Farewell, Tanzania

I'm home.

RELIEF
is getting home 24 hours later than expected after spending a full day stuck in the Nairobi airport, and then almost a full day in London. With all my bags (after being transferred from plane to plane an uncountable number of times).

JOY
is coming home to the people I love, hearing voices and seeing faces. Playing a song on the piano, brushing my teeth without using bottled water, taking a warm shower for as long as I want, and eating what I want, when I want it, without it being boiled, cooked, or peeled. Christmas, New Year's, the holiday spirit, and general happiness all around (I can feel it in my fingers...and in my toes...?).

SADNESS
is already missing those left behind, knowing that this life-changing event is over and now I have to move on with my life.

REGRET
is wishing that I could have done more, knowing that I could have, knowing that I didn't.

PRIDE
is knowing that we did make a difference, testing over 700 people, teaching almost 8,000. 700 people who know their status, 8,000 who can protect themselves from the world's deadliest virus.

INSPIRATION
is working with so many talented, dedicated, and motivated people, learning about how an NGO works, how the non-profit world fits in with the rest of the society, and how I can use what I've learned to make the world a better place.

- - - - - -

I made it! Doubters, show yourselves now!

The last week in Marurani was tedious, frustrating, but quite cleansing. As an SIC organization, even in the last week of low energy and lack of motivation, we managed to test several hundred, and teach almost 1,000 people. Walking through the village on the last morning, I felt more comfortable than I've felt in a village at any point. Maybe it was partially my happinness that I was leaving, that the night before was my last (perhaps ever) cockroach infested shower, and that afternoon was my last lunch of rice and beans. But it tells me a lot about how I've grown. I can speak the language (not fluently, but enough), I can walk down the street and feel safe, I know how this society works.

The summer program is only 6 weeks in the village, as opposed to 10. Trust me, it makes a huge difference. Working with SIC for 4 weeks longer allowed us to dig even deeper into the workings of a fledgling NGO, an experience that has undoubtedlty changed my entire outlook on the concept of global charity, and probably steered my future in at least a slightly new direction. Also the extra 4 weeks allow you to absorb the culture that much more. Living in two villages, which seem so similar on some levels, but were actually immensely different, was a much more enriching experience.

It's weird to say that 3 months is life changing. Peace Corps volunteers dedicate 2 years of their lives to their work. Others move around the world helping people for years, decades at a time. And here I am declaring that not even 4 months of work in just one foreign country has left me a changed person. I'm not saying that my outlook on life has changed completely; I'm not going to come back performing tribal African rituals or with a new taste in clothes and music. I haven't changed inherently as a person any more than any 3 month period of someone's life allows them to change. But I will carry these 3 months with me for a long, long time. I will carry the faces of the children we taught, and I will carry the gratitude of the communities we were graciously invited into.

So now it's my responsibility to use all of my experiences to infuse my art for the next who knows how many years of my life. I definitely want to make at least one film somehow related to the to the AIDS pandemic. Maybe a book will come of it? Most certainly some sort of story for a magazine...if I figure out how to shop that around. Not really sure what will be the concrete result, but I know for sure that this experience has left an unforgettable footprint on the rest of my life.

I miss you already, Tanzania. But, wow, it's good to be back.

Last Chance

Yesterday morning, I got up at 8 a.m.

To put this in perspective...I haven't gotten up after 7 a.m. for over a month. Even weekends, getting a late start means 7:30, out of the room and eating breakfast by 8 (a good breakfast is white toast, some sort of egg...and recently, corn flakes with a banana), and then out and around. Last night I stayed up past 11. Woah. Past 10, woah.

So this is our last weekend in Arusha. By this time next weekend I will be sleeping in a hotel on the sandy beaches of Zanzibar, and getting ready to wake up so I can live the hard life for 5 days at one of the most beautiful places in the world. This morning we walked to two markets to get some last minute shopping done for homestay families, etc. and I remember just how completely dumbfounded I was when I first arrived in Tanzania. The same walk I did today was completely disorienting and I wanted to take pictures at every corner just so I would never forget this trippy little town in the middle of Africa. People are usually surprised when I tell them I've never been out of North America before (my only outside of US experience is Canada and TJ..), because I guess I handle culture shock pretty well. I'm laid back, decently flexible, and, most importantly, had 6 months to let it sink that I would be LIVING IN AFRICA for over 3 months. It's kind of weird to just go live in Africa, right? But I don't feel like it's weird any more. I'm surrounded by people who have been doing it...SIC, other NGO workers, ex-pats. It's not a bad way of life, just a different way of life.

You buy fruit and vegetables from the ladies down the street. Most clothes are second hand from America for men, and made out of some combination of ultra-colorful fabric for women. Your toilet isn't a toilet, probably a hole in the ground, and probably with cockroaches at night. You shower with a bucket, while fending off the frogs. You wake up to the roosters crowing. Being fat is good, being skinny is bad. Jogging is weird. Football is soccer, and soccer is life.

But you can see every star in the sky at night. And Mt. Kilimanjaro, one of the biggest mountains in the world, for a few minutes every day. The walk between homes is a parade (constantly waving and greeting), and the walk to school is a safari.

Woah it's so close to the end. I can't believe it.

We went to the orphanage one last time tomorrow to say goodbye to the kids. Some fishy stuff has been going on there - a few of the girls in the program have been doing some investigating and trying to figure out how to make life for these kids as good as possible. But my best contribution at this point is just to give them a distraction for an hour or two, bring some bubbles, play a few circle games, maybe throw a ball or two (or 500).

This weekend were also our last dinners in Arusha. Next Friday, the day we move out, is closing dinner, which is at Masai Camp (always at Masai Camp), a restaurant, bar, and campsite. Yep - you can camp at Masai Camp if you want. I don't think I'll miss Arusha's restaurants. I've had more Indian food than I can handle. Some of the more "wazungu" places are supposedly racist. And most of the meat just isn't that good. Plus I'm looking forward to cooking for myself again. I want salmon. Broccoli. I dunno. Just stuff you can't get here. I don't even like cooking.

This past week was frustrating, yet pretty successful. Members of Parliament (MP's as they call them) apparently like to make unexpected appearances in our ward, so we had to cancel our big meeting scheduled for this week. But, thankfully, our big meeting was also canceled last week..and moved to this week, so we did end up teaching 160 people. Then we also, because of scheduling and bad luck, had our testing day on the same day as our teaching, which SIC has never done before. But it worked pretty well - we got 74 people tested, for a total of 89 in Marurani so far! AND, even cooler, because our testing day was the first of 3 that happened last week in our ward, a lot of the Marurani villagers went to the testing days in Mzimuni and Nduruma on Wednesday and Thursday!

So, our village is convinced that we've come to bring HIV to the community. This is a product of town gossip, which seems to become worse and worse every week. The parents are also convinced that we're teaching their children how to have sex by teaching them about condoms. Really, they've turned one 10 minute lesson about condoms into an entire curriculum about how to have sex. And some of them have heard us teach for sure...we've taught one member per household of over 300 households so far! Sure, we answer questions like "what's oral sex?" but that's the closest we get. So on Thursday a group of Mamas stared us down when we went to teach at school.

I suppose it's just one of the challenges we have to face as HIV/AIDS educators in a community. We were lucky in Majengo - the leaders were supportive, the community wanted to learn, and we were accepted as part of the village because of our homestay situation and ability to work as a group. Marurani isn't so accepting. But it's just something we have to deal with. And only one week left!

Part of our way of doing this is sponsoring the first SIC-sponsored soccer tournament among the villages. The concelation game is on Sunday, and the Final game is on Monday, which is our Community Day. Our games have been bringing out between 700 and 2,000 people over the past week or so. The winning team gets a goat. The second place team gets a chicken. Pretty good prizes, eh?

BUT, if we can bring 2,000 to one place, and test just 10% of those people, we can potentially have the best testing day in the history of SIC. We have some factors against us. The kids are no longer in school - so where the kids performing HIV-related songs and raps in the last ward was a main feature of the event, we don't have that this time. Also, a LOT of people still don't trust us, and still don't know why we're here. But we'll see.

We also had seminars this week. The low point was walking an hour to school to find 7 boys there (all the girls were fetching water for their mamas, of course). Two of the boys ran away as soon as we god there. So we had 5. And believe it or not, teaching 5 boys is a LOT harder than teaching 70. Which is how many we had at our close school on the best seminar day. We taught them goal setting this week, and did a few other pretty cool things. It's just sad when you know most of the kids aren't there because either their parents think we're giving them AIDS or they just have so much work to do at home that they can't spare an hour or two of time. Unless of course they've been called to do work at the school. Once a week, each of the students are required to come to school for something like "environmental care learning" and spend an hour dusting off the dirt from the dirt, and the leaves from the leaves. It's really ridiculous.

So next week is our last chance to make an impact in our community. Test more people! Teach more people! Even if they learn one thing, remember it for the rest of their lives, and share it with their neighbor, we've done our job. So wish me luck and off we go!

Also our last week with the wonderful people of SIC. I will have lived with Shujaa for 12 weeks. Except last week I lived by myself because he had to get his wisdom teeth taken out. A discovery he made after it hurt so much that he couldn't sleep, so they did an x-ray to find out that his teeth were growing horizontally, thus pushing his other teeth. So he was in pretty bad pain this week, and couldn't eat or talk. But anyway, I'll probably never see most of these people again. It's horrible to feel sick of some of them (I am), because they live all over the world. Maybe I'll go to London some day. Maybe I'll even come back to Tanzania. But it's sad. I miss home, but I'm going to make the most of my last week with SIC (except when I do campus coordinating when I get back in January...um...APPLY FOR SIC! I might get to interview you!). So I'll hopefully have a lot of good news and fun times to share about my last week in the villages of Arusha.

Til then, best wishes - Happy Hanukkah! - and peace and love as usual,

Devon

p.s. Some people are beginning to wonder what the heck I'm doing with my life now that I'm actually come back to America to start the whole "real world" thing. My plans so far are:

December 21-30/31: San Diego
January 1-6: Los Angeles
January 7-14: New York
January 15 --> forever?: Los Angeles

At this point I'll be in full search of a job somehow related to the film industry. I don't even know exactly what I want yet...I figured I would start looking and see what I stumble across. BUT, if anyone has any connections of course, and knows someone looking for a recent UCLA grad with a lot of film experience, as an office assistant, production assistant, something...i dunno...let me know! My goal is to have a good decent job by February first, and we'll see what happens.

World AIDS Day, winding down

The week in the village was semi-uneventful. About 1/3 of each class showed up to the seminars at our first school, and about 1/4 of each class showed up at our second school. We had a testing day during which we tested only 15 people, and then Nelea led us in a "Problem Tree" exercise, during which we dissected the reasons why people hadn't shown up to our testing day, when 150 people came to the teaching. Our conclusions were: #1) religion #2) stigma and #3) fear. These are issues we can address through education (done and done), but more specifically by going to teach at individual churches and address how getting tested does not in any way contradict religious faith.

The rainy season has brought mild sickness upon all of SIC. We all have colds and flus, and we're all also getting a little bit burned out from the program. It's been a long year, and as our kids are heading into their holiday season and summer break (December = summer!), we still have work left to do. So it's a weird mixture of feelings. I want to be home, but I want to be here. I know I'm going to miss Tanzania three days after I come back. But it wouldn't be so bad to be home right now, even just for a day.

Also, the feelings of leaving a place, knowing that you have done so much, yet could have done so much more, are starting to creep in. Yesterday was World AIDS Day. SIC helped make all the AIDS ribbons for the event, helped set up the entire event, and we were also a large part of the march through town (which was sooo cool! drums, trumpets, signs, signing...way cooler than UCLA's marches, sorry Bruins). The march ended at a soccer field where different AIDS-related organizations set up booths and testing units. Our favorite taxi driver came and got tested by SIC! The day ended with a soccer game between a women's team and an HIV+ team.

SIC contributed a lot to the day's events, but at the end, we still feel we could have done more. We spread awareness, tested people, and educated. And that's what we're there to do. But it's pretty much impossible to avoid even the slightest regret, knowing we've made the effort to come all the way out here, yet still feeling like a little bit more energy, a few more minutes of time, a few more smiles, could have been used to effect just a few more people and make our impact that much greater.

So that's that. This week should be another fairly uneventful week. With the school year officially over, most of what we do is hang around hoping to get the chance to teach one person here, two people there. And really, even though it's slow and monotonous, and we want to be quick and efficient, that is what we're there for. Whether we want to accept it or not.

Until wiki kesho,
Devon

Another Week, Another Risky Behavior

In SIC we say that "risky behavior" is anything that can potentially lead to the transmission of HIV. So it's a term we kind of throw around a lot. If you've engaged in risky behavior, you need to get tested. If you've engaged in any risky behavior in the last 3 months, you need to get tested in 3 months. Blah blah blah.

But lately, risky behavior has taken on a new meaning. A few weeks ago we hitchhiked. Then I climbed Mt. Meru (let's not talk about what could have happened with a few false steps on those craggy slopes). And this weekend 14 SICer's made the decision to risk our lives once again by bussing to Uganda to raft The Nile, the world's biggest river. It's an SIC tradition. And (so far), everyone has come back in one piece.

Rapids in the Nile range from class 1 to class 6. The highest we did was class 5, which is illegal in most places around the world. But with strict instructions from Canadian and Ugandan guides, heavy life jackets, and gnarly helmets, we felt surprisingly safe during our two day trip.

Each rapid has a name, and strict instructions on how to or not to flip over, surf the wave, stay inside the boat, jump outside the boat, ride the current, avoid the current, etc... I felt like I was going to die, but knew for sure I wasn't going to die. We practiced flipping over, abandoning the raft, paddling of all types. During the low currents, we swam in the mildly warm water and the hotter than hot sun of the river Nile. We were prepared for anything. But honestly, I can't put most of these feelings into words in the few short minutes I have to sit here and describe my weekend's experience.

We left Friday, crossed into Kenya and hit a giraffe with our bus along the way (bus drivers here are INSANE). Then we stopped in Nairobi for a few hours, an incredibly surreal city. Kind of like New York City, everything is in English, with more people selling items on the streets. And more well-dressed drunkards assuming that we all know the scores of the most recent English football games.

From Nairobi into Uganda we were stopped in the middle of the road by a turned over bus. The people were calmly exiting the bus, and as we approached in the slight rain, half-groggy, we realized that this was the same bus company as we were riding, and this bus in front of us could have so easily been us. Instead, we rushed off to try to take another road so we would reach our destination on time. Of course, however, the driver's door wouldn't close after he had jumped out to see what was going on, so I was charged with tying a rope to keep the door shut as we flew in the opposite direction at 80km/hr.

So the bus rides to and from Uganda (destination: Kampala, but we were dropped off in Jinja), were most certainly the most dangerous parts of the journey. Who knew?

Uganda is a beautiful, green country (the Nile - duh!), with beautiful people. Sort of like with climbing Meru, it was just nice to get away for a while. Clearly, we were in Africa. But, even more clear, we sure weren't in Tanzania any more.

Oh yea, I also bungee jumped into the Nile, 145 ft. up, touching the river during my first downward spiral. Nile High Bungee is the only Bungee into the Nile, probably the only in East Africa, and one of the lowest in the world...meaning one of the few where you can touch the water. And it's safe. I mean, a towel and a heavy duty rubber band around the ankles sounds pretty safe, doesn't it? The money is worth the first half second of free fall. Indescribable.

Also, I know pictures have been sporadic, incomplete, and randomly ordered, but I'm doing my best to work with the internet connection to give you a glimpse of my experience. Hopefully it's working out. I promise to have my complete collection online by January.

Back to the village for a short week. Last week, we finished up with the school year with some more frustrations (end of the year festivities are obviously more important than learning about HIV/AIDS), and start with training our Peer Educators and working in the seminar settings next week. I taught a group of over 150 at a subvillage teaching earlier this week, which was AWESOME - Shujaa and I taught 76 men, and Joyce, Nelea and Gaby taught 78 women. We have a testing day in that area tomorrow, so hopefully the number of people at the teaching bodes well for our testing numbers.

The SIC malaria count has reached something like 10, with several teaching partners also getting typhoid, and the chance for amoebas and bacterial infections increasing by the day as the rainy season creeps toward us (it rains almost every day now). But in general my experience remains amazing, there's so much more I want to say, but don't have time to think through...which just gives us more to talk about when I get back. Less than a month until I'm home!

Peace and love,
Devon

Tanzanian Conversation, in short

News?
Good.
Problems?
Cool.
Things?
Clean.

- - - - - - - -
Habari?
Nzuri.
Mambo.
Poa.
Vipi?
Safi.

I don't know if I've emphasized this before, but greetings are the basis of Tanzanian culture. You greet everyone, on the street, on a hiking trail, in the village, in a restaurant. Sometimes you go so far as to asking how is the family, how is the work...even when you've never seen them before, and may never see them again.

Strangers are going to think I'm really weird when I get back...

From Majengo to Meru to Marurani

Wow, it really feels like I haven't been to a computer in forever. If I miss one thing from home its being able to spend 2 hours a day on the computer/internet...instead of 2 hours per week. Ok, I guess that's not what I miss the most. But you guys should consider yourselves lucky right now, that's for sure.

In other news, I'm coming home, like, really soon. 4 weeks left of the program. less than 5 weeks left in Tanzania. More than 9 weeks down. Can you believe it?

- - - -

The second half of SIC Volunteer Program 3, 2007 is now officially under way. This Monday, all 21 volunteers and 12 teaching partners, in addition to the coordinators and our new Field Officer for the new ward, moved to Nduruma, a relatively urban and relatively green area about an hour out of Arusha. We are divided into 4 villages this time - the smallest group is 6, and the biggest is 10. And guess what? I'm in the group of 10. Going from a group of 5 (the smallest) to a group of 10 (the biggest) has been quite an experience so far. Because of sheer size, we have potential to be extremely productive in our community. However, because of sheer size, we also have the potential an extreme amount of conflict, stepping on each other's feet, and just general frustration. We'll see how it turns out.

My village is called Marurani, and we have the biggest group because our village has the largest population in our area (roughly 2,000 people). The other villages are Nduruma, Mzimuni and MajiMoto (which literally means "Hot Water" - how awesome is that). All 5 of the homestays in my village are pretty close to each other, which is nice, and we are also fairly close to the center of town. Yes, this village actually has something you could call a town center. Weird, I know.

In addition to a change in terrain and weather - it's rained every night so far, hence the green - the people here have a different feel about them. Because Nduruma is closer to town than our last wards, people are more urbanized in their slang, their day to day mentality and, of course, their obsession with alcohol. My village hasn't been too bad, but we've seen more drunk people wandering our villages on an average early afternoon, than I've seen at most college parties. Times are hard, people say, so they drink their sorrows away.

Plus, people are quite religious. We met a man who speaks very good English on our first day in town while wandering the main strip. Laura happened to mention that she hadn't really chosen a faith yet - a perfectly acceptable answer in most Western societies. However, the rest of us lied and said we were Christian, of course. The man began to attack Laura for being undecided. She argued that to be a good person, one does not have to believe in God, or a certain God, and one can be a good person and feel successful in his or her life without necessarily finding God. He wouldn't have it. However, he does believe strongly in HIV education and happily welcomed us into his community. We haven't completely discovered the response to condoms, though. When Shujaa and I attempted to do a condom demonstration for our Baba, he wouldn't even let us take it out of the package.

So I'm living with Shujaa again, but this time sharing a 6x6 bed (we were spoiled with separate rooms last time), in a good size room, in a good size house, electricity at night (run from solar panels), our Baba and Mama who are both really, really young, a few kids, 2 cats, a few dogs, and an uncomfortable number of lizards, frogs and cockroaches. We live pretty close to Laura and Joyce (yep, so far, all from my last village), whose house is practically on a mini-orchard. The variety of fruit available in this village is awesome compared to the constant doses of banana with every meal during the last homestay. We've gotten mango, papaya, avocado, orange, banana, and some Tanzanian fruit I can't remember the name of.

The other three homestays are:
Gaby (UK) & Nelea (TZ)
Alex (UK) & Stefanie (UCLA)
Dustin (U of A) & Jonas (TZ)

So we have 6 volunteers and 4 teaching partners, which is a very comfortable ratio for getting as much done as possible, considering we foreigners can't exactly get along very well with our work without our Tanzanian friends.

In Tanzanian style, we arrived in our village this week to discover that there were exams scheduled for our students during the first 3 days of teaching, a few trench buildings that prevented community leaders to meet with us until Friday, and there were some ultra-important can't miss, more-important-than-HIV/AIDS soccer games (have I ever mentioned how big of a deal soccer is here?). So we didn't actually get that much done this week (and you all know how hard that can be for me). However, on the positive side, we were able to completely immerse ourselves in our community, and we did a few community teachings, including one with 50 village leaders.

Next week, the Tanzanian school year ends. So we have exactly one week to get through most of the curriculum. After that, we request that the kids come back to school on certain days for extra "seminars," but we have no way of knowing if they'll show. It's like saying to you, when you're in 5th grade "So I know we promised you a winter break...but how about if you come back to school every other day instead of just taking the time to play at home. What do you think...?)

- - - - -

Arusha is becoming less and less safe, so we're spending less and less time here. Apparently the holiday season is the worst for crime rates in this area because well...people gotta get their family presents, and stealing is much cheaper than buying. No one from SIC has gotten hurt yet, but we have had some incidents. So to ensure our safety our weekends in town are going to be 24 hours ish.

Last weekend was a 3 day weekend in between villages, so, like any good SIC volunteer, 5 of us decided to climb Mt. Meru (may-roo), the second highest mountain in Tanzania, 5th in Africa, the hardest hike/climb of my life.

Mt. Meru is almost 15,000 ft., which makes it a hefty feat to conquer in 3 days. It's apparently possible to climb it in 2 days, but most climb it in 4. And besides the difficulty of the actually physical exertion, the reason for a longer climb is that as the air gets thinner, we get tired more easily, and the faster we climb, the more of the chance there is for altitude sickness.

We started planning for the climb about a week ahead of time. Gaby, Jess, Jenna, Dustin and I rented some gear from a safari company, including a gas stove which was RIDICULOUSLY huge...pretty much not carriable. We were kind of taken aback when we got it from the company. Wait. It would take TWO people to carry this. And we're planning to take this up a mountain. So, you see, most people use a company when they climb Meru, and spend a good $400/person doing so. However, we, in volunteer/student style, managed to spend about $250 each by renting our own gear, buying our own permits, and cooking our own food. And it ended up working out. We just rented a few porters to help us with some of our stuff (local villagers who cost a very small amount conisidering how much help they are), including the stove.

Most of us, though, carried our own backpacks. Which I guess is part of the experience. It certainly made our backs sweaty as we first trudged up sunny grasslands with views of zebra, buffalo and giraffes, which were soon followed by torrential rains, and then the next day, below freezing temperatures.

The guidebook says Day 1 is a peaceful winding road up the first third of the mountain. STEEPEST HIKE EVER. Then we stay in a cabin-type complex, which they call a "hut." Of course by this time everything we have with us is soaked because of the rain. So we huddle in our cabin and make our quick noodles and chomp on our peanut butter, raisins, bread, and protein bars (at least we tried to be healthy).

Day 2, the guidebook claims, is much harder. NOT. Much more windy, still tiring, but only a few hours. Some of us are beginning to feel slightly light headed. We decide to rest instead of taking a small hike in the afternoon to "Little Meru," which is one of the mountain's 18 false peaks.

Day 3 begins at 1 a.m. And, of course, seeing my luck in Tanzanian so far, I get pretty extreme altitutude sickness. Similar to when I had malaria in terms of my aches and pains, diziness, nausea... But I decide that I'm already so close to the summit, that I can just grin and bear it. I do pretty well on the way there, which involves hiking completely in the dark, often on walls that are somewhat vertical. We figure that part of the reason they take you at night on the way is so that you don't freak out when you realize that a few missteps and you'll probaby die. By the time we're almost at the top, it's below freezing, it's sunrise (you can see Mt. Kilimanjaro rising over the clouds, with the sun behind it!), but I feel so, so horrible. I feel like my head is going to fall off. But, once again, I take it slowly, and all 5 of us make it to the summit!

By the time we got down the mountain (via a "rescue" vehicle for the bottom 3rd of the hike...thanks to me), got back to Arusha (by the way...we took a TAXI all the way into and away from Arusha National Park, that was quite a sight), and had dinner...it was about 9p.m. So after behing up for 20 hours, my body wasn't too happy. But with a good night's sleep, the sickness was pretty much gone by morning.

I know it sounds like I've been pretty active, but I doubt all the running and climbing means I've lost wait, or gained muscle...because I've consumed more sodas and snickers bars in the last month than I've had in the past 2 years. Yea, and these mediocre ice cream bars with "vanilla" ice cream and chocolate coating. They don't use preservatives or artificial anything here, so we consume a lot of sugar. However, I do avoid it in my nightly tea. They think I'm pretty weird.

UPDATE: [Sunday morning.]

I went to the orphanage again on Saturday morning. The kids remembered me! I took a few pics this time. We only hung out for an hour or so, but it's a nice feeling to know that you're loved by little kids who hardly know you.

Last night we had Thanksgiving Dinner, SIC style at Erica's house (the Volunteer Program Manager). People started cooking mid-afternoon at 3 different staff member's homes. We made hand turkeys as decorations, ordered loads and loads of fried chicken (turkey is kind of hard to get), made mashed potatos, candied yams, stuffing, tomato/cucumber salad, and corn bread muffins. Erica's house was the first time I didn't really feel like I was in Africa for the last 2 months. We just hung out for 5 hours like it was someone's apartment in Westwood, played music from someone's ipod, and drank sodas (and some drank alcohol I suppose), and just chatted. Definitely not the typical Thanksgiving dinner. But it was really, really poa.

- - - - -

Next week we have another long weekend (a 4-day), and a bunch of us are going to Uganda. Which means, once again, I'm not really sure what my Internet situation will be next week.

And the Saturday after that is WORLD AIDS DAY! So get excited.

MASWALI??

So I've been trying to take varying approaches to my blog so you guys won't get bored, so here's a new one. I want YOU (yea, the few of you who actually read this....or maybe a lot of you, I don't really know), to ask me questions. What haven't I covered in the blog so far that you're dying to know about?

We start our new villages on Monday, so this is a great chance to delve into anything that you've really been wondering about.

Ok, that's all for now. Don't have time for a full blog update until maybe Sunday, but probably next week. But I look forward to your questions (silly or serious)!