One of the things I used to love about winter was Friday nights – well actually, I used to love them in summer as well. After a week at work, we'd eat dinner, settle down on the sofa with a cup of cocoa (or maybe something a little stronger), pull a blanket over our knees and put on the DVD we'd rented from Blockbuster. So last night we settled down on our (green, plastic, garden) chairs, pulled a blanket over our knees and put on a favourite DVD.

“Winter in Mozambique!”, I hear you cry, “Come on!” Well this year has been a particularly cold one. Last night it was 17 degrees outside – not exactly scarf and gloves weather granted - but 17 degrees outside equals 17 degrees inside when your house is made of bamboo and mud with no glass in the windows. It often gets a fair bit colder at night and reached 10 one morning – the coldest John has ever known it in 14 years.

I am grateful for my hoodie and fleece top which I've worn much more than I expected. I'm even more thankful for our thermostat controlled waterbed, now with the added luxury of a duvet which my parents left. We have the most wonderfully inappropriate bed for our context – but I'm thankful for now.

Most people in the west are reasonably prepared for winter – they have appropriate clothing – and although it gets so much colder than here, people can dress up accordingly for the outdoors. When you get back inside you can change your clothes, put them in the drier and put the kettle on. What temperature is your thermostat set at in the winter?

Not only is it cold at the moment – and most people are spectacularly under resourced – but it is also unseasonably wet. With no drier and no warm change of clothes, many will get very cold. One of our widows brought us some tangerines the other day. I was out planting grass (best done in the rain) as I met her. I noticed she was wearing a thin blouse and had an old piece of bin plastic loosely tied round her shoulders. I was wearing a new Peter Storm waterproof which some visitors had left me as a “second” coat. Doesn't Jesus say something about having two coats...?

It seems that Mozambique constantly throws the unexpected at you. I hadn't expected this kind of a winter in tropical, malaria-rife Beira, people would be living with inside winter temperatures that closely parallel western winters. So spare a prayer for the poor of Mozambique at the moment. The “frosty winds” may not be blowing, but for many it is indeed a “bleak mid-winter”.

Dave West