Yesterday, the captain said that we passed the Tropic of Capricorn at 1:49 pm. That is the furthest south that the sun can be directly overhead. He said that we have traveled 13,057 nautical miles since we left Florida.
Also, yesterday we met up in Shirley’s cabin to help load up bags for our trip to the local seminary. Thirty of us traveled together today on a bus provided by the seminary to their campus in Maputo. The seminary students have gone on holiday break and wouldn’t be back until after Christmas so the campus was pretty empty. We were given a tour of the church by Father Nicholas and a couple of seminary students and teachers. They provided a wonderful lunch of chicken, potatoes, minced meat pies, cookies, cake, bread, wine, beer, pop and water.
After lunch, on the way back to the ship, we were driven around town, past the fort, hotel row, and had a stop at the Cathedral. Pope John Paul visited here in 2019. The newly installed Archbishop of Maputo was at the church and gave us a history of the church along with one of his first blessing which was said in Portuguese and English.
Father Nicholas told us that in 2021 Cyclone Idai, ravished the country. It rained hard for 3 straight days and then the wind hit. He said because the ground was so saturated that the wind took out a lot of mature trees and caused lots of flooding and landslides. The wind also tore the roofs off of many structures. Over 2 years ago, and they are still trying to recover but the recovery has also been hindered by another cyclone (Freddy) that hit in March 2023.
When Shirley had contacted them about their needs they asked for school supplies, clothes for woman and children and also money to buy a brick making machine, irrigation system, a printer, a laptop and a few other things. Our group put together over $4100 and had over 30 bags of items that we delivered. I also saw a man from our group hand Father Nicholas an envelope and he told him that he covered the complete cost of one of the items they had asked for.
From the ship, this town looked like a modern city with a very active port. On our trip around the city, we viewed modern high rises, 5 star hotels close to the waterfront, but we also viewed rundown tenement buildings and areas with very small, closely spaced primitive housing.
After we were dropped off at the pier we walked, in the hottest part of the day, to the local train station. This was designed by Eiffel and you could definitely see his influence on the inside of the building with the iron work and rivets in the ceiling.
When we returned to our room we were completely soaked through from sweat. A much needed shower and a nap rounded out the remainder of the afternoon.
