Moravian College in Mozambique: July 2009

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Friday, July 17, 2009

We will be spending the morning hours with Lidia, Matilde and Olga. Our plan is to go to the big craft market. This particular craft market is open only on Saturdays and we have not been able to visit this in the past. So we are all looking forward to that. We'll try to post some pictures before we board the plane later in the afternoon.

What a surprise that Olga Novela, the nursing director at the Ministry of Health, would stop by the AIHA office just to see Lori and I. Lori and I had the pleasure of meeting Olga at the Ministry of Health in January and also on American soil during the March/April partner exchange. She came bearing gifts and helped to dress each of us in the traditional African garb: the capulauna. This gesture was so very kind and means a great deal to Lori and I. You can check out the pictures of Lori and I dressed in our capulaunas standing with our friend, Olga.

Today we traveled to Romao Xavier's office, who as Lori stated in a much earlier blog, is the in-country AIHA representative. We had planned to meet most of the day to review our previously developed work plan, to revise as necessary, and to propose budgetary recommendations. We moved from a period of confusion over the actual budget to one of much greater clarity. This was a good process for all of us as we now have a better understanding related to the funding.

In the pictures above, you will find two pictures of us. At the table are seated Ana Soila (ANEMO accountant), Lidia Monjane (Executive Director), Lori and myself. Unfortunately, Romao is not in this picture as he was kind enough to take the picture. Thanks, Romao!

On Thursday, July 16, we returned to Maputo, given the luxury of traveling via ANEMO's car and making the trip back much more comfortable for the 3 of us. Though the trip took 7 hours or more, it was much quieter than the bus trip (though we liked the singing, of course) and more pleasant than our midsummer Xai-Xai trip when we had Maria with us.

The day was uneventful...we bought some local tangerines and cashews from the vendors along the way. Though we didn't stop at any hospitals, health centers or health posts - which we would have liked to have done - we struggled with our Portuguese to convince our driver to stop so we could take pictures of one of the village health centers. (Photos of vendors and one health center above) Lori

Another view of our seaside hotel where we stayed the night before going back to Maputo.

ANEMO Conference attendees in Inhambane at the end of the session, Day 2.

This is a photo of the song and dance group - the group opened and ended the conference, something that was all about Africans and ANEMO, united and empowered...

Labels: The Closing Ceremony

Michele and Dave were the photographers... Here are some photos taken on the way to Inhambane.

A photo from the bus trip to Inhambane - the songs, dancing and us - a little risky, eh? Dancing in the aisles??

Thursday, July 16, 2009

The second day of the conference was professionally energizing as well.

Our day began with a report of the previous day's discussions, summarizing approaches to increasing membership in ANEMO. A common concern was how attract students to the profession with the necessary attitudes and physical attributes, and then how to encourage students and younger nurses to join. There's actually talk of creating an ANEMO-led curriculum component and even, a school...hmm.

Delegates strategized to plan for April's General Assembly meeting. Groups intend to report on activities of the coming year -- for example, holding a provincial-wide meeting for ANEMO members in Gaza, "workplace safety" training for HIV protection, development of a data-base of members and resources, more networking and collaboration, etc.

All in all, it was a very satisfying day and I do believe we're part of something very important. Michele and I laugh about the African song and dance and what it could do for our faculty meetings; however, the music clearly changes an intense group dynamic to one with togetherness, empowerment, passion, and joy! Translating one of the messages - "We are intelligent nurses, we are strong, we must work hard and we can be great together".

And, even as they sang words I didn't understand, I felt their awareness of the importance of ANEMO in improving health care for their people.

As Michele said, we stayed Wednesday night at Hotel Tofo Mer, a quaint resort oceanside, calmed by night rhythm of waves. Lori

Here's an early morning photo of the beach at Inhambane. Inhambane is a popular resort city here in Mozambique. So you might ask.. where are all the beach goers? Well, it's winter in Mozambique so the day time highs have been ranging in the high 70s to low 80s. That's a bit nippy for some Mozambicans.

Here's a photo of a panel discussion that was part of the conference. Some of you will recognize the person on the far right, Matilde Basilio (President of ANEMO), who visited with us in March of 2009.

Well, the video clip of the cultural session would not download after nearly 15 minutes, so we'll just have to share that with interested folks. Instead, here are some pictures of the conference center in Inhambane and surroundings (like the Indian Ocean -- I know, hard to take). Enjoy....

Labels: Conference Center

(Photo of Lidia Mondlane)

(Photo during our presentation)

The first day of the conference seems like a week ago, yet in reality, only 2 days ago. There were many nurses from Maputo province (southern most province in Mozambique), from the Gaza province and from the Inhambane province - about 30 in all. All nurses really exhibited much passion for nursing and how to become a stronger professional voice in Mozambique. We certainly see parallels with our own history. Yet given the many obstacles related to poverty so evident here in Mozambique, we are filled with a deep sense of respect for our new partners. They are courageous men and women.

On a lighter note, it was nice going to a nursing conference that actually started at 8am or after. None of this 6:00am wake up call for opening sessions at 7am! There are lessons that we can learn here. There is a great sense of culture expressed in song and dance that was apparent on both days. We will be posting a video (hopefully -- if I used my camera correctly) of some of that. Lori and I are trying to determine how we could introduce music / dance into our meetings.

Our presentation went very well (Portuguese and all) and there was great interest in our structure and the professional voice that nursing enjoys in the United States. Throughout the rest of the conference, references were made to American nursing. How we wish we could snap our fingers and make this happen in Mozambique. But that would be too easy. One interesting observation for the first day is that much time was spent in reflection -- open dialog about issues within the provinces, solutions, etc.

Pictures for the cultural session will be posted shortly, so stay tuned...

Michele

We couldn't post for days! Our Internet access was nil in Inhambane. Didn't like being "out of touch"!...

July 14, Tuesday
It’s Tuesday…geez, I’m losing track of the days! Yesterday July 13th was a travel day. We went 440+ kilometers (you do the math) to Inhambane, the site of the regional conference of ANEMO nurses. The trip was by bus and took 7 or more hours from Maputo, a ride filled with songs in their African dialect and dancing in the aisles. Quite a site to see and hear.

The season is winter here so our trip was pleasant enough, without the heat we had in the January summer. Last evening we were treated to a lovely buffet, catered by a restaurant owner here. We sampled it all –fish, chicken (always and everywhere we have “frango”), prawns, rice, fried potatoes (every meal), and vegetables – of course, bottled water and Fanta sodas.

We’ve connected now with Lidia and Matilde, two of our guests at St. Luke’s-Moravian in April. And, we'll meet nearly 30 other nurses at the conference. Today is the day that Michele and I present out PowerPoint and we practiced a few lines in Portuguese to say. Think we’re ready! Lori

Sunday, July 12, 2009

This is well posed for picture of Lori, Romao, and myself (notice that I am wearing my new purchases).

This is a picture of Romao and his lovely wife, Paula. Thank you both for opening your home to us.

This is a picture of a sampling of dinner. Well, it's actually my plate and you should know that I ate every morsel (mm, mm, good)

Saturday, July 11

Well, much has happened since our earlier blogs. Lori, Dave and I arrived in sunny Maputo on Saturday morning. Life was good - except for one detail which was my missing luggage (but at least we were at our Maputo destination). Once we checked in, we were quick to go shopping for some clothes and essential items until the luggage was found. Actually, it was a good excuse to buy some clothing in Mozambique. Our mission was successful and we then prepared to go to dinner with Romao.

What a celebration we had with Romao! Little did we know that he was taking us to have dinner at his home with his family. We were treated like royalty and enjoyed real authentic African food. There was calamari, shrimp (seasoned oh so perfectly), chicken, potatoes, rice (African style), etc... We sampled everything.

A very special part of this partnership has been in building relationships with our colleagues. How awesome it was to meet Romao's wife, Paula, and his son, Ray. We also met close friends of theirs, as well as other family members. We are so fortunate to have been given the opportunity to get to know others in such a meaningful way. We returned to our hotel room ready for some much needed sleep.

Signed, Michele

It's Sunday afternoon for you, nighttime for us. Our time difference is 6 hours ahead of Pennsylvania time...It was nice arriving here in the early morning on Saturday. It gave us a full day to force ourselves to be awake and go to bed at a decent hour. No naps that day --> no jet lag today!

It was so good to get here, and I was not as uneasy and anxious since we've been to Maputo before. The people are lovely and our hotel quite comfortable. Especially when we try to speak Portuguese, people smile...And, then they speak to us in English or tell how to say it in Portuguese. Michele and I are committed to take a language course in our future.

Once we were checked-in to the hotel, we ventured out to exchange our US dollars to Mozambican Metical at an exchange rate of 28 MZNto $1. After that we headed to the Maputo Shopping Center (clothes for Michele, a new belt for Dave).

We accepted an invitation for 6 pm dinner at Romao Xavier's home. Romao is the in-country representative for AIHA's Twinning Center, the organization guiding us in our partnershop project. How much we enjoyed the evening - meeting his wife, son and a number of others who greeted us warmly. We were served "fruits" of the sea - calamari, prawns & clams - and other Mozambican dishes. Mozambique is a coastal African country with the Indian Ocean to the east. We know that dinner will be a highlight of our trip.

In speaking with Romao's friends and family, we had the opportunity to explore consumer's views of nursing in Mozambique. It's been interesting to us that 50% of nurses in MZ are male, while in the US that number is 6-7%. When we asked them their view of nurses, each expressed concern that many who enter nursing do so because it is a occupation, with education and employment paid by the government. These words were translated to us by Romao, so there may have been pieces of the perspective picture that he hesitated to translate! Clearly their experience were not good. Of course, they noted that there are "good nurse" exceptions.

We had heard this before from ANEMO nurses, and also know that there are nurses in the US without "the right reasons" for going into nursing. However, an uncomplimentary image of nursing in MZ may be more common than we at first believed. We want to explore that consumer image piece further...we know we didn't reach the qualitative saturation point with our few interviewees! :)

Today we worked on our presentation for the ANEMO nurses' regional conference in Inhambane province. Maria had translated the PowerPoint slides for our Professional Nursing in the United States, and we worked with Romao to add some Portuguese accents to the lettering. We made copies for conference attendees and look forward to meeting more ANEMO nurses at the Inhambane conference.

I see this has gotten too long, but I'm really enjoying this blogging thing in the way that it will allow us to remember details of our trip! We've a 5:45 a.m. bus trip to Inhambane in the morning so we will be unsettled and in transit once again. I'd best close and get some sleep. More later, but it might be a couple of days before we get back to blogspot.com as we may not have Internet accommodations in Inhambane.
Later, Lori

This is a photo of the Mozambican airlines coming to take us away to Maputo (YEAH!!!)

This is a picture at the gate with us and Cate McKinney after "partying" all night at the J-burg airport.

Labels: The two of us with Cate McKinney

We have some pictures that we'd like to share with you. Actually,our day yesterday was eventful (Michele's luggage didn't arrive) but we don't want to blog now and will each blog later. But, for now, we're posting some pictures from our night in Johannesburg. Michele & Lori

Labels: Wandie's - a restaurant in J-burg airport where we spent the night

This is my blogging done in the wee hours of the morning…the night in Johannesburg airport:
The three of us, Michele, me and my husband Dave drove to Newark and met Fred, my son, who drove us to the airport and will keep the car with him in NJ until we return. Check-in was uneventful and we were assured that we could (attempt to) get seats together once we got to Atlanta – that was important to us for the looong trip to Johannesburg. In Atlanta, we realized that Michele’s boarding pass was different – she’d been marked by security! Not sure what that was all about, but she did get her seat assignment - the last seat on the overbooked flight! Thank goodness we were able to sit together for the flight to Johannesburg.

We boarded the plane on time, yet there was a snag in the luggage scanner so they had to check bags manually. We ended up leaving Atlanta 2 hours late which wasn’t a good thing, as there was only a 2 hour layover in Johannesburg…so unless our flight to Maputo was late, too, we were not going to make the flight.

Several hours into our 15 hour fight, Michele’s eye glasses went missing. They’d apparently dropped out of the seat pocket and we couldn’t find them anywhere. That left us uneasy the rest of the flight – knowing she’d need those glasses for our presentation and the work we had ahead of us, let alone to read and watch movies on the flight ahead. We hit severe turbulence for 2+ hours of the trip and sleep didn’t come easy on that flight. Just as we were about to get off the plan the stewardess announced that the glasses were found. There were cheers of delight by Michele & me, while a number of passengers enthusiastically congratulated her on the find. St. Anthony and a few other saints were with us!

We arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, at 7:10 p.m. on Friday, July 10th.

July 10, Friday
Johannesburg at Night
Our flight to Maputo left at 7:10 p.m., but we missed it! After being assured that we (with our luggage) could be on the next morning’s flight, we decided to stay in the airport to be ready to check-in at the crack of dawn. So, that’s where we are right now (3:35 a.m., Sat., July 11), capturing our overnight-at-the-airport experience. We found an area in the airport with cushioned, albeit uncomfortable chairs – Michele took some lovely photos.

Oh, by-the-way, we ran into Cate McKinney, who works with the CDC in Mozambique, and is the person our AIHA poject manager, Kim Bohince, reports to about our work with ANEMO – an amazing coincidence! She was on our flight from Atlanta and has shared our airport moments. We’ve had some important conversations about Mozambique and are really quite thrilled to have this time together.

Signed, Lori

Saturday, July 11, 2009

July 10,2009

Greetings from Johannesburg, South Africa!

It is winter in J-Burg and tonight the temperature is in the 30s. Needless to say, it is not the kind of weather to be wearing short sleeved shirts and sandals. Because of delays at Atlanta (scanning equipment malfunction and some inappropriate luggage on the plane), our flight was delayed for 2 hours. We were pulling into the J-Burg Airport when our next plane connection to Maputo was pulling out. So? We decided to spend the night in the lobby of the airport. We did meet a colleague, Cate McKinney, from the CDC whom we met on our last exchange so we all had some good company despite the minor inconvenience of staying the night.

Our Delta flight was a bit turbulent – much of the flight we were required to keep seat belts on. Over some time, we got used to the rhythmical oscillations of the plane – up, down, back, forth. Surprisingly, the ticket holders had strong stomachs as we saw no one suffering from motion sickness. The path that this plane took was entirely over water (perhaps that explains the turbulence) as opposed to our last flight which flew over Africa in a North – South orientation and avoided much of the water (that flight by the way was much less turbulent).

I had one fright when on the plane and that was because I lost my glasses. I made the mistake of sliding them partially into the pouch on the seat in front of me for easy access and they got knocked off – most likely by me. But that ended my reading ability for the remainder of the flight. An announcement was made to be on the lookout for a pair of glasses and fortunately one of the passengers found them (thank God) as Lori and I were already developing contingency plans for what to do if they were not located.

At this point in time, we are really looking forward to getting to the hotel in Maputo for a nice shower and change of clothes. Thinking of you all!

Michele

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

It's Tuesday, July 7th, and we're beginning to pack for our trip. It's the second trip to Maputo, Mozambique for Dr. Michele August-Brady and me. We've a presentation to do for the nursing association there - ANEMO, and have prepared a Portuguese-language version with the assistance of Dr. Maria Schantz, our Moravian colleague and partner in our work with ANEMO. Maria accompanied us in January, yet will be travelling to another part of the southern hemisphere this time - to the Amazon. We'll miss her, yet are excited about our trip!

We're leaving from Newark, heading to Atlanta. Then, from there it is a 16 hour flight to Johannesburg. We're taking a Mozambican Airlines, Linhas Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique...from there to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.

About the Adventure

July 9-18, 2009

In 2008, St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing at Moravian College partnered with nurses in Mozambique, Africa, to strengthen their membership organization, ANEMO. Strengthening the nursing force in this impoverished country is vital to improving health care for its people. During SON/Moravian’s second visit to Mozambique in July 2009, faculty members Dr. Lori Hoffman, Dr. Michele August -Brady, and Dr. Maria Schantz begin their work in Maputo (the capital), then travel to the province Inhambane to attend a regional meeting.

Blog Archives

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