Boa tarde!

By Kate:
After a series of long flights and layovers, we arrived safe and sound in Maputo on Tuesday Morning, August 5th! Air India got us over the pond with a little help from some curry chicken and Indian comedies as our in-flight entertainment. British Airways ushered us down the continent of Africa while we indulged in tea (with cream and sugar...in honor of the Brits), and a couple fantastic movies. "Son of Rambow" was excellent, capped off with "The Big Lebowski."

Our first two Portuguese challenges were a total flop. A woman at the airport in Johannesburg asked us if we could translate between English and Portuguese for her and a customer. We didn't even attempt it. And then two business men traveling to Maputo asked us if we "fala" ...aka do we speak Portuguese. At which point Amy starts yelling "falo! falo!" while I stumbled over a phrase that roughly translated into, "me would like more ice creams." I'm chalking that up to sleep deprivation. But we did manage to navigate from the airport to the hotel, which was a personal victory.

After surviving Tuesday and Wednesday in a complete jet-lagged haze, we're finally being productive today. Had a wonderful meeting this morning with Dr. Mohsin Sidat, who is helping us finalize our proposals and get research approval from the Mozambique Ministry of Health ethics committee. We have a lot of work to do over the next couple days, before heading up to Quelimane.

Oh! And Amy got hexed at an ATM. It was hilarious! Some witchdoctor looking guy came up to her and looked like he was going to make the sign of the cross on her, but kind of mumbled something, made a gesture, and then walked away. It was great!