Bilene.

We took a trip up North again. We are getting ready for an investor to come here, so we had to make sure things were in line with the land that could possibly be invested in for corn production. This investor is coming looking to spend millions of dollars to start a corn project in Chokwe to help lower the prices of corn for the people and the local poultry industry. There is a Mozambican here named John who was in charge of the preparation and searching of land in Chokwe. John has known about the investor coming all the way from the U.S. to see the land for about 6 months now. The purpose of our first trip up to Chokwe earlier this week was to see the work John had done to get ready to show the investor the land. So we are driving along through some farmland, then all of a sudden John says, "This is the land that could be used". We continue to drive for 5 minutes or so and John says, "Ok, thats probably about where the land would end." And that is pretty much all he had prepared. No soil samples, no estimation of how much it would cost to irrigate the land, no real plan on how to acquire the land and get this.. he didn't even know how many hectors or acres the land was. Alex had to hold John's hand and give him a pep talk to do his best to prepare the information he could (which should have taken months) within two days. We had to make a seperate trip all the way to Chokwe to talk with " Vossa Excelencia Senhor Enginheiro Alberto" (Your Excellency Lord Engineer Alberto, that was literally his title that we had to call him) to assure him that we really were white people who wanted to use their land to benefit the locals. Alberto is in charge of the land in the District of Chokwe. When we finally got to Chokwe and caught him at a bad time- the wedding of which he was the "padrinho" (godfather). He took a moment to talk with us and after a five minute conversation, it was determined that if we would pay for his lunch and dinner he would work non stop the next day (his day off, a Sunday) to get two property proposals ready. If you buy a government official a nice lunch you get what you want! Many South Africans who do business here buy a full grown goat for about $15.00 and will randomly show up at a key government official or police officers house (or the witch doctor's) and offer the goat to the influential person as a sort of form of insurance.

We learned our lesson the first time with our trip up North. Last time we got stuck staying in a hotel that was a little sketchy. Granted we are in Mozambique, but I was a little scared to go to sleep that night. When we got to the hotel I was about to pee my pants from the long car ride and my reluctancy to use the facilities in public restrooms in Mozambique, so I ran in to use to bathroom only to find no toilet paper. We had to run to the front desk to ask for toilet paper. She looked at us as if she was annoyed and took 10 minutes (while I am hurting from how full my bladder is) to walk out to some warehouse to bring me one roll of the thinnest TP I've ever seen. I didn't bother to take a shower, since there was just a dirty, moldy tub with a cup on the edge to use. Our light source was a single light bulb coming out of wire on the ceiling. But that's not was the worse thing, I was afraid because our door basically didn't have a lock, while we are in the middle of the ghetto of Chokwe.

So, this time we decided to stay somewhere a little nicer. We actually stayed in a private hut on the beach. They were really cool. They looked a little sketchy on the outside, but once you walked in there was a nice comfy bed, electricity, a running toilet WITH toilet paper, and a hot shower. It was really nice. They made it so wind could flow through the hut, so you can hear the ocean as you are falling asleep. Only one downside- we had a pet mouse in our hut somewhere, but at least it didn't get us while we were asleep.

We even went out to see the sea turtles swimming. It was hard to get pictures of them since they were in the water and we would see them for a second or two at a time. They are so cool to see though! It was a fun trip across in the little boat with the locals. They were awesome, and the beach is BEAUTIFUL! Bilene is a little resort town, many people build large houses on the beach as their "getaway" home.

We had alot of progress with our trip. We will post more about the details on that later.

The gas tank on the boat

We asked him to carry us to the boat because we didn't want to get wet, and he did it! That kid was awesome!

On the beach