Mais Gringos and LC Planning

The busy-ness continues!! On Thursday and Friday we had our LC Planning conference. It was actually supposed to be Wednesday and Thursday, but on Tuesday night when we were sending out the reminders to all the members, one of them replied saying ‘isn’t tomorrow a holiday and won’t the university be closed?’ Nobody told us!! We had no idea it was a holiday! And we had booked the rooms, told all the members, ordered the food and nobody said anything! Sure enough when we called the university they said ‘Oh was it Wednesday you booked the room for? Ya, the whole university will be closed that day.’ Soooo, we had to change the days. Ah Mozambique.

So, we had our planning days anyways and it went quite well. The members were a little overwhelmed with all the stuff we have planned. They are still at that ‘WE are supposed to do that?’ stage because they haven’t realized yet that they can. But I think they learned a lot and they came away having a much clearer idea of what’s going to happen in the coming weeks and months. Plus they spent the whole two days working in their teams, something they haven’t done much yet. We can see them started to bond and communicating better together. Some individuals who used to be very quiet and unsure are starting to speak up and express themselves because they feel comfortable now and they feel that they have the knowledge. I think it will be a big eye opener for them when we recruit the new members because they will realize just how much they have already learned.

While we were getting everything ready for the planning days (without Daudo because he is in Portugal) we also had two other big milestones! Our first interns arrived!! On Friday and Sunday morning we were at the airport to pick up our two Brazilians. One will be working in Tete, in another province, and the other will be working here in Maputo along with our third intern that will arrive on Tuesday. It was really nice to meet them and show they around the city. They are excited to be here and I think it will be great for the members to see the exchange program in action.

Two more crazy Brazilians, just what we need!



At the Train Station again



No hovercarts allowed here!



Next week we are finishing functional training and doing individual plans and then the week after that we start recruitment planning! I’m very excited that this time I get to be the coordinator and the members will be the ones doing the printing and putting up posters and doing classroom presentations and such.

More busy weeks ahead!

P.S. Last week it was really cold here. It got all the way down to 24 degrees ;)