Cohesao

As of March 7th I have officially been in Zobue for three months.  In celebration of that accomplishment (and the fact that we can now leave the province) all the volunteers in the central region met for the annual Cohesao reunion at Casa Msika.  Casa Msika is a lovely lodge outside of the Chimoio, the capital city of Manica, the province south of Tete.  Travel to Casa Msika from Zobue is a full day--Emma and I left Zobue at 7 am and didn't arrive in Msika until 6pm.  I counted a full 7 types of transportation we took during the journey and we still counted it a very successful travel day.  It was tiring travelling all the way down to Chimoio on Friday and travelling all the way back on Sunday, but it was worth it.  The lodge was gorgeous, it was great to see other volunteers, and I got to see quite a bit of wildlife.  It is weekends like that when I really appreciate how lucky I am to be living here in Mozambique.

The lovely pool and view from the main area of the lodge.

This is an animal called a dykka (I have no idea how to spell that).  It turned out the lodge was also a small nature reserve.  It had a few of these animals in a large enclosure close to the lodge and other animals such as zebra, wildebeest, and giraffe in a much larger, more wild area.

They also had crocodiles in an enclosure (separate from the dykka).

There were also a ton of these amazing bird nests and we even got to watch some being built.

Jeff, Thelma, and Carly outside the crocodile enclosure.

All the Tete volunteers showing off our awesome shirts.

On our second night we were able to get a ride up the hill to try and find the giraffes.  We got to see an amazing sunset...and oh yeah, giraffes too!

We got to see a family with a 6 month old baby.  With the gorgeous sunset in the background it can't get much better than this.