It's been awhile.....

The days and months have flown since the last posting. It is now almost the end of May.

The Anabaptist churches of Angola have been requesting a reconnection with MCC for some time. Mid-May Bruno travelled together with the chair of the Mennonite World Conference Africa caucus to Luanda to visit the churches and see what their status was. Unbeknownst to us there is a thriving (and struggling) faith community of at least 25,000 Mennonites in Angola. For me personally it was the first time I had been to Luanda since our evacuation from the Congo (during the independence chaos) to refugee camps in Luanda in 1960.

 Later in April the MCC Representatives met for their bi-annual gathering in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. Twice yearly we meet for coordination, training, resourcing and becoming familiar with the regions programs. This time we chose Malealea as the meeting place. This is an old trading post turned into a backpackers lodge in the heart of rural Lesotho. It was also the last time this group met as many will be ending their term of service with MCC and new folks coming on board.

One of the things on Bruno's 'bucket list before leaving the continent' was to spend some time in the Okavango Delta. Early May he along with some friends headed to this vast inland swamp/delta in northern Kalahari (Botswana). Annually approximately 11 billion liters of water spread over a 6-15,000 square kilometre area. At the height it can host some 200,000 large mammals along with myriads of fish, birds, amphibians, etc. It is considered one of the seven natural wonders of the world. We spent an incredible week poling on mokoro's, travelling by 4x4 and seeing the beauty of this oasis in the desert. It was amazing to see the reality of survival play out as a lion pride took down a zebra and a leopard enjoyed an impala until a spotted hyaena stole it from her. For the 'twitchers' in our group it was 7th heaven and we saw  and photographed innumerable birds. 


Subsequent to the delight of the Okavango was an administrative trip to Mozambique to help orient new staff and participate in the country review. Every five years MCC reviews country programming to assess overall effectiveness and accomplishment of desired program outcomes. Following this is an administrative trip to Pietermaritzburg to discuss programming in Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa. 



Clearly it is a time of year where there is a lot of travel.  This can include road trips (car and local transport), airline travel, boat cruises and sometimes even 'footing' it! Whatever the context it is a gift to be living and working in this part of the world!