What's this? An email from Justin? After so long I thought he must have gotten a) eaten by a lion, b) trampled by an elephant, or c) [insert your creative African demise here].

Nope I was just, as you know, busy applying to grad schools. I only have a little time but am convinced I can work my fingers overtime since they haven't done much typing today. Where to start.

How about September? In September we had a one month break and visited my old site, Chidya. If you remember, it's a three day trip so the first saw us going to Dar. There we stayed with a friend of a friend and were introduced to Mama Precious. She is a rather large lady who just had a baby. We talked for about and hour then walked around for about three hours (in the process being invited to a Muslim feast). Then we were back at her house where she fixed some formula for Precious. "Oh, so Precious Martin (her new baby) doesn't breast feed?" we asked. Remember bare breasts are not considered nudity here and breast feeding typically comes up when talking with new mothers. "No he does," she answered, "it's not enough." Anna and I looked at each other both thinking, "What baby would not be full? Her breasts are enormous." Then we were taken into the room to see Precious. The largest 4 month old baby I ever saw. Easily dwarfs some of the 4 year old kids I coached in swimming. The Michellin Man's biological chils no doubt.

The second day had us on a bus to Masasi. Bus rides are not fun in this country but one thing that makes them more tollerable are the pictures on the backs of buses. These are usually done by local artists. We have God fearing penguins-a picture of penguins navigating the treachorous artic regions with the words, "In God we trust" written above the painting. Those sweet, faithful penguins. We have ugly mermaids-the artist may have been a novice. We even have monkeys in leopard print, one shoulder leotards sipping orange juice by a pool resort. There's no limit on the imagination of these artists. But recently these artists' vitality has been threatened by the phone companies paying to put there prefabricated adds on the back of buses. Now if you remember from my emails the previous two years you remember the Mtwara region is slightly behind the rest of the country in trends. So we still saw some good pictures. My new favorite was of a charming scene of a village by the water. In this body of water was a villager in a canoe that was being overturned by a crocodile who was simultaneously eating the villager's leg, with appropriately render squirting bloood, who was stabbing the crocodile with his machete. Oh, what will these artists come up with next?

The third day saw us arriving at Chidya. It was a Sunday. Also from my previous emails you may remember my village has no car on Sundays except during tomato season which, luckily, is 10 months out of the year. In my newly-wed bliss I forgot that Septmeber is not part of the tomato season. So Anna and I had to get a car out to antoher village and then walk up the mountain Chidya resides on. This took about 3 hours in the afternoon sun. Needless to say we were pretty tired. But the welcome was worth it. When we got into the village my good friend's, Ajiri's, brother saw us and came running screaming my name and then shook our hands, took our bags, and waked with us to the village center. There I saw Ajiri and other friends before we continued on to the school. It was a wonderful welcome and the vacation, although short was also wonderful and relaxing. It was good to see my old friends and see how my projects were holding up. I was replaced by another volunteer but he had to leave two weeks before we visited due to circumstances out of his control. I'm happy to say both the library and my Peer Educator group were still functioning in the absense of a volunteer. I also got to talk to my students and about their past year.

Now, more chicken news. We got two new young roosters and a mother with three chicks. One night the chickens started freaking out. Since this was the fourth time this had happened we shined the flashlight out in the yard from a window, they calmed down, and we went back to bed. The next morning we found that two chicks were missing and one of the young roosters was dead. Upon further inspection we found the rooster had two puncture marks. We left him under a bucket and at midday checked his neck again. It had turned black. This meant a snake had poisoned him to scare the other chickens. Two chicks must have run out under the opening in the door. The snake followed and ate them. This is the dry and hot season and food is scarce. A snake also attacked, killed, and ate some of the NGO's chickens a few days after our attack.

For some light hearted chicken news we came home one day to find the mother chicken freaking out. Then we heard chirps coming from a nearby cement pit meant to collect rain water during the rainy season. Sure enough the remaining chick was down there chirping away. The pit is a six feet by three feet rectangle but even so it took me about 5 minutes to catch the little bugger since there is grass growing out of the bottom and trash and other things that conceal a scared little chick quite well.

My last piece of news comes from my water duty. We pump salty water from a well on the NGO grounds. Anna and I have become used to drinking this salty water. We have three sixty liter buckets that must be carried by wheel barrow from the well to our house. On a very hot day I was pumping water into a bucket with the lid off. The NGO keeps two oxen to pull a cart to and from its farm. One of the ox became interested in the water and started coming over. He's a non-threatening looking ox of brown and white and, even though he's about four times my size, I decided to head him off and defend my water. He stepped aside. No worries. So I continued and had just about finished pumping out sixty liters, which takes about 5 minutes, when the other ox came over. This guy is about five times my size, a beautiful gray with lots of branding scars. In other words, he scares the beegeebers out of me. But, having successfully thwarted the other's attempts I went to meet him. Well, this guy was thirsty and "no" was not on the menu that day. He nudged me aside and began to drink. Nothing to do but let him finish, quench his thirst, and pump again.

So that's all for now. I'm sorry it's a short email but my memory only remembers so much. However, these adventures are coming to a close and we'll be back in America soon.

Justin

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