hello friends

I came in town for the day to bring a volunteer to the clinic--turned out to be a bacterial infection, not malaria--hoorah! although malaria is super easy to treat anyways--$4 for some pills and the symptoms are gone in a few days at worst.

The villages we are working in are b-e-a-utiful and remind me a lot of the countryside in France. The volunteers are spread throughout six villages, and to get to each one I walk through fields of corn and tomatoes--its so neat, I looooove it. Some homestays are pocketed on grassy slopes that i have to cross river beds to get to. We are staying in a rented house in teh first village, complete with large grassy lawn--electricity but no running water. Sometimes Ill come home in teh afternoon to a hoard of small children playing in the yard-other times the children will be replaced by grazing cows. hahaha its great. The kids call my frisbee kipepeo (butterfly!) and they love it, which makes me very happy. Daily work has consisted of walking to homestays (an hour walk to the farthest one?) to bring supplies and talk with groups when small problems arise.

---I ate eggplant and LIKED it! the vegetables are so fresh
---every morning Jena, Glady and I get hot milk for breakfast, straight from the neighbor's cow, for 40 cents a liter. Its so neat

---Last night I successfully carried a 3 gallon bucket of water on my head. Usually our cook (who lives across the street) boils water for us at night to shower. Last night he was busy so I decided to go--I asked a little girl to show me where to get it and soon Jena and I had 10 small children following us to the water source with their own buckets--which turned out to be a river 15 minutes away and down this steep, muddy embankment. balancing it on your head is actually much easier, because there is no way in hell i would have been able to make it back up the hill and all the way home carrying this heavy bucket. My skirt was drenched and my feet were filthy by the end, but i was a proud mzungu when we finally made it home.

---Kids here work so hard! as soon as youre able to walk youre set to work. The littlest one on my water-fetching journey last night couldnt have been older than 3 or 4. Of items that are balanced on heads by children, I am most impressed by the enormous stacks of firewood. All of the cooking for the family that lives across the street is done by two 10 ten year old girls.

TZ is great and I am a happy gal.

Emmanuelle