Oceans Apart - For the Sake of the Call

Tweet

Esmé's Mommy here:

My mother grew up as one of eight children in rural Canada. Farm life was tough work in those days, and the six girls, of "sturdy German stock," were expected to do their share.

Imagine the culture shock when Mom, with my one-year-old sister and infant brother, moved with her husband across the ocean to India to work as missionaries. Another sister arrived in India, followed by a new sister in what was then East Pakistan, and finally me in Bangladesh.

Mom and Dad have continued to work in exotic locations, including New York City, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. They finally retired a couple of years ago and moved to Vancouver Island, BC, hoping to enjoy their twelve grandchildren more frequently.

Shortly after their retirement and move back to our continent, I discovered I was pregnant with my first baby. And then hubby and I decided to move across the world with their newest grandbaby to Mozambique. Rather than expressing regret that we were moving away so soon after they moved back, Mom encouraged us to go, recognizing the calling.

I love this photo of Mom with her five sisters and mother, dressed in beautiful Indian saris. My Grandma (far right), a true Canadian pioneer, is still alive and well in her nineties. This photo represents the meeting of two cultures and a mother who followed her calling across the ocean, instilling that same calling into her own children. I want to pass that on to my baby, too.

----------------------------------------------------

This post has been entered into a Mother's Day Photo Contest. And another one. And another link.

Hole in One

Tweet

I played golf with Mommy and Daddy for the first time today, and boy, am I good! I got THE best score!

We went to Komatipoort (just across the border in South Africa) for some business and finally checked out that golf course we’ve been seeing every trip.

And I got lots of holes in one. Don’t know what the big deal is. You just take the ball and drop it in the hole. I don’t understand why Mommy and Daddy kept getting upset when I helped them drop their balls in the hole.

Mommy got a 64. She said not to tell you if it was a 9-hole or an 18-hole course. (She also says she hasn’t played in more than 5 years, and wasn’t that good the few times she did play.)

But it was a fun, beautiful day, and I got to drive the golf cart a lot. And here are the photos:

Me driving the cart.

Getting ready for tee off: Got the ball and the club! Who needs a tee? Especially when you're using a putter to tee off!

Giving Daddy some putting pointers:

Impala next to the fairway:

Official ball spotter. He didn't do so hot - Daddy lost 3 balls and Mommy lost a few more than Daddy.

One of the views from the course. We need a new camera, as this one just doesn't do it justice.

Wordless Wednesday

Tweet

African mama

Countdown

Tweet

In just one week we are getting on a big airplane and flying for hours and hours to the US! I am very excited! We have been making paper airplanes and singing airplane songs and learning how to spell airplane.

So now Mommy and Daddy are discussing all the important things, like - Do we take a car seat? No. Do we take Esmé's skateboard? Yes. Do we take it as a carry on? Maybe - she can practice on the plane aisles. Do we take Daddy's tennis racket? What do we need to buy to bring back? Books? No. Yes. No. Yes.

Mommy here: Does anyone have tips (outside of Benadryl) on surviving a zillion hours on transcontinental flights with a 12-month-old on your lap?

Gotta get to work - lots to do before next Tuesday!

Ponta do Ouro

Tweet

I had lots of fun at the beach this weekend! We drove forever on bumpy roads; the last 20 or so km on sand, the last 15 km on 4wd sand tracks. You wouldn’t expect to see many people at the destination after that trip, but it was a regular, bustling resort full of South Africans. Here is a photo of our caravan on one of the better sand tracks.
There were twenty of us staying in three rooms/cabins right by the beach. I got to play in the sand, boogie board, take a sunrise walk with Auntie Susan, and check out tidal pools.

Here are some cool photos of me playing with my friend B.

Here I'm on my sunrise walk with Auntie Susan:

And playing with sand:

And boogie boarding just before a wave came and knocked me down. I was having so much fun, I was clapping instead of holding on!

And sitting on my chair in front of the cabin. Actually, it looks like I'm in front of one of the trucks, doesn't it?

A doggie adopted us Saturday night, and Daddy fed it some potjie kos. It wasn’t too hungry, so there was some food left. The next morning I was hungry, so I went to Daddy, folded my hands so he could pray for the food, and then went to the doggie bowl to get me some breakfast. Mommy intervened and made me eat ProNutro instead, which didn’t look nearly as good.

We kinda got lost on the way back. There are multiple sand tracks all going the same way, so you can hop in between them and pick the best-looking one. Except only one of them leads to the bridge you need to cross (a bunch of little sticks with a couple of planks on top to drive on). And that wasn’t the track we took. So we ended up at a big ditch and had to backtrack quite a few km to find the right track.

We all made it back safe and sound, back to another work week here in Matola . . .

Honorable Mention

Tweet

Esmé's Mommy again . . .

I won a writing contest! Well, actually, I got a “Most” Honorable Mention for my Clean Underwear post. But it was fun – thanks, Scribbit! And if you’re visiting from Scribbit’s page, welcome! Visit often!

Since I got more hits from the link on Scribbit’s page than I usually get in a month, I thought I’d share with any new readers who I am and why I blog.

I’m a thirty-something mom of a one-year-old with an American passport living in Mozambique. My claim to fame is having the youngest skateboarder in the world as my daughter. Serious! If you’ve missed my previous posts on this, here are links to some skateboard videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSugV3byMSc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjHL66Kw3A4

My husband and I work with Maranatha Volunteers International on their project of building churches and schools here in Mozambique. We’ve been here since May of last year. With an accounting and IT background, I work with the money over here.

Combine working full-time with taking care of baby full-time, and there must be a good reason for spending valuable time blogging. Let me say that this idea that being a mother makes you more efficient is totally false advertising. Where do I start? Oh, yes, bullet points! I love bullet points! They make me feel so organized – what disillusionment! So, here’s why I blog:

• I wanted to journal my daughter’s childhood; to keep track of all the milestones and have things documented for my increasingly failing memory. I know someday my baby’s gonna ask me when her first teeth arrived, when she was potty trained, and what her favorite books were. Right?
• By the time Esmé was four months, I was having a hard time keeping up the journal. I figured an online journal would make me a little more accountable.
• Being so far from much of my family, I figured this would let them see how Esmé was growing and make me feel less guilty for not writing personal letters.
• It’s just plain addicting! I don’t have time to keep up with all the blogging jargon and strategies, and I know just enough about statistics to know mine are pathetic, but there’s something oddly rewarding about knowing the entire world can see what I wrote if they so chose.
• “Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all for God’s glory” (1 Corinthians 10:31). My posts don’t focus on Christianity necessarily, but at the end of the day, if it doesn’t glorify God somehow, I shouldn’t be doing it.

If you’ve read very far back, you’ll see most of my blogs are written from Esmé’s perspective. Here’s why: (Oh goody, more bullet points.)

• This actually started out as a MySpace blog; one of my friends recruited me to sign up with them, but I just couldn’t make myself devote a whole webpage to me. (Yes, I have hookups, as my husband can attest.) It seemed much more reflective of my “humble spirit” to highlight my daughter instead.
• I DON’T have time to proofread my writing and make sure things sound good. People will be much more forgiving of a one-year-old’s writing than a thirty-something’s, won’t they? This allows me to just post, rather than try to be perfect and never get the posting done.
• It actually helps me as a parent to try to see things from my kid’s perspective. Sometimes the things I do just don’t make sense, or aren’t any fun, or have no value from that perspective, so when I see this, I can change and become a better mom.
• Some people actually think it’s cute . . .

Read It Again!

Tweet

Esmé's Mommy again:

I may not be an artist, but I am definitely a reader. And I’ve been doing my best to instill my love of books into Esmé.

When I was pregnant, she got to hear whatever I wanted to read. And for her first few months, I still had free latitude, though our selection was limited after moving to Mozambique and waiting for our shipment to arrive.

As she reached the “book in mouth” stage, board books, plastic books, and cloth books gained popularity, at least with her mother!

She finally started to respect books a little more – only tearing them when she wanted attention. Trying to expose her to all types of books, we’ve been working through the bookshelf over and over, reading the next four or five books in line every day. While she has clearly had her preferences (ones with animals and not too many words), she often patiently listens to them all.

So now is the moment this mother has been waiting for – when Esmé KNOWS what she wants to read and DEFINITELY wants to read it. She brings the same book to me over and over, and I drop everything to read it every time.

Last night I picked out four books to read before bed, and every time I started to read a different book, she pushed HER book back into my face again – “This one, Mommy!”

I think we’re about up to 142 reads by now, or close . . .

It's called Colors of Creation, by Thomas Paul Thigpen. As far as choices go, I can’t complain. It teaches colors using the story of creation, chronologically following the Biblical account for the most part. It rhymes, so I can memorize it easily and therefore read it upside down.

And the last page epitomizes some of what I want Esmé to learn as she grows up in Mozambique:

“God liked each color, fresh and new
the pale, the bright,
the dark, the light,
so people came in every hue,
and God said: This is good."

What more can you ask of from a book?

Artiste

Tweet

Esmé's Mommy here:

Anyone who knows me knows I am not a very artsy person. However, I don't want Esmé to be the only kid on the block without a masterpiece on the wall by the time she is 18 months, so we've been improvising.

Usually art class consists of giving Esmé a piece of paper to scribble on, and then Mommy takes it and makes the craft out of it while Esmé eats crayons. This week's theme was elephants, as you can see.

Today Esmé decided to color on the wall while I was working on the toilet paper roll elephant. (Yes, I do give her blank paper, but she usually prefers tile art.) Here is what she came up with. Very nice purple and brown, with smudge aftereffects, don't you think?

And then while working with play dough, I remembered the imprint ideas I'd seen on other blogs and had the bright idea to imprint baby doll's feet. Esmé was all over that one. We had a couple of trial and errors, but here are our final imprint sets, Esmé's on the left (in case you were wondering).
Now, if someone could tell me how to get MySpace back in English, I'd appreciate it. It's all in Portuguese now, and I'm just not there yet on my language lessons!

Wordless Wednesday

Tweet

Up-and-two-and-three-and-four . . .

This and That

Tweet

This blog is going to be a miscellany of this and that, kinda like my attention span these days.

Gecko. We found a tiny gecko with the skin falling off his head so you could see the inside. He was missing part of his tail, too. I wanted to play with him (he was a little slower than most), but Mommy wouldn't let me.

Bidet. I put my toothbrush down the bidet drain. (Look up the definition if you don't know what that is, though if you were Portuguese, you would know. The bidet - not the toothbrush. If you don't know what a toothbrush is, shame on you.) Mommy cleverly got it out and drenched it in mouthwash.

Log in Bathtub. I had my first log in bathtub experience. Mommy wants to know what the proper protocol is for this event. Do you grab baby out first, or log out first?

Drinking Water. I love drinking the water in the bathtub. (When reading this entry, ignore the one above, please.) Especially sucking it from my washcloth. What do Mommies do when the tap water is not necessarily safe for drinking?

Bubbles and Play Dough. Mommy made homemade bubbles and play dough for me last week. I tasted both of them and they are NASTY! She's got some serious work to do on those recipes.

Safety Gates. Daddy installed these silly gates around the house that keep me from going places. They still need locks, but we are getting there . . . In the meantime, it messes up my skateboard practice:



Photography Business. Mommy let me use her camera, and I think I am going to start my own photography business. Here is my first photo of some of my favorite things - electrical outlets and phone jacks. Maybe I better not quit my day job just yet, huh?

Tylenol Effect. Last week I was running a low-grade fever, so Mommy gave me some Tylenol. Boy, did that make me feel good! I was jumpin' off the bed and everything! Here is a video of me on Tylenol. (After this, Daddy put the mattress on the floor. Good thing, 'cuz I then proceeded to dive off head first and then cried about it.)

Saturday Night

Tweet

My Mommy and Daddy are WAY COOL! When we have nothing to do Saturday night, we go to Shoprite and look at food! What fun!

At least I have a very important job to do every time we go grocery shopping. I hold the receipt and give it to the man at the door to check (think Costco) when we leave. Then I try to give it to everybody we meet in the parking lot, too.

Not Guilty!

Tweet

Does anyone have a survival guide on what to do when your Mommy is sick? She's been lying around in bed for two days, and quite frankly, I've been getting bored!

At least I am working on changing my diapers by myself. I can get my diaper off, and is it really necessary to put another one on? I like running around without one.

And I can feed myself, too. Just give me access to the pantry, the fridge, and a big wooden spoon.


Anyway, Mommy is feeling better now, and the silver lining is that all her baby pounds are gone. So that means, no matter what her weight issues are, she can't blame me anymore! I am NOT GUILTY!

She does want to know why her pre-pregnancy size 4 jeans still don't fit. Maybe cuz there is no TurboKick class here in Maputo? Whatever it is, it is NOT MY FAULT!

Wordless Wednesday

Tweet

Don't. Touch. The. Flame.

Clean Underwear, Cheerios, and Gloryland

Tweet

Maputo, Mozambique

Coconut and date palms, mango trees. Smells of frangipani and cooking fires. Trucks clattering through huge potholes. Children calling to each other in Portuguese and Tsonga. Barking from Groban the dog. This is home.

It hasn’t always been home. As the fog of jetlag evaporated when we arrived last May, we had to adjust to a different language and a different culture. I treasured our rare shopping trips to Nelspruit, South Africa, about three hours away. It was a place where English was spoken and understood. It had a shopping mall. And not only were you guaranteed to find bare necessities like milk and cinnamon on the store shelves, food prices were 1/3 cheaper, so you could afford luxuries like juice and pasta sauce.

I remember when Maputo became “home.” We had headed to Nelspruit on a Friday for a rushed day of shopping, only realizing in the evening that we probably wouldn’t make it through the border in time to clear the tools my husband bought. So we settled into a B&B, and on Saturday we meandered our way to the border via Kruger National Park.

Not having a camera on this unplanned detour, we were guaranteed an exceptional day of animal sighting. It included a leopard, EIGHTEEN lions, four rhinos, elephants, hippos, giraffes, zebras, warthogs, crocs, and all the regulars.

We got to the border in plenty of time, we thought. After much perseverance, we cleared the tools on the South African side, only to be told at the Mozambican side that we needed to go back to a South African clearing agent, where we would pay more taxes and “tips.”

By this time, the South African border was closed. We were in for a long night in the car with a tiny baby. But an unlikely angel in the form of an SA police officer let us back in SA without the requisite rubber stamps or even a request for soda money, and another angel opened her B&B to us at 11 p.m.

Late Sunday afternoon, sitting in front of the SA clearing agent’s office in clothes we had worn three days straight, I told my husband, “I can’t wait to get home and put on some clean underwear.”

Home is where the clean underwear is.

Yet we don’t really belong here. We stick out in the villages. We don’t speak the language. And we can’t really be ourselves, as we’re constantly careful to avoid offense in the local culture.

Roseburg, Oregon

Home is a small green cottage on the sparkling North Umpqua River. Purrs and snuggles from Flame the cat. A mini orchard of apple, pear, and plum trees. And we’re going home at the end of this month for some R&R. I can’t wait!

We’ll see our family and friends and catch up on old times. I’ll have my hair highlighted and cut for the first time in a year. I’ll go to the Y and drop my baby at the daycare so I can have an hour of uninterrupted workout time. We’ll dine out at Taco Bell. I’ll find fabulous sales at Ross Dress for Less. And I’ll buy Cheerios and introduce them to my baby for the first time, reveling in the crunch of Cheerios in the back seat of the car, crumbs and all.

Home is where the Cheerios are.

Our friends will listen to our stories with polite interest. We’ll find out how things have changed: who has died, married, divorced, had children. We’ll realize we’re really no longer a part of their lives; people have moved on and survived without our being there. And we’ll realize that we really don’t belong here anymore. And we can’t really be ourselves, because so many in the US can’t relate to the world of extreme poverty that we've just come from.

Gloryland

This isn’t meant to be a theological exegesis, but I can’t help but end this by stating that a big attraction of Christianity is the hope that there is a home beyond what you can find in this world. A place that never changes yet has new surprises for you every day. A place where you can be with all your loved ones at the same time, not having to juggle them into your packed itineraries. “A home in gloryland that outshines the sun, way beyond the blue.”

Home is where you fit in; where you are free to be yourself. And one of these days, I’m going home!

Party Time!

Tweet

Here it is as promised - the exciting story of my very first birthday party, right here in Mozambique. It started out with the delivery of 35 live chickens for a BBQ here at Daddy's shop in Machava.


I am going to break all blogging rules and post LOTS of photos, though we've made them small so hopefully they will load okay on your computer. I left out the chicken guts ones in case I have any sensitive viewers . . .


Guests
Including Ouma and Oupa and my cousins and the expat Maranatha team, all the Maranatha shop workers were there, so there were about 80 people total. Here I am making the rounds.


Here I am visiting with Jorge (the shop supervisor) and some of the other shop workers.




I am with Ms. Cathrine, talking on her phone. I like to play with her.

This is Uncle David.


And my cousin Marquelle.


And my Auntie Susan.


Food
There was lots of food, from BBQ chicken to veggie crumbed schnitzels, mixed vegetables, a rice dish, mealie pap, fresh bread, cabbage salad, and sodas. And there was lots of peach cake - Mommy baked for two days straight - with custard for dessert, but I didn't get to try any of that.


I decided to help the cooks dish out the food.


I ate some of the veggie crumbed schnitzels.


Here are some of the workers eating.


This is me with Daddy getting into my cupcake and candle. I couldn't blow out the candle because it was too windy to light it.


Entertainment
For entertainment, we brought out my skateboard. Some of the guys decided to try it out. Some of them did okay.


Some of them didn't do so well.


Then I got on and whizzed by everybody. I am a pro, you know.


I am starting down the ramp in front of the shop.



Going faster. And faster. And faster. This is starting to get scary!


I didn't fall though. Daddy got me at the bottom. I did it three times. I am good!


Then I did my stand-up routine for everybody.


Then everyone else got to play tug-o-war. I wanted to play, but Daddy thought I might get stepped on so moved me out of the way . . .



By this time I was really tired, so we went home.

Birthday Cake
After I had a long nap, my cousins came over for supper. Here I am getting ready to blow out my candle on my carrot cake. There was no wind to help me this time, though, so Daddy helped out.


I DID get to eat some of the carrot cake. It had raisins, too, so it was VERY healthy . . .


Here are my cousins and me behind the cake. Don't I look much older than before?


Presents
Mommy says birthdays aren't about getting presents, but presents sure are a lot of fun. After supper, I opened my presents. I wanted to play with each one and had to be coaxed to open the next one. Stacker cups are cool!


Here I am showing my cousin Janelle my garden counting book. This came from several people - Auntie Barbara gave Mommy the material, Mommy cut and basted it together, and Ouma sewed it up.


This is a pretty doll blanket Marquelle knit for my doll.



There's got to be some way to put this swimming suit on! I tried over the head and over the feet, and it doesn't seem to work any way I try!


And this pretty dress just doesn't seem to fit right. Maybe I need to lose some weight or get my head tucked.

Now shoes I can handle, though.

Videos

Wow, what a fun day I had! Mommy took lots of video, so she will have to get some software to edit it one of these days and make a cool memory video for me. In the meantime, we are posting two videos for good measure.

The first is of the shop guys singing Happy Birthday to me. The second is of me skateboarding down the shop ramp.