As I’ve said before, every dedication ceremony is special in its own way. In Mozambique, the new homeowners stood inside the house with candles while the women sang. They asked the rest of us to surround the house, put our hands on it and fill it with our wishes for them.

As always, saying goodbye is the worst part of any Global Village trip.

Blowing Bubbles

Here’s a picture from my teammate and roommate Kelley that she took of me playing with the kids one day. It was probably the most fun I’ve had in a long time – teaching them to blow bubbles, and watching them as they did it and chased the bubbles.

Our families

Thank you! Our funds all have to be in the Habitat office at least 45 days before we leave on our trip so they can send everything off and start making arrangements, buying the supplies we’ll need, etc. And thanks to all my wonderful family and friends I made my fundraising goal! I can’t express how grateful I am to everyone who donated.

I also booked my flight which makes everything seem really final. And then today we got a note from our trip leader with information about the families we’ll be building with. We’ll be working on 2 houses while we’re there and one of them will be for Gerson and Milda.

As one of my teammates has been tagging her Twitter posts “Moz or bust”!

Family from Gaza

Courtesy of the ONE blog this morning, I found this story on NPR about the fight to keep babies in Mozambique HIV-free.

The statistics in the sidebar are pretty scary – 25% of adults in Gaza province (where my team will be building) are HIV positive Without proper treatment, that’s a lot of kids that will be left without parents.

I’m joining a Habitat for Humanity team in September that will be helping to build houses for kids that have already lost their parents to AIDS. Considered a vulnerable population, these child-headed households receive a safe house with a cement floor, mosquito nets and a supply of Certeza water treatment liquid to purify drinking water.

If you’d like to help my team and these kids, you can learn more about our trip and donate at Habitat’s secure donation site.

Kids from Gaza

I’ve signed up for a trip to Gaza, Mozambique in the fall. Our team will be focusing on building housing for AIDS orphans – basically child-headed households that Habitat Mozambique considers a vulnerable population. Here are some kids standing outside a newly completed Habitat house like the ones we’ll be building.

If you’d like to donate to support my team, you can use the Habitat secure donation link. I appreciate all your good thoughts and donations and will post stories of what my team accomplishes here.

Blue Footed Boobie

When we were heading back to the boat from the island, I was lucky enough to grab this shot of a blue footed boobie sitting on a lava rock.

On the last day of any trip there’s always a ceremony to dedicate completed houses to the new homeowners. It’s always wonderful to see people have new, safe houses. And in the words of one of the homeowners, “You will go home and remember us once in a while, but I will remember you every day because you helped us build our new home.”

Each dedication ceremony is special but the Kombolcha ceremony was particularly memorable.

Our Last Coffee Ceremony

Coffee is an important part of Ethiopian culture. Twice a day we stopped work for coffee, and each time one of the girls got to be part of coffee ceremony – including wearing traditional dress, roasting and pounding the beans and serving the coffee. Traditionally there is incense, eucalyptus and popcorn. I got this picture one of the women just before our last coffee ceremony and after a lunch everyone had made for us.

It was a really fun time to celebrate, but bittersweet because we knew it was almost time to say goodbye, and none of us wanted to leave.

Chika

Once the frame is built and the bottom of the poles are painted with insecticide, you can start throwing chika – the combination of mud and straw that will make up the walls. First you throw from the inside and then it has to cure, then you do it again from the outside. Throwing chika is actually a lot of fun – though the wet mud is heavy and it takes a while to get how much to throw at a time and how to get it to go where you want. As you can imagine, it’s also quite messy so I don’t have to many pictures of the actual process.

Once the chika is cured, the outside of the house is wrapped in chicken wire for stability and then can be painted.

Framing the house

In Ethiopia, Habitat for Humanity builds modified Chika houses – a sturdier version of traditional houses – using local (and more affordable) materials. Here Tracy and Jeff are adding the long poles to the frame of the house that go down into a trench. The bottom of the poles are painted with insecticide and then the trench is filled in with (very heavy) rocks. The wooden frame is covered with chika (a combination of mud and straw).