"We're Family"

After a morning of going to the market in order to obtain some supplies for the week, I received a call in my hotel room from the front desk. The receptionist said that there was somebody in the hotel lobby who wanted to see me. Honestly, who could be coming to see me in Mozambique? I was slightly confused. To my surprise, it turns out that Todd, Dawn, Luciana, and Sumate were in Maputo and decided to come to the hotel in order to meet with me and the group. It was pretty neat.

Todd was very gracious in helping us to learn about the city and constantly getting us in touch with people he thought would be able to help us on our trip. Dawn had just arrived in Maputo from Detroit only a few days ago, so she was still very new to the city, but she seemed very comfortable. Both Todd and Dawn had such a relaxed outlook on everything and just went with the flow. Luciana is originally from Brazil and works with Todd and Dawn at the Dream Project in Ponta D’Ouro in order to begin the construction of the orphanages.

Michelle, Sana, and I along with Sumate were in the back of the pick up truck and drove through Maputo with Todd and Dawn. Sumate and I started talking and asked me where I was from and how I got to know the Dream Project. After explaining about how I found out through Genesis back in Royal Oak, he said, “Oh, we’re family”. And I was like, “Ya, we are”. It finally occurred to me what it means when people say brothers and sisters in Christ….you’re literally family.

We stopped at the weekend art fair where we exchanged contact info with Carolina, another documentary film maker from Brazil. Then, we went to Maputo Central to see the clinic where HIV patients are treated. However, we got there too late because it was closed. We then picked up Nunu, Sumate’s brother and went to the walkway overlooking the ocean. Sumate and Nunu were pretty hilarious during our random photoshoot.

When it was time for dinner, we decided to go to Mimmos, apparently a local hotspot for Italian food. To our surprise, we saw our group there already sitting down and ordering drinks. We ended up joining the group and had dinner. Of all the places that we could have ended up in the city, we all came to the same place.

While many of the things that happened appear to be coincidences and random turns of events, I have a feeling that nothing is random here. We were all meant to meet the people that we encountered today and share our stories.


I think we are eating way too much pizza in Africa...