Naomi’s First Birthday

Mid-winter sunset on Beira Beach

Opening presents!

Yesterday was Naomi’s first birthday, and was great to share it with Lynne and Fiona. Isaac was very keen to help Naomi open her presents and our family’s first Mozambican birthday seemed to be going surprisingly normally. That was until the workmen turned up to replace the bars across our balconies. With five or six guys traipsing through the apartment, banging and welding and shouting, we were worried that Naomi’s day was not going to be quite as we planned. However, they agreed to stop for an early lunch as we had invited Julião and Beatrix’s and their two children, Rebecca and Calebe, around for a party (pizza, jelly and cake).

All was going well, until the power went off and the water stopped. The workmen had overrun the electric circuit to the whole building and burnt out the mains. At some point the electrician would turn up to repair the mains, so we decided to go out for birthday dinner after the kids woke up from their afternoon nap.

We had the phone call to say we had light again while we were watching a red sunset over the ocean and a cool mid-winter breeze whipped over the beach. Our fantastically resourceful guard sorted the water pump after we got back. We were all relieved when we were able to flush to toilet for the first time since lunch.

Today it’s been back to our massive list of tasks we need to complete before we start language training next week.  For those that pray, please ask that our childcare arrangements would work out really well.  Tomorrow, we can begin to think more about visas and work permits (it's not all sun and sand!)