MozamWeek

My appointment with the director of the Universidade Catolica de Tete was at 9am. The director received me warmly and seemed personable and interested in our topic. He's got research of his own underway: "Which local traditions have survived the influence of the Church?" Now there's a topic you can look at for years! He offers me coffee which I accept. (I'm offered coffee just about anytime I visit Catholics!) He chats about his reading habits and is interested in our work in local languages. He loves newspapers! He buys all of them, even the ones that aren't available in Tete. Since he has other business to attend to, I'm turned over to his PR manager with instructions that she should show me around and answer all my questions. Library door to the right... the Great Zambezi across the road! We tour the small campus compound situated on one of the main streets parallel to the Zambezi River. The buildings belong to the Catholic Church and were used f...

Re-posting last week's note... I don't know what happened, but it disappeared. On Facebook this generated quite a few comments. Traditional religion surfaces in many aspects of people's lives here in Mozambique. In facing these ideas, it is important to respect where people are coming from while at the same time speaking the truth in love. My friend John seems to have found that balance on the day he visited the home of people with the "magic airplane". Following is the original mention of his post on his own blog. An encounter with a magic airplane ________________________________________________________________________________ Original post: Almost in my own backyard... I learned of an interesting occurrence this week on the blog of a friend here in Tete. We have mentioned before that people here live in the city, but still have lots of beliefs based on cultural traditions. I have heard people mention "invisible airplanes" before. It just sound...

Today I stopped at the famous newsstand in from of Hotel Zambezi. I say it is famous because everyone indicates it as a place they know where you can buy reading material. I asked the guy for an interview and didn't learn much new. The salesman is named "Carlos Respeito"… respeito is "respect" in English. He sells about 25 newspapers a day. Mostly he sells "Noticias"… that is the paper distributed by the people I talked to in the first interview. So, his 25 is included in the number I got from the first lady. I'm still not finding new stuff being sold. I asked if people often ask for stuff that he doesn't sell. "Yes, sometimes they want school books that I don't have here." Anything besides school books? "Yes, Bibles. People want Portuguese, Shona and Chewa Bibles." Do people ask for Nyungwe Bibles? "Yes, lots of people do, but I don't have them." Next week he will have a stack of Maliko , Mark i...