This chronicle begins on the 23rd of February as I depart from my family and once again set out on an adventure on my own. It was hard leaving them but having been home for five months, I was feeling like it was time to get on my own again and begin living my life in a way that keeps me healthy, activates my mind and polishes my skills. That’s what it’s all about and this keeps me in the moment where I like to be.

On this quest I will be going to Beira Mozambique with my colleague Tim Evans who will be staying there for one week then going off to Ethiopia. I will remain for six months unless I can get all done that needs my skills and orchestration, when I may get off to Ethiopia myself for a short stay. But either way I must return in August at the latest because that’s when my travel insurance runs out.

We should be met in Mozambique by the local staff that I am told are anxiously awaiting our arrival and inputs on how to continue the projects that were earlier piloted by Tim when he was there some months ago. The plan for the program in Mozambique is to create in the next two years five assembly shops in which local people will be set up as operators and entrepreneurs along with setting up 100 wells, establishing in 100 homes smokeless stoves and water filters for those same homes. It’s an aggressive program that is well funded and in my opinion very possible if we can get the right people on the ground as community workers and provide them with enough incentives that they will be motivated to make the program happen.

This first leg of my trip was long and not too interesting. However, I did meet one man on the plane from Atlanta to Johannesburg that was a good conversationalist and a little fun to be with. The trip was divided into three segments for me since all of my flight to Johannesburg was given to me by Chris and Johnna (my daughters) from the Frequent Flyer miles. But I went first to Dallas where I stayed over night with an early flight to Atlanta. Then off to Atlanta where I sat in the Airport for six hours before leaving. Tim met me there just before flight time. We did not sit together on the plane, but I saw and talked to him a couple of times before arrival in Johannesburg. A short trip to the Airport Hotel was in a van which gave me my first wakeup call that I was in Africa. As I entered the large van I approached it from the right side only to find that there was only one door—that for the driver on that side and had to go to the other side to get in. It was quickly apparent that I was in a country where the steering wheel of the car is on the right side. I will get used to that soon, I hope in Mozambique as they are also left hand drivers on the road, and I will be driving much of the time.

Final arrival in Mozambique on Tuesday was on schedule with no hitches except when we stepped off the plan to realize that this sunny day in which we had arrived was also about 90 degrees with 100% humidity. Whew, what a change from snowy winter and freezing temperatures in Salt Lake. By the time we arrived and were in the house around noon time, I was soaking wet and haven’t been different since.

My first full day in the house, which by the way, is about as nice as one could expect for Mozambique—that is, running water, lights that don’t work, toilet needing fixing, etc., was consumed with travel to a German/Catholic Church-Owned Non Governmental Agency (NGO) to discuss our water programs. That took the full morning after which we traveled to a village site (another NGO) to look at a water cistern and then back to the office/house for a meeting and then out at two to look at some sites where we might install some wells. That was a pretty good first day on the job and I am sure with the plans we have made there will be many more like it.

Just in closing this first entry of my blog, I want to say that my goal in setting up this new “Jack’s Quest Mozambique” blog is to provide myself and others who may by readers with a running chronicle of my activities along with photos that I take of people and conditions I come across during my stay there. I hope to make it interesting and perhaps useful to some, and a running history for myself. I will not do this daily but intend to keep it quite active on at least a weekly basis.