Mozambican Adventures of the Beilfuss family (Madison chapter)
08 April 2008
Welcomed by Friends
It was great fun in the days following our arrival in Chitengo to greet old friends come to welcome us back. Word travelled fast, and we had many visitors to our home to meet Theo and see (in particular) Ian and me, as we'd been gone for such a long time (since mid-November '07). So many familiar faces! Theo goes by "Tay-o", as the "th" sound is missing in Portuguese and "Tee-o" means "uncle".
Below: 1) Zeca and Antonio with Theo, 2) Grant, Ian, Katie, Theo, Francisco and Vasco, 3) Katie, Theo and Ian with some other new Chitengo babies.
Our family has moved back to Madison (we returned mid-August 2008) for a variety of reasons. While we are very sad to have left the Chitengo family we had come to love -- and the extraordinary natural resource, Gorongosa National Park -- we are very excited to be back in our old Jean Street neighborhood in Madison, and to be able to see and communicate with our friends and family more readily.
"A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambque" by William Finnegan.
"Drawn from the Plains: Life in the Wilds of Southern Africa", by Lynne Tinley, wife of the ecologist who documented the plants and animals at Gorongosa before the wars. Out of print but available through www.abebooks.com
"The Safari Companion: A Guide to Watching African Mammals" by Richard D. Estes