. A few of the kids we knew whose parents worked for New Horizons attended this school. They are taught English and Portuguese in a christian learning atmosphere. Pretty cool!! We happened to be touring right when they went on their lunch/recess break and some of the kids started a soccer match and were actually pretty good. There are a few of us in the group that played soccer in the past so naturally our inner competitor came out and joined their game. Well the kids decided it would be fun for all 20+ of them to play against all 8 of us.... We thought heck no problem we're twice their size we got this....HAHAHAHA nope... they smoked us. They scored a goal in just a few minutes of playing. Okay so we were kinda taking it easy, but after the goal we had no mercy. It was blood, a lot of sweat, and tears from that point on. Safe to say the elbow rule was not in effect haha but we all had a lot of fun, and we ended in a tie so we were happy!
After recovering from our soccer game the group was on their way to go hang out at the farm till lunch time. Everyone but the micronutrient team that is.. We had our own special plans. Ebrohimo had arranged for our team to go and eat a "real" Mozambican meal in the village. So the 6 of us girls went with Ebrohimo and drove about 45 minutes out to a village we had been at before when we were interviewing. We pulled up the house and to my surprise I saw a man leaving on his bike wearing an Arkansas T-shirt I had given away during my time here in Africa. It was really cool to see immediately people taking use of the things we are giving them. So we walked in to the house and they had a bamboo mat laid out with their nicest plates and goblets and chair for us to use. The mom and dad came and introduced themselves to each of us greeting us worth the biggest smiles and cheek kisses. Then the grandmother came around with a bowl and cleaned all of our hand for us, it was so sweet. So the meal we were prepared was called Chima which is a combination of maize flour and water in a dumpling shape served with a vegetable sauce on the side. We found out the sauce goes on the side after we poured it over our chima and they started laughing at us. We enjoyed a nice lunch with the family and then got to take a look of their house. Surprsingly they had one of the "nicer" homes in Mozambique. They had cement floors, electricity, cell phones, and a motorbike. They were the nicest family and we really enjoyed our time with them. It was such a special experience that we will probably never get to do again in our entire lives and we were very thankful for the opportunity.
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So Monday and Tuesday of Week 3 was spent gathering the rest of the surveys we needed. After that, Tuesday night was spent finalizing and prepping for our presentations on Wednesday. We had to come up with a 30 minute powerpoint presentation for Andrew, several of the New Horizons employees and their families. No pressure right? We were able to get a powerpoint together and felt pretty good about it.
So Wednesday morning the group decided to dress up a little bit for our presentations. I actually put on a skirt and some makeup for the first time of the trip. Amazing I know!! So once everyone made it to the farm, all of the groups went down to Andrew's house to get ready to present. He had a projector set up and about 10 very important people for New Horizons and their families were there ready to watch. Presentations were fun for me to watch because I already kind of knew what other groups were working on, but not in full detail. So it was cool to really hear what all they had been up to and what all they had discovered. There are 5 groups total.. There is the poultry/bio security team, water quality team, accounting team, One Egg team, and then mine which was the Micronutrient team. Listening to everyone's presentations you could just tell that everyone had really put their heart and hardwork into it! There was so much pride in the work we have completed. I mean this is the first time most of us are giving a presentation on something because we genuinely want to inform others and not just because it was a required assignment. The New Horizons employees were very appreciative of all our hard work and had several questions for each team to help their business. It is crazy because New Horizons is one of the top businesses here in Mozambique and the fact they genuinely wanted to use our research and suggestions to help improve their business speaks volumes to us. This opportunity would not have happened back at home thats for sure. It feels good to know that Andrew and New Horizons was thankful and honestly really impressed with everyone. It has been a really long, but very fun week. Everyday we leave for the farm at 7:30am and come back at 4:30pm. Every group here has been working really hard on their projects. My group has gotten to really interact with the families and it has been super rewarding. I have gotten opportunities to play with the children and that has been so fun for me! It is so funny because no matter what race you are, or what language you speak, there are some things that universal. A simple smile goes a long way with these people and they are so welcoming to us. It is funny because once we get the kids to warm up to us we start to play games with them like duck duck goose or soccer and they have such a fun time. The best is when I start to take pictures, the kids go crazy! They love to have their pictures taken and when I would show them the picture I just took they just light up with so much joy.
Oh yeah forgot to mention, We have had a camera crew and a couple Deans from the University of Arkansas come out to Mozambique to tag along for the week... They are here to interview us and take a lot of footage of our trip. This is to help promote our program and help show others what exactly we are doing and what we have been working on here in Africa. We weren't exactly thrilled at first to hear they would be spending the week with us, but as the week went on we became more accepting and thought about the big picture and felt better about them spending the week with us. It really wasn't so bad after all. During the week my team was able to finish 30 surveys of New Horizons employees and then we began surveying people of the villages that did not work for New Horizons. We were very proud of how fast and efficient our team has really been working and getting things done. I'm really lucky to be on the Micronutrient team with 5 other amazing girls. Our team Lead is Maggie Jo Hansen, then theres Paige, Jess, Katelyn, Craig and myself! We are a very close team and really work well together :) This past weekend we got to go on our first excursion. We only worked till lunch time on Friday and then we all loaded the bus and headed for an island called Ilha. This was about a 4 hour bus ride, but it was really neat because right when we were arriving the sun was setting over the ocean. Our hotel was called “The Ruby” and it was amazing. It was all island-like with seashells and flowers everywhere. The roof was the popular spot though. The entire roof was lined with bench seating with pillows and tables everywhere. The whole group would just go up there to relax and hangout. The best part was at night you can see every star; it was breath taking.
On Saturday we all rode sailboats to what we found out was “Snake Island”. The sailboats were completely wooden and looked like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. It was really relaxing just floating on the water. Oh man was the water beautiful though. We were on the Indian Ocean and were just surrounded by turquoise water and breath taking views. Once we got to the island we all just did our own thing. Some people snorkeled, some wandered the island, some went shell hunting and some people just soaked up the sun. It was so nice to just relax after such a long first week of hard work. After exploring the island we came back to the hotel for a great lunch and got to hang out until dinnertime. The group kinda split up and decided to tour the town to kill some time. The group I was with decided to walk along the beach and go watch the sunset. After a few hours of exploring we got ready for dinner. Dinner was at a nice restaurant where everyone treated them selves to some gooood seafood! I split lobster and tiger prawns with my friend Austin and it was amazing! After dinner the group all went back to the hotel and enjoyed all hanging and talking with eachother on the roof. I really like the group of people on this trip. They are so fun and so smart and I really have enjoyed talking with everyone. Sunday we spent touring a fort that was used in the 1600’s. It was really big and it was surprisingly still in very good condition. It was on the beach and the location was beautiful, the only thing was that day was miserably hot… We tried really hard to enjoy it to the fullest, but man we were sweating bad. Once we finished the tour we all hopped on the bus and headed back for Nampula. We got different roommates for the week and are looking forward for our second week of working. Hey yall so sorry I haven't been posting! We have been out of wifi for a long! So here's kind of a summery after working the first week at the farm. So it has been such an amazing time working with my team and for New Horizons. The first few days my team basically spent re-working everything we prepared for about our project... This trip has already shown that no matter how much you spend preparation for something, everything can go wrong anyways. We basically had to re-do most of our survey we created due to the language barrier and also ran into a few technical problems, but we were able to problem solve.
So safe to say we had to make many changes and adaptations to our "plan of action", but after day 3 we were able to work through these challenges and figure out the most efficient system for our team. We then started with our project by interviewing some of the workers on Andrew's farm. Later in the week we started going out to the out growers for New Horizons to survey. This was really fun because we got to experience communicating with the families for the first time. We have a translator that is dedicating time to work with our team everyday and he is really patient and excited to work with us. The language they speak here in Mozambique is mainly Portuguese and then there are a few tribal languages. There are some similarities in Spanish and Portuguese, so some of my old high school Spanish is actually coming to good use! One week complete and a few more left. I already feel like I'm learning so much, and getting so much work done. I'm excited for our first excursion this weekend and to see what all the trip has in store for me! Today was our first day at the farm working. We started out touring the farm and all the different departments and projects New Horizons is working on. The have Eggs for Africa, Mozambique Fresh Eggs, and a new project involving crocodiles! We went in to see all the chickens and even got to collect some eggs. We then went to where the crocodiles were and they had about 250 babies! They had trained them to eat and take it into the water to swallow their food, pretty cool. One thing I thought was kinda funny was that we had to use our "inside voices" that way we didn't stress out the crocs. We were all whispering and taking pictures of them, one of the workers was actually trying to show us one and dropped it at our feet!
After that we broke for lunch and then started working on our specific projects. So a little about what my specific project I'm working on.. I am on a team with a couple girls working to find out what nutrients the people here are deficient in and how healthy they are. We ask them a survey that goes into detail about how many times they eat a certain food per week and then ask them to measure out how much they would use to make one meal. We take body measurements such as height, weight, and upper arm circumference to determine how healthy or malnourished they are. Once we got back to the hotel we ate dinner and all got together for a group talk. Dr. Nalley likes to get us together most nights and asks us a pretty diverse or philosophical question to get us really thinking. Tonights discussion was actually pretty intense. We found out that with a certain amount of money, Malaria can actually be completely wiped out of Africa. I had no idea of this. Theres not many problems in life that throwing money actually can solve them, but this one actually can be. The question for the night was, why doesn't America just fund to get malaria wiped out here? 1 days worth of pay at the Pentagon could pay for the entire country to be malaria free. Pretty eye opening. I've always been aware that malaria kills people but not really knew the intensity of it until I got here. If it doesn't get treated within the first 3 days most people will die. Malaria is not something that should be treated lightly. I just wish I had all the money in the world to help this poor country out. I hope I can help raise some awareness about this because I personally had no idea how big of a problem it is! Today I woke up at 5 am to get ready for our hike with Wilfred. We all piled up in the truck and headed to Mount Mojito also know as "The Dark Place" by the local Mozambicans. It's said this is where the witch doctors come for their powers. I local named Lopez lead us on the "trail".... not a trail at all. He basically whacked away with a machete and created a path for us up the entire way up the mountain. We had grass at least 7 feet high on all sides of us. With lots of stops we finally made it to the top of the mountain which was breath taking. We all just really took in that moment, it was really special. Going down the mountain was the hardest part actually. Me, Craig, and Lilly tripped and fell like every 5 minutes. I think we were just so tired and delirious it was actually pretty funny. We finally made it down to the mountain and let me tell you I was so excited to see our vehicle for our ride home and chug a bottle of water!
The total hike was about 6 miles and I was completely covered in dirt and sweat. The only thing I wanted was to shower when I got home. Well.... showed up to the hotel to find out all their water was out.... don't judge, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We decided as a group we would get into our sketch hotel pool as an alternative. Apparently we are the first group to ever get in the pool. After our little pool adventure we all ate dinner and then went to bed super early tonight (literally 8:30 lol). So our hotel is actually pretty nice.. Now granted it's nothing like a hotel in the states, but its more than an African hut thats for sure! The staff is super nice and very accommodating. This is my home for the next few weeks! We all went met this morning and we spent the day at Andrew's farm and hung out at his house all day. The scenery is just amazing here. The sky is so blue and the mountains are in the background every where.. it's just something else! When we got to the farm we sat around with Andrew and got to know him and several of his workers and their families. Andrew is such an accomplished person and is so inspirational. I am very excited to spend this time picking his brain and getting to know him more. Today he said something that really stuck with me "The flipside to problem is opportunity". I think this is the definition of why I am on this trip and just speaks volumes about the kind of person he is. I honestly could listen to him talk all day.
We were prepared a meal that was made for us by one of his workers. It was chicken with some sauce and vegetables served with rice and salad. it was actually very good! We were also pleasantly surprised when Andrew's wife brought out homemade ice-cream and cupcakes! :) Andrew's house is probably one of the nicest homes that is in Mozambique, he even has a swimming pool in their backyard. He also gave us a pretty awesome options for tomorrow... We can either climb one of the mountains here with Wilfred (one of the workers we met) or attend the African church under mango trees with Andrew's family. Tough choice I know!!! I decided to go on the hike because how many times do you get to climb an African Mountain??? We leave at 6am tomorrow so I better get to bed, but I will make sure to take lots of pics! :) XOXO EM After a long flight we landed in Johannesburg around 7 am their time. At this point everyone is just purely exhausted.. Jet lag is a real thing yall!! We had only a 4 hour layover till our next flight (yay..). We all went to grab a bite to eat and just relaxed for a little bit. When it was time to meet at our gate we found out that we actually would get on a bus that dropped us where we needed to board. We all crammed on this bus and it literally dropped us off right next to the plane which seemed to feel like it was in the middle of the runway. This plane was very small and I was excited to see how it compared to the last flight! And it was only a 2 hour flight so we were all VERY thrilled about that. I think the second we were in the air everyone fell asleep for the most part, this made this flight go by so quick thank God! We arrived at the Nampula airport and of course the first thing I try to do is take a picture ..and what's new I get yelled at right away lol... Apparently I missed the "no picture" memo oops.. but hey still got it tho ;) Going through Immigration and customs was a tad intimidating because the guards were very serious and did not speak English. A few people got their bags searched and unfortunately 2 other people's luggage was missing... I was SO happy to see my suitcase though. Once we got done there we were greeted by Andrew, the New Horizons owner, in the parking lot. We all got on a bus and went straight to our hotel. Okay yall the bus ride was eye opening... I saw extreme poverty along the roadside the entire drive there.. I have always been aware of poverty but it is just whole different experience seeing it first hand. This just gets me so motivated to get started helping these people!!
So my flight in Dallas was at 9pm and I didn't arrive to London until 1pm their time... (6 hours ahead) You can say this was the beginning of a lot of jet lag. Besides the limited leg room and airplane meals, the flight wasn't bad at all. Once we got to the airport we had a 7 hour layover till the next flight... I was so bummed though because apparently going in and out of customs in England actually takes forever so we didn't have any time to go explore the city. However we tried to have as much fun in a foreign airport as we could! We walked around one of the biggest and nicest airports and people watched for a while, which was so entertaining. I love hearing all the British accents especially coming from the little kids! The European style of clothes is so different too, I saw some interesting.. outfits while there. After that some friends and I went to an English restaurant to grab a bite to eat. The food was pretty good but I'm actually really impressed with my drink order.. (don't worry its legal at 18 here! ). I got a "Classic Pimm's" and it was basically some lemonade thing with a lot of fruit.. soo good!!
We then went to met up with the rest of the group at our gate and wow was I surprised. Our next flight was going to be on a huge double decker Air Bus! We loaded the plane and it was so nice inside as well. The seats were huge and every seat actually had a fancy touch screen TV! I'm gonna be on here for the next 11 hours so lets hope it's comfy and the meals are alright.. next stop will be in Johannesburg, Africa!! |
Emily EnglishHi I'm Emily but my friends call me Em! I'm a Texas girl, born and raised and proud of it. I go to the University of Arkansas and love it here! I am pursing a degree in marketing with a business management minor. Outside of school life I am very involved with my sorority. I'm blessed with 400 sisters dear to my heart. I am excited to start traveling and exploring this big beautiful world of ours. ArchivesCategories |