August 10th, last build day!

Susanne reporting.

Wednesday: today was the last build day.....always a day you sort of look forward to as it means the family can move from one standard of living to the next. On the other hand, it means that a somewhat emotional day is ahead...one with more building activities, a dedication ceremony to officially hand over the new home to the family and final good bye`s with the work crew, families and community.
Funny: we stayed in a hotel right by the ocean but could not really go swimming due to crazy waves, surf and undertow, but a few of us decided to go for a 6 a.m. walk on the beach. What a nice morning....we did the obligatory writing in the sand, took pics of the sunrise and enjoyed the waves and fresh air.
We had a what we call a ``green shirt`` day last week and got a team picture taken by Dan who brought his tripod. We made today another green shirt day and put on the green Habitat shirts in honour of our last day. All our stuff was packed last night and we packed up the vans for the very last time.
We already knew that we would not be able to finish all three houses completely which often happens. Materials are sometimes not delivered on time and we had lost the day on the Scratch site due to the owner`s Mom passing away. We spent the morning trying to finish remaining tasks and entertaining the kids some more....then 12 p.m. came around and we went to the home site for a quick lunch and the upcoming dedication ceremony.
The specific project we worked on was the vulnerable children project for kids who have been affected by HIV/Aids by either having lost one or both parents or having sick or dying parents. A reminder of this came early in the day when we found out that one of the home owners would be missing the ceremony as it was Wednesday and her day to pick up medication. When getting medication to treat HIV on behalf of herself and/or a family member, the dedicated family person has to be there that specific day and it cannot be changed...so the Mom appointed another community member to attend the ceremony with her kids. Affliction of Aids and/or HIV is about 20 percent here, so when looking at the families and all the kids...one can`t help but do the math to see just how many of ``our kids`` were likely infected already and even though medication was available, people here were certainly not the in the same position as North Americans, for instance, to fight this disease. Very, very sad.....
Once the ceremony was about to begin, kids gathered around, the 3 families came, all the workers (2 per site) and the team as well as one other Habitat staff. It was a really nice ceremony..speeches of thanks from all sides, a presentation of the 3 signed Canadian flags from us, heartfelt speeches from our team members, lots of singing and an overall emotional, meaningful and unforgettable ceremony. Isabella, Mom of house number 3 was happy to have a roof that did not have to be replaced every 2 years like the one on her hut which had reeds. Eunice's aunt Louisa gave a thanks that Eunice, her 12 year old niece who was an orphan, would have her own house to live in. Eunice who was quite shy in the beginning, but grew on all of us so much since we met her. Of course all the attention on her today was a bit overwhelming for her age, but her aunt took care of all the speeches etc and Eunice was all smiles even though she hurt her foot stepping on a wire as she is also mostly in her bare feet. Our first aid kit came in handy once again :) Magaia, our Habitat contact here, sang a song his mother wrote who is a pastor and it truly gave us goosebumps....even though we could not understand the language, we had a pretty good idea of what the song was about.
We left mid afternoon and went back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, settle final bills and switch vehicles and gears as the Habitat build part was now done and the next part of the trip would start: the R&R part which all centred around the upcoming safari. We piled into two vans operated by Mozaic travel (the company to take care of us for the next 3 days), and started our 3-hour drive back to Maputo. It took a loooong time. Since we left around 3 and had some stops to make etc, we were quite hungry on the way. So our snack of choice: hard boiled eggs which magically appeared in our van in a large crate type of container....not a bad snack actually! The last few kilometers to Maputo seemed like a roller coaster as roads were not paved anymore and the bumby roads made most of us wish we had a helmet in case our heads would bobb up or sideways. Quite the ride! We also ran into a police check point. The police asked Magaia why he wasn`t wearing a seat belt. ...apparently he answered `because I am tired...which seemed to work! Love it, would be fun to try in Canada one day to see how that answer would fly.
We arrived at the Hotel Turismo around 8pm, and went to the Scorpion restaurant for dinner! We were all starving, having not eaten since 12:30, and couldn`t wait to eat! We ordered our food and had some drinks and waited for our food.... then we waited some more, oh and just a little bit more- it took them 1.5hrs to prepare our meals!! I`m pretty sure our stomachs were eating our insides by the time it arrived- good thing the food was awesome! :)
Off to bed to get ready for our first safari day tomorrow.
A great, but long day. ...lots of hugs and good bye`s. Sad to leave but a great feeling to have been able to help these families. Habititis at work :)