Countdown Commences :(:

The Regulars - Boys who hang out with me in the garden and for some of their help and patience, get rewarded with green balloons. I can never resist!

Here, there and everywhere! I've been up to so many different things with this final month of planning out where everything will go from here.

During the day, it's farming (and LOTS of it! The farm's expanded!) and finishing up our Project Rx - Mozambique growing guide. The garden is thriving very well. Now that we can anticipate and prevent certain pests and diseases from entering, and we have planned out the garden for this season by companion planting (plants that grow well with other plants and defend the threats of pests and diseases) and planning for each season, we are seeing where the garden could take us!

Little baby lost his shoes and has been collecting lots of dirt and grime since. Sometimes I play clinician and host some first aid for the kids when they come to me with things like cuts and many skin ailments.

We makeshift a shoe to protect his wounds until parents can come up with some new ones.

The food that we are yielding goes directly to the villagers, first living on the property and then distributed to families that go without or have asked for additions to their eating. We are hoping to use the food to provide an income for several families, (including Papa Sebastião's), once more of the vegetables and fruits are ready to be harvested. It's so exciting to see what the earth is producing and what we can now recognize as success and failure.


...And it's not all just work! With the World Cup madness this month, I have been able to have incredibly satisfying leisure and sport. I never thought I could be a soccer fan, much less a soccer MANIAC!! I'm having a blast keeping up with games, (and even attending the few that are going on just across the border!) My first World Cup game was watching a not-so-devastating draw with Italy losing to the underdog, New Zealand. It was a blast cheering for the underdog with my Kiwi buddys!

Blowing my continent-wide popular tool: A VUVUZELA! (aka horn you can hear like bees on broadcast World Cup games!)

On the weekends, I'm taking the time to see must-see places before I leave and using evenings to spend with the friends, (now family), I've acquired in the past 8 months. It's so strange to think I will have to go. Everyone keeps asking when I'll be back... The truth is, I just don't know! :-/

My very first live World Cup! I can't begin to describe how amazing this experience was!!

Juggling Developments

By morning I'm diggin' up the garden and planting new seeds...

...and by afternoon, I'm negotiating building contracts.

In the past weeks, the search has been on for some direction into the next stages of Project Rx and the life of Andrea Romero, in general.

Sadly, the decisions that one makes, goes with the other...and time is ticking on what is going to come next.

I have had incredible things that have taken me by surprise, helping me to formulate the next stages of Project Rx and my life.

The happenings of what have been going on are as follows:

1) I have acquired a job with JHI Real Estate, where they have promised a flexible schedule for me to work around the Project. It's incredibly interesting working on both sides of international development. I see two tremendously different lenses of servitude and relational interactions. In one instance I am debating the amount of spacing between onions and filling up watering cans via pulling up a bucket of water by a rope. In another instance, I am negotiating million dollar properties with investors who have built up Mozambique to what it is today.

Thus far, I've been working two jobs, by going to the farm in the morning and working on acquiring clients in the real estate field by afternoon and evening. All other time not used to do real estate is dedicated to continuing the translating and research for the Project Rx, Mozambique Gardening Guide.

This experience is leading me further down the path of a sort of business initiative, but only God knows what will come next.

2) I will begin teaching health education classes to groups of children on Sunday afternoons, starting with a lesson in teeth brushing, where every student will get to take home some toothpaste and a toothbrush. :D

3) As time gets closer and closer to come to an end, I'm seeking out more opportunities to spend time with those who have made my Africa experience so incredibly amazing. I will be planning a few more trips and taking more time to see the places that I must before I move onto the next.

4) I've been soul-searching for answers to a new job. I realize that I am suffering working alone on this project and am looking for a place to learn something new and grow with all of the incredible experiences I've gained. Johannesburg has been calling me. I've applied with Google for a Policy Manager position -- I'm leaving it up to the fate of the employment gods to give me a response. (If only life were easy...)


If you have advice for the Project or know someone who does, I'm open to all interpretations of the current state of affairs and hope to hear from all those involved. The continued meditation on the current state of affairs has kept me hopeful, (and yet perplexed). I'm staying afloat on hope. If only Obama could see me in Mozambique...

What else? Well, I miss home, I miss my family and am yet so divinely attached to my current state of affairs. They change by the minute, it seems, only enough to make me laugh and smile about where my life is leading.

[This is the part where I think Project Rx has done more for me than anyone else... sigh.]