Trip to Gorongoza ....July 2009

One of the special things we were able to participate in this summer was a trip to Gorongoza. Gorongoza is a game park in Mozambique that was once the glory of the country. During back to back wars the animals were poached, fighting took place, land mines were probably present and the entire place was nearly destroyed. Recently an American started pouring money into it to restore its former beauty and collection of native Africa

Our fearless vehicle for the trip to Gorongoza
animals. It has been a plan for quite awhile to take the children there for a field trip. While there this summer, we were able to go with about a dozen of the children (all 11 to 14 years old). The others will have to go at other times. It was such a great opportunity for them.....a very rare treat......and we were just as excited!


Some mixed emotions on the way there. Excitement, apprehension......this is a new experience!














We set up tents for the night and camped out. Jen even brought the ingredients for S'mores and showed them how to make them over a little charcoal fire. No graham crackers....we had to improvise!



















Here are a couple of faces we saw on our tour. One group even got to see a lion.













CCheck out these faces!

Summer 2009 visit

In June Jennifer Nolte and I took off for Africa on a 14 hour flight to South Africa. Shortly after that we hopped on another plane for a short flight to Mozambique and were met by my daughter Erin Mitchell, Simon Mudiwa and several others. We began our three week adventure. Jen and I are both teachers so we were very interested in being a part of the newly formed school on the orphanage property. We spent lots of hours participating in the workings of the school.....getting to know the children and new teachers, working alongside the teachers, teaching lessons and sharing the school materials we brought with us.

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CFO-MOZ was able to help start a school on the premises in February of this year. The need for the school was overwhelming because of the dismal conditions of the public school system. The 3 year olds to the 8 year olds are the ones benefitting the most from the new school with a teacher full time each day. The older students get small group tutoring from another full time teacher when they are not in public school (which is only 3 hours a day).

Erin Mitchell and "her kids"
The children are thriving with their new teachers and their much improved school environment. We watched with excitement when we saw how much they are learning and how enthusiastic they were.