Mozambique-Lesotho-South Africa

Hi all

I just thought I'd let you know where I am, though this post does not come without some Mozambique related excitement and I therefore feel that I'm allowed to post it on a blog entitled Joanne in Mozambique. Skip to the last paragraph if you don't want to hear about my holiday exploits!

Erin, Rebecca and I spent a great week in Lesotho and the Drakensbergs doing a lot of hiking, by foot and pony, and enjoying the beautiful people and mountains. The highlight was joining a group of Lynx kit car club members with Morgan replicas to drive from Katse Dam out of Lesotho. We got a ride in one of the cars and somehow the scenery is so much easier appreciated that way rather than the smoking minibus we'd got there in!

The last week and a bit has seen Erin and I hit the coast of South Africa in our (very) little yellow Kia and we've met some very cool people and had lots of great chilled days as well as some swimming, hiking and canoeing amongst everything else! I'm finding it very interesting to learn from locals about the political situation here - so much more complex than it appears (maybe obviously) but we've been having some really interesting conversations. We're currently inland at a place called Hogsback which I love - I've discovered I'm definitely a mountain girl! Headed for a national park tomorrow for some animal spotting before meeting Andy in Port Elizabeth on Saturday :-).

This is obviously cutting lots of stories very short but no fear, you'll be fed up with them within a couple of weeks of me being home!

Now to the most important part of this post... at the end of May I'm running the Bupa 10k in London. I signed up for this before I came away when I was running every week and I'm suddenly realising that I am now very unprepared for it. BUT I have also decided to run it to raise money for the Diocese of Niassa in order to enable the work I was doing there to continue. The beginnings of the project, as I hope you've gathered from my blog, were really sucessful and funding is now needed for the project to expand and fulfill its potential. The money will be used to enable the field workers I was working with to go to even more communities with the manual I wrote and the skills they now have to train more people how to maintain the pumps. I'd also like them to translate the manual into the local languages. Some of the money will also go towards building more boreholes in willing villages in the Diocese. This is mostly by way of warning that I am therefore looking for sponsors for my run to motivate me to get training once I get home. If you're interested in sponsoring me please get in touch and email joanneinmozambique@gmail.com. I'll then let you know how to actually get the money to where it needs to be. If you'd like more information on the project (even after reading my blog!) then let me know. The project will benefit enormously from your support and you can be sure that the money is going directly to a very worthy cause and one which I would be happy to keep you updated on as it progresses. It's also great for me to be able to something useful even once I'm back in the UK.

Thank you in advance for your support and generosity and I look forward to hearing from you (I am not however looking forward to running again!!)