Hello and Happy Thanksgiving to all . . .

We’ve been in the kitchen since the early morning hours, of course. Thanksgiving has officially started here at the Del Bueno’s because I have burned myself on the stove, and it’s not Thanksgiving until someone cuts themselves or gets burned.

The Holidays have also officially started since, as usual, the Kimler/Del Bueno curse has landed firmly on Steve and Vicki. Their car died yesterday in the parking lot of Lowe’s Midlothian, 15 minutes before all auto repair places closed for a four day weekend. My most trusted mechanic will repair it for them Monday, but they will be forced to extend their stay in lovely Richmond, Virginia for some extra days. They are being very good-natured about it.

I have a few moments before the 17 pound bird goes in the oven, and before I have to clean myself up in the shower, so I figured I’d blog and also put a post out here from Sally, my fearless cousin who has left Saurimo and is now in Mozambique and sounds much happier. I finally found out what MSF stands for - “Doctors Without Borders” in French. I am not even going to TRY to spell it in French, so whenever she says MSF, just read “DWB”.

Lily has 8 teeth now and is very vocal and extremely active. Her latest way to communicate wants/needs is to screech at the top of her lungs. We are trying to break of her this very annoying (and ear splitting) habit. She usually does it when on my dad’s shoulder, right into his hearing aid. I’m surprised his head has not exploded due to the extreme loudness of my child.

Kaitlin has spent her vacation helping Lily learn to walk. She’s taken a few steps and definitely wants to do it - she just doesn’t know how. Mike, dad, Steve and Voz are all golfing this morning - they were wise to get out of the house. Women on Thanksgiving tend to be a little, well, bitchy. We are no exception. I’ve already kicked the dog twice because she is sharking around the kitchen licking up every tiny scrap of food that drops. It’s very annoying.

I hope all of you out there are having a great day and filling up on food. Instead of watching the parade, I’d like to tune into the dog show in the hopes they have a Great Dane featured - my desired pet of the week - and since there are no men around to force football on us, I might actually get to do this.

Enjoy Sally’s posting and drop us a line if you are bored.

Oh…Hello there.
I have made it to Mozambique with no problems and I have been at my new site for about 24 hours. It is a huge change from Saurimo and I am so glad I took this assignment. I am in Beira, the second largest city, following Maputo, the capital. Mozambique is quite nice and of course they speak Portuguese, so hopefully I will be fluent when I leave, because they probably speak a better Portuguese than Angola. For right now, use this e-mail at the end of this message and just put my name in the subject line, although these probably won’t be as personal as I had in Saurimo. I still have a lot to learn about the workings here and I am only here for 8 weeks. I have a thousand questions but I can tell you a bit about this rather exciting project. So I left Saurimo on very short notice, only to wait in Luanda for my flight to Mozambique. Starting on the 11th of December, we will be doing a 2 dose oral cholera vaccine campaign which is part of a study being conducted by Epicentre in Paris, the MSF epidemiological department. Someone has been here since July doing the groundwork and me and the logistician just arrived yesterday. We are 4, a field coordinator from Switzerland, a log from France and another American nurse from Arizona. We seem to be a good team. We will get a Peruvian epidemiologist soon and many, many visitors from headquarters, Maputo and France. There are many partners actually involved in this like the WHO, the University of Lisbon, MSF, Ministerio da Saude de Mocambique, Epicentre etc. I guess they have tried to do this campaign for 4 times before this but only now is it actually happening. I could go on and on but maybe this is boring you, but certainly not me. So basically I have to help hire 215 people tomorrow, train them next week and do the vaccines the week after, with the big guys all here. The chiefs from Maputo and Geneva. I live in this excellent big house with a nice fridge and stove and garden with a tv and furniture with the waves just some meters away, although I have yet to see the beach. In fact I have only seen the office, which is not my house, unlike in Saurimo, thank goodness for that. This is just a quick e-mail to tell you I am here and am very fine. I have a million things going through my head and I feel like a little girl on Christmas day. Oh, Happy Thanksgiving. All my love from Mozi…Sally

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Thank you
MSF Beira team