Our last day in Mozambique

[Thanks to Ray who encouraged me to finish the story!]
It's amazing how quickly one's perspective changes. At first the orphanage seemed primitive and uncomfortable, but after returning from an outreach to bush village, the orphanage is a bastion of amenities. Sleeping in a bunk bed is positively luxurious after sleeping on the ground. Being able get dressed while standing up is way easier than the contortions inside my tent. And the fact that the water is out is disappointing, but not shocking.

We are suddenly faced with a contrast so abrupt it is almost ludicrous -- our whole group ventures down the road for a luxurious breakfast at a nearby hotel. We were impressed by everything: not just the abundant buffet, but the green lawn, the white tablecloths, and of course ... the bathrooms! Hot and cold running water! toilets that flush! Toilets you are allowed to throw toilet paper into! This is great! We wash our hands over and over, just because we can.

The breakfast is beautiful, but I can't eat much, as my stomach is upset. How ironic, that I can't really take advantage of the one fine meal on the entire trip. But I can't complain too much, as I've been generally healthy. After breakfast, I joined a couple of women to walk back to the orphanage, but then I get a little bit antsy at the amount of shopping they want to do first. I'm just not a normal tourist, I guess.

And finally I'm back in the orphanage, in the worship center, on a dirty mat on the floor, wearing a wraparound skirt on top of my capris. I haven't had a shower since Tuesday (it's now Friday), and my skin has layers of dirt, glued together with sunscreen and bug repellent. And yet even in this we are not living a totally authentic 3rd world experience -- the sunscreen and bug repellent are luxuries, as are the baby wipes that have been substituting for the shower.

This morning, Barbara is speaking. She ministers inner healing and deliverance. Today she preaches on 2 Peter 1. The message is that negative emotions are a signal that one needs more time with Jesus.

I spend the rest of the day not doing too much. My stomach cramps get severe, and I'm worried about how I will manage the flight home, so I finally give in and take the Cipro. Usually I would wait a couple of days to see if it gets better on it's own, but I'm doubled over in pain, and can't imagine flying from Mozambique to South Africa, to Amsterdam, to New York. Between the pills and the prayer, I'm ok by the time I need to travel.

I skip lunch and dinner, and try to help with the final cleanup. We sweep the bedrooms, again and again. I'm not sure if the problem is that the brooms are such poor quality or what, but we keep sweeping out piles of dirt, literally. Again and again. My team is supposed to clean the visitor's gazebo. I'm at a loss for how to deal with the kitchen. The light has been burned out for days, so we're cleaning by flashlight, and the plumbing is still not working, so we have a limited number of buckets of rather slimy dirty water that Scott hauled from the cistern. The refrigerator is truly disgusting. I decide to sacrifice our carefully hoarded paper towels to try to sop up the inch of smelly goo in the bottom, but there is too much goo, so we use a dirty dish towel. I'm realizing how hard it is to clean when you don't have the right cleaning supplies. I never knew that cleanliness was a luxury.

While I'm busy in the kitchen with another helper, the rest of the team is trying to mop the gazebo floor. The finally develop a method where they dump a bucket of muddy water, and then scrub with the push broom, and then squeegee it with big squeegees. I never knew that you could use mud as a cleaning fluid, as long as you squeegee it!