Although I miss Allison, right now is not the worst time to be without a flatmate – there is so much to be done, and I can leave my work stuff spread all over the flat without inconveniencing anyone!
On Sunday I finally did a church visit again, something else that came to a grinding halt during the month of March. I went to the Nazarene Church’s main church with my friends Wilfred and Carola van der Kooi, a Dutch couple working with New Horizons, an organization that does community development through chicken farming. Wilfred picked me up, always a bonus, and I was treated to some delicious coffee and Dutch apple pie before the service. I enjoyed the service very much, especially the singing – this congregation is known for its excellent choral group. Basically there is a “formal” group of young people that always sing, and then anyone who wants to can come and practice during the week, and then this more changeable group does an item as well. It was definitely the best I’ve heard in Nampula, and without any musical instruments, too, just beautiful voices harmonizing. The sermon was by a visiting pastor, always frustrating for me J. It was fairly good, on the parable of the ten virgins and how we should maintain our “virginity”, our new person in Christ, to be ready for when He returns. Some of it was still somewhat works-based though – Carola says she is really delighted that their regular pastor doesn’t preach legalistically at all, a rarity in Mozambique. Their reception of visitors was very warm, although I wonder whether anyone really heard what I said. Many churches in Nampula have exactly the same design, and though a solid brick building is much preferable to a mud or bamboo church building, these churches all share the same terrible acoustics! All I did not like, of course, was the altar call… I spent a lovely afternoon of fellowship with the Van der Koois, I’ve really missed that. But it was also nice to be home and relax with a book!
Monday was a public holiday, the Day of the Mozambican Woman. I’m not sure how exactly it was celebrated officially, all I know is that it’s pretty ironic that this day, which presumably had something to do with the empowerment of the Mozambican woman, ended in drunkenness and everything but empowerment and fulfillment for countless women… I worked quietly at home, except for checking on things at Woodrows and wasting a lot of time traveling, thanks to the gardener, who accidentally left his keys in a room I locked up when I left, so that I needed to go back! Not worth my while. Yesterday was a town day, as tomorrow needs to be as well, and today I spent 5 hours putting 376 magazines into little plastic bags and adding the paper with mailing addresses on them (which took me about 3 days to copy and paste and print). Not the most exciting job in the world, but hopefully on Friday I can seal the packages and get them off to the post office in a reasonable amount of time.
