Day 5

We had a US AID photojournalist traveling with us yesterday afternoon and this morning to document the CNFA programs in Mozambique.   He is the one who took the not so attractive pic of me yesterday you can find on the dropshots site.  (www.dropshots.com/elizpou).    Let me know if you have any problems accessing it, because blogspot is not that great at allowing me to paste in photos.   

Here is one at the warehouse, showing women sewing sacks of corn and soybeans:

Here is a woman sifting dirt from soybeans:

I also liked this pic of the woman sorting handmade bricks.   Lots of small brick houses made with bricks out of the local red dirt plus water.   Apparently, if you heat the bricks, they will last 100 years (?).    Without that, which most people can’t afford, maybe 20 years.  I’ll try to get a couple of shots of a house being built near our meeting place.   

It was raining off and on today and of all days, there were no cars at the meeting place.   Andreano and I took taxi bikes to and from lunch and back to the guesthouse today.   Did I mention rain?   Muddy, rutted dirt roads with spots of standing water.   Of course, no helmets in sight.   A bit thrilling and otherwise noneventful.  Andreano took this:

  I dont look too scared, do I? 

We finished up the start up cost sheets and the expense/income chart.   If the group is right,  this looks like a profitable venture.   A key question tomorrow is how are they going to come up with their 30% of the cost of the project (total cost, about $26K US).   That will be the first question I ask tomorrow as we delve into the marketing and operations part of the business plan.   

Good work done today.   The troublesome neighbor from last night, who played his obnoxious music all night long and even thru breakfast this morning, is taking a break and its nice and quiet as I write this just before dinner.   

I can't believe I actually got these pics loaded.  Its a PITA to do it in the gerrymandered system I had to set up, so there are many more on the dropshots site.