Brian Cassels

I am home! Got in last night at 9:00PM after a 40 hour trip. I was pretty tired, but not too tired to miss getting up to go surfing at 5:30. When I went to unpack my bag I had my last taste of Africa. It had four Nokia boxes in at that were not mine. They were for really nice phones, but the phones were missing, I have all the accessories though: chargers, headsets, and USB cables. I’m assuming someone at the airport stole them from another bag and stashed the unimportant stuff in my bag. Pretty weird…

The last couple weeks in Moçambique were great. The camp went quite well. There were 14 kids who came and spent two nights at Rio Tembe Outpost (That’s the name of the camp). We had them do whole range of activities; from capture the flag, to a 10km trek following clues though the bush, to challenge activities and a relay. They all really enjoyed it. It was also a good opportunity for me to see what we have to work with and what a camp can look like there in the future. After the camp we had a meeting to debrief how the camp went, what we can change, and lay out a vision. Once I had a reference point to work off, it helped us to talk through some important issues, and I am really excited about the future potential of the camp. We weren’t able to finish the climbing wall before the camp, but we did finish it on Saturday. We are pretty sure that it is the first climbing wall in the country, so that will be a big draw for people to want to come to camp.

The last couple of days I was able to go on a trip to Ponta do Ouro, a beach town bordering South Africa. It was nice to get to see some more of the country and relax on the beach.

I am glad to be home, but I will really miss Moçambique and my friends there. It was tough to say goodbye to everyone from the organization I interned with and the Bowers. If you have any questions about my trip, let me know!

It looks a lot more impressive when it is up then on the ground

The classic camp group photo

At Ponto do Ouro with the boys (Ismael, Me, Mark, Cory)

This entire week has been fully dedicated to building a climbing wall out at the camp.  None of us have built a wall before, but we put our heads together and came up with something.  It actually looks pretty professional and I think it will be quite a success.  It will be 8 meters tall, and quite possibly the first climbing wall in the entire country, so that is an accomplishment in itself.

Today I finished the my last bit of schoolwork-a ten page paper assessing my internship.  After finishing that, and five days of work at the camp I was ready for a celebratory adventure.  So this afternoon I got Cory, the Bowers’ 13 year old son, and we decided to kayak to an island off the coast of the city.  The Island is called Xefina, and it is about 4 miles away.  We got there around 3:30 and started exploring.  It used to be a prison, controlled by the Portuguese during the revelutionary war here, but has since been abandoned.  We were exploring the ruins of these enormous cannons and met up with some fisherman who offered for us to sit with them and eat fish they were cooking over a fire.  We were loving life, eating fish with the natives but realized that we should get going because it was getting late meaning we would have to kayak in the dark if we wasted too much time.

We followed the fisherman through a road to the other side of the island where we had hid our kayaks and parted ways when they reached their house.  As we were nearing the beach, some guy saw us and told us that it was prohibited for us to be there.  I told him, sorry, we didn’t know.  No worries, he replied.  We reached the beach and were heading towards out hidden kayaks when someone yelled for us from behind.  It was a guy in a military uniform.  He came over and started giving us a lecture because we were not allowed to be on the island without coming to him first and asking permission, that he is the commander of the island.  I apologized and told him we didn’t know, but next time we’d let him know.  However, he was a)drunk, b)unreasonable, and c)had a henchman with an AK-47.  He had no intention of letting us go on our own terms.  So he starts going on this monologue about he can kill us and any other white who comes to the island without permission and that we cannot leave-he is going to make us stay at least one night, I’m making my case before the court about us being innocent-how could we know this ‘law’, Cory is keeping his mouth shut and giving me a look of-’is this actually happening’, and some bystanders are pleading with “comandante” to leave us alone and let us go this time since we didn’t know.

There was about 15 minutes of discussion and confusion where he refused to budge while I layed on every reason why he was being unreasonable in as friendly a way as possible.  “Listen, my friend, look at this boy, he’s my friend and just a kid (pointing to Cory), he needs to get home to his parents tonight, it’s getting late”.  Finally, he somehow decided to let us go as we walked to our boats and paddled away under guard by his armed henchman.  We just paddled as quick as we could away from the island on pure adrenaline, in the dark, and have been laughing about it ever since.  This rivals my homeless night in Jo-burg on the rediculous scale.

Our climbing wall, which still needs hand holds

The men hard at work erecting a post

Scaling the post

When I first came here to Africa and was on the bus driving through South Africa to get to Moçambique, I was really hoping to see some wild animals.  My dream was for the bus to have to stop to let a herd of elephants across, and have lions jumping on the side of my window trying to attack.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see anything but cows then, and even since being here I haven’t seen anything to exotic except for one monkey tied to a rope in someones yard.  Yesterday, that all changed!

I got to spend yesterday in South Africa at the famous Kruger Park.  If anyone hasn’t heard of the YouTube video called “Battle at Kruger”, you need to go check it out now and be amazed!!  We stayed with some friends of the Bowers who are South African.  I was able to see a ton of awesome animals.  Africa has what are called “The Big Five”, which include Elephant, Rhino, Buffalo, Leopard, and Lion.  The ultimate is seeing all of them in one trip.  We saw 3, which isn’t bad, especially since we saw the 2 rarest.  We also had a little friendly competition amongst ourselves, where we picked the animals before hand and rated them with point values, and the first person to positively identify an animal would get that amount of point in Rand (SA currency) to use at the gift shop at the end of the day.  When you are driving around the park, you often know when there is something exciting when you see cars stopped and people leaning out the windows with cameras.  At one point we hit a major traffic jam and it was because there was a leopard lying down under a tree about 150 ft away.  That was pretty awesome to see, but what was cooler was later in the day we were driving over a bridge and saw another one drinking water around this little pond by itself and I think we were the only ones to see it.  It was REALLY close too.   We also saw about 5 lions, all lying down and not right in our faces, but it was an awesome time!  I also won the identifying game!

Classic giraffe with birds on the back

South African braai (BBQ), they know how to cook my style!  MEAT!

Some monkeys

This is amazing!  There are a total of 450 cheetah’s in Kruger Park.  Kruger Park is bigger than the UK.  Cheetah’s generally hunt alone.  We saw TWO walking away after feasting on a recent kill.  I was going crazy!  They were literally 10ft away.

We had to back up in fear that it would come charge us

Sorry it has been so long!  I have been fairly busy recently!

I have learned more and more how unpredictable Moçambique can be.  You have to be quite flexible.  My plans have changed about a million times.  As far as the camping ministry goes, we have tried to plan a couple camps, but they have both fallen through because of various reasons.  It looks like we probably wont actually have the first camp until the 14th of July.  We have been able to brainstorm quite a bit of activities and explore around the wilderness surrounding the grounds.

Last weekend I went to work with a different ministry that was pretty cool.  A missionary is starting an egg laying farm business that will be quite large here in Mozambique.  He has 8 different Mozambican interns who are actually living with him.  They will get experience working with the business (there is a major problem with unemployment here) and ministry.  The goal is that at the end they will have enough money and skills to be able to create their own business and run their own ministry self-supported.  I got to spend a few days living with them and being an intern myself.  We also went to a national soccer game between Moçambique and Madagascar, we won 3-0, it was quite an experience!

The last week I have been working full time with the development organization.  A guy from the states, Mike, has been here doing lots of training.  We have set up the office really well here and went up to Xai Xai and assembled a bunch of the lighting systems as he taught the workers there how to do it.  We have really had a good time together and I am more and more excited about the good things that will happen as a result of the work of the organization.

This is a very factual post with not much detail, I just wanted to let everyone know WHAT I’ve been doing.  Feel free to e-mail me with any other questions, and just to communicate, it’s always nice to hear from you!

Tons of crazy fans at the soccer game

I got some play in myself

The intern group at the game

Assembling batteries for the energy project (Mike, Eusebio, and Matias)

Got to see Naomi