September project: week 1

After a quick sleep and hurriedly unpacking the Landy, we were back at the wheel and rushing up to Inhambane, to fetch our volunteers. Scott had a quick snooze in the landy whilst we waited for the plane to arrive.

After a few wobbles, a jet landed out of nowhere and we grabbed the ‘mozvolunteers’ sign and waited patiently for 4 girls to appear from the plane/customs. To our surprise… just 3 arrived. Oops, we’d lost one. We took the three volunteers for a quick post-international flight culture shock- Inhambane market, to change money into mets and buy extra groceries, then headed to Tofo beach to wait next to the sea for the second plane of the day, in case number four had got on the wrong fight.

Second plane. Still no number 4. Home time, we’ll sort this out in the morning.

We reached Zavora. Again. After checking to see that the prawns that we had bought for dinner (and tied to the roof to keep them cool) were still there, we hurriedly prepared a ‘welcome to mozvolunteers’ supper of paella and sat down to chat with a welcome glass of wine (or 4).

After sleeping all morning, the next day we showed the girls around and spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach. Still no number 4. The rest of the week followed, with snorkelling trips to the offshore reef, beach bonfire, a fish braai and a trip to the local town of Inhambane where we made friends with a small boy and taught him to count to ‘five-y’!

Finally on Saturday, we found number 4. Stuck in Joberg, and arranged to fetch her the following day. We ended the week with our group of volunteers complete, and waiting in anticipation for work to begin the next morning.