The COINS Foundation CEO, Ric Law, is currently meeting with our project partners around Africa, firstly he’ll be visiting partners in Mozambique and then later he’ll be traveling to Zambia to meet up with the COINS Foundation President Larry Sullivan to meet with more of our partners. Throughout his stay there he’ll be sending back some African tales of his journey;
Africa wakes early. Well it woke me early. It’s 3am your time and 4 here – even at this time of the morning its hot and the cockerels are crowing. It seems way too early to be out from under the protection of the mosquito nets – it is still dark my bare hot arms and neck feel like fair game to any roaming Malaria vector. I swat at every little itch and puff insect repellent periodically into the air.
Ten of us arrived in Mozambique yesterday – a small community called Massaca to be precise, some 45 mins from the capital Maputo. It’s hard to know what to say . . . my companions (there are ten of us) confessed to some culture shock – the drive from almost any African city to outlying rural areas will do that I guess – at least the first few times. . . The city of Maputo seemed much like any other I have seen in my limited experience of Africa; not as fresh as Cape Town nor as busy as Kampala (though Mozambique were playing Nigeria in some important league football match which may have accounted for the comparative quietness of the streets). 
But in one regard they are all the same; to drive from the centre of the city to the countryside, you have to pass through a ‘belt’ of ‘informal housing’ (do we use the word “slums” I am unsure) in any event it strikes me as we drive by, that the word humble doesn’t cut it – except that that is how they make me feel – and desperate and a bit angry. I have nowhere to put these emotions (a wise man once asked me, “In a crisis, what use is one more crying man?”) so I tuck my renewed inadequate outrage behind my NGO professional facade (which I deem to be more useful) and resolve to make the trip count.
Today we go to build houses for young people who have no homes of their own – during our short stay we won’t build many but that isn’t the point – people in Africa can build, they don’t need us (particularly me!) to show them how to do that but they do need to be included in the world community. I don’t think that means we give them “Aid” (even faced with what appears to be such poverty I am struck by the dignity, professionalism and energy here) . . . I think ‘including’ means we stand beside them; and we show that we do by coming here with humility to learn.
