Happy Fathers to all us dad’s out there. Funny where living in a country with so many different nationalities among our friends that some celebrate while others don’t. Happy to say my lovely wife found a couple other Brits who thought it would be nice to take us dads and kids to our city beach for any afternoon picnic of good drinks, food and friends.

Sorry again for the long delay in entry. A combination of a crazy busy schedule and our still crazy expensive internet to get pictures uploaded. We are coming off a couple week visit from my dad who visited Africa for his first time and we think loved it. Of course it was a pretty sugar coated trip with the great winter weather of Maputo (warm 80s during day and pleasant 70s at night) and highlights of the sights and sounds of an emerging ‘modern’ African city with a great international community and western comforts such as mostly paved roads, electricity, restaurants and overall pleasantness to foreigners (except the street venders who followed him for blocks insisting he purchase a belt, sunglasses or even a carpet).

Although the weather is great it is actually too cold for ocean swimming so we spent the weekend he landed doing a daytrip up to our island getaway for fantastic views, playing in the sand and a fresh fish lunch feast. The tour includes a rather sketchy looking 5 minute ferry ride and a safari truck pick-up to get through the sand dones to the lodge. The other weekend the boys (since Pranvera cannot still get into S Africa) went to a fantastic private lodge right outside Kruger Park for 3 nights. The best thing about the location was that we were staying across Crocodile River which is still part of the park and were able to view the herds of elephants, hippos and alligators in the water from the comfort of the lodge grounds while having our morning coffee or afternoon cocktails. The weather was perfect and we took 3 different game drives into the park to see all the big 5 plus a leopard. Also our guide allowed us to bend the rules and take Adi in the open safari truck into the park which they normally reserve for 6y/o and up.

In between all the excitement we had good meals in the city and visited with friends to expose dad to the great and diverse international community we associate with. He had quality time with his grandson and the guestroom has transitioned from Aunt Stacey’s to grandpa. We miss his support and presence but are eagerly awaiting my mom’s visit now in early July to do a similar tour of Mozambique and SA.

On the more routine homefront we continue to settle into our grove. The most recent big transition is Pranvera began her fulltime job with the UK’s development Agency DFID as a Senior Anti-corruption Specialist who will be advising the G19 donors on key corruption issues and potential solutions to accompany their budgetary support programs directly to the government of Mozambique which presently accounts for over 35% of all their expenses. Her office is conveniently located in a building next to mine so not only is she able to ‘play adult’ again but we are all able to commute Adi to daycare and drive into the office, meet for lunch and return in the evening to see our little one playing with the nanny and a revolving collection of friends to come over for playdates.

My work continues to be good with new partnership opportunities we continue to explore with entering multinationals, local organizations and donors wanting to invest in PPP models around agriculture. As a result of some work in did in Ghana over a year ago building a CSR dialog platform for the oil and gas industry I have been asked to speak and present on this model to the government and donors as well as businesses and civil society on a number of occasions. It seems like it is catching on now and actually might be designed and implemented with the support of the French, Canadian and American governments. So this has added a bit of excitement. I will also return to DC next week for a crazy busy week of attending our Senior Management Conference while trying to fit in some key doctor appointments and visits with friends.

As a parting update on our happenings, we are pleased to finally announce that as of July 15^th we hope to welcome yet another worthy addition to the American family as Pranvera will take her naturalization oath in DC. It has been an incredibly long and painful 5 year road full of every type of delay, challenge, denials, resubmissions that one can imagine. The biggest challenge for us has been moving overseas to work for an NGO doing American government work but proving our case that we still consider the US our base (not to mention both her husband and son are America). In the end the government is either so incompetent or backlogged with the immigration process that they refused to let us know the status of her final application for 5 weeks past their own deadline potentially jeopardizing even her status as a green card holder since we were already at the 6 month mark where she would have to have returned to the US just to keep her resident status valid. So in the end it only took a close personal connection with an ex-Congressman to link us to his close Senator friend whose office inquired and pressured a response on our behalf. Her invitation to present final document and take the oath came within 24 hours. How is this for justice and equality for all?