Our good friend Karin celebrated her 50th birthday with a fantastic gathering of family and friends in a beautiful part of Victoria: The Grampians National Park.

On our way to Tasmania (Xmas 2009) we visited Karin and Wei at their house in Melbourne. The painting in the background is one of Wei's masterpieces (if medicine fails he can always sell paintings)

We met Karin in a rather unexpected way. After spending almost one year in my city of birth Silva Porto, Angola (now Kuito) Karin decided to write a book describing hers and the husband Wei’s experiences in Angola. Wei, a doctor, volunteered his time working with Medecin sans Frontiers, to help people from Kuito. They wrote a book called “No One Can Stop The Rain” (available from Amazon.com) describing a thoroughly remarkable undertaking of two extraordinary persons.

When researching for the book, this website ( Silva Porto ) came up and Karin saw images of the city before it was destroyed, found out that I was born in Kuito and was living in Nowra, the place where she and her family lived and had lived in China where Wei comes from. Obviously she was surprised with so many coincidences and she contacted us. That was the beginning of a friendship that culminated with our presence in these celebrations.

Karin gathered almost thirty family and friends in Dunkeld and the objective, in her own words was:

"I want nothing more for my birthday than to share time with special friends and family: a moment in life that makes for great memories"

We all had the opportunity during the celebration dinner to talk about our relationship with Karin and introduce ourselves. In listening to each individual stories it was evident that Karin and Wei were able to build a network of friends all special people in their own ways and that on its own shows how remarkable they are. We feel honoured to be one of the friends and we spent five terrific days in the Great Western region of Victoria. In the next pages we would like to share with you some of the great moments we spent together.