All Africa Games held next door!

This is how close the stadium is - this photo was taken by one of my colleagues from her garden in our center!  This was part of the opening night extravaganza.  There have been fireworks there a cool time and the boys love running out to watch them.  Come to think of it, so do I - and my Tias!!

 

So when I say "next-door" I mean it!  This is the new national stadium for Mozambique and it is in Zimpeto, the same neighborhood I live in.  In fact, it is walkable, as you will see in the photo below with my Tia Laura as we walk up to the stadium with a bunch of kids.  You can also see how rural it still is, even though we are 1 kilometers out of the heart of the city of Maputo.  Of course, this is the "side entrance!!!"

Don't ask me where everyone else is - we had I think six adults and about 30 kids with us - where in the world are they???

Just a smattering of the crowd that was with us.  We weren't actually in the stadium you see in the photo above, we were at the swimming venue right next door to it.  The boys had never seen a pool that big, nor a setting that big for that matter.  I'm not entirely sure they understood why we took them to watch OTHER people swim instead of them!  We actually didn't get to see a lot of races but we did get to see the para-olympians  warm up which was amazing and inspiring.  It was so cool for the boys (and Tias) to see people with one leg or no legs or one arm, on crutches, prosthetics, in wheelchairs, to see them swim was a once in a lifetime event for these kids.  It created a great talking point for faith and perseverance and hope and dedication and choice.  I hope they never forgot what they saw!

 

An Olympic size swimming pool in Zimpeto - who knew?  And who knows what they will do with it now?  Perhaps we can take the boys for a swim every so often!

   

We arrived well before the races and got to see these men practice raising the flags, I kid you not, at least 30 times, if not more.  We were cracking up, but all that work paid off as they did great.

This is two members of the South Africa team taking gold and silver, two of their Bazillion medals they took at the games.  They were the country who took home the most medals, lekker bru! 

As we were leaving one of the events, Hyundai, one of the sponsors of the games, saw us and gave us all these shirts and hats and soccer balls.  The boys could care less that the shirts are a teensy bit big, they love them anyway.  We are so blessed!