Smooth and efficient? Not

If you have been reading our letters for awhile you may have picked up on the fact that things don't always run smoothly in Mozambique.  That has been the case this past week.

 

We are trying to set up some systems for the chicken businesses so that we don't have to be as hands on.  The agreement is that WR will supply the feed, chickens, meds etc and the volunteers will take care of the chickens and sell them.  Systems for transporting these items would be ideal so that we don't have to make a run 3 hours north every week.  We had a good deal with the chickens and a driver from the company was taking them up every week along with the medications.  It worked pretty well until his car broke down.  Then a new supervisor came to the hatchery "who knew not Joseph" or World Relief for that matter and all deals were off.  She raised the price of the chicks and said she could provide transportation but we would need to pay for it.  So now we need to find transportation for the chicks plus buy our meds also.

 

We are working with the feed supplier and they said they could transport feed for us, but would just drop it by the road, not take it off road anywhere.  The manager promised it would go Saturday or Monday.  That was OK because the chicks were going Monday.  I had not heard from her yet on Monday so I called.  "Oh, we had a breakdown at the factory so now the feed won't go until Tuesday or Wednesday!"  So now we have chicks in the houses without any feed and the volunteers are having to walk who knows how many km to borrow some from another house.  On Tuesday I got an e-mail informing that the feed would go that day and be delivered at 3 in one town and 5 in the other.  So I called the point persons and told them and they were waiting by the road for the truck at the appointed times.  Problem is, the truck didn't even leave Maputo until 3 p.m. and arrived after dark at the first town.  By then the point person had given up and gone home with instructions to the guard to leave the feed in the church and lock it up.  At 9 p.m. I got a call from the person waiting in the next town.  She was there with several women with carts to haul the feed home.  But she had just learned that the driver decided to spend the night in the first town and was not even coming.  So they all went home and will try again the next day.

 

It's becoming very clear that this kind of arrangement will not work.  There are several factors:  1) Mozambique is not a task oriented society, relationships always trump task 2) breakdowns happen and probably more often because preventative maintenance is a foreign thought, 3) the driver may get hungry or have some other errands to run along the way, 4) efficiency is not a high value and the concept of "time is money" is a foreign one.  A trip that normally would take one hour ends up taking four to five.

 

We are seriously looking for a location in one of these communities to open a store to provide feed and meds to WR people and possibly sell some to others as well.  This will help.  We may need to hire a driver to take the chicks and meds up every week.  This would probably be cheaper than paying transportation fees to others.  We are also talking to the "Rei dos Pintos" (king of the chickens), a new supplier who may be able to help us out.  So hope springs eternal and we will keep working at it until we find something that does not turn our hair whiter than it already is.

 

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and we are really thankful to be in Mozambique in spite of the challenges.  I love looking at the palm tree out my window and seeing the blue sky and the ocean just over the house tops.  I love relating to people from all over the world and speaking Portuguese (even though I still mess it up).  We will join with some fellow Americans to eat turkey and pie.  It is not a holiday here and I was telling our host that we might be at work.  He said “That’s not right.  It’s Thanksgiving.  Take the afternoon off!" so we are taking his advice, especially since he set the time for lunch at 1 p.m.  We will miss the family gatherings and you will be in our thoughts, but we are thankful our kids have lots of extended family at home and will be well taken care of.  They are each having three separate Thanksgiving meals!  Whoa, I can't believe I ate the whole thing.

 

We're counting our blessings and hope you are too.

 

Rachel & Steve