Yes!Yes!yes! it works...thrilled! so much to say, and want to wish you all the best of the season; there is no resemblance of Christmas here, but for a few billboards advertising beer with green and red bows slung around the neck of the bottle, Santa loitering mistly in the background, that's it..heard Silver Bells in the market this morning admidst huge piles of gnarled bananas and pineapples tumbling off the back of a truck but that's all..i'm leaving tomorrow on safari, camping in tents with lions and giraffes and people i don't know, a different way to spend xmas if you can't be with family and friends....

MOnday..with high expectations,heading out of Handeni for the Masai circumcision celebration, me with a new red Bible in my bag, foralmost two hours, in the front seat, MWAJABU SAIDI the terribly sick woman, positive with HIV i mentioned meeting the other day, gaunt, arms thin as pipes, weak, with 6 kids at home, her husband running off and marrying another, picking our way through cattle path scrubby meadows, pit holes, to the small cluster of Masai mud and thatched huts, admidst goats and cows and thousands of flies only to discover that the ceremony I was so excited about, with 150,000 magnificent Masai, wouldbe happening not today, but on Wednesday as we were told..spirits down, slugged silently all the way back to World Vision. The important thing now was to find a medicine person and get help for Mwajabu, despondent and hungry by now. WV provided eggs and pancakes with tea, and by 'luck' we ran into the husband of the main Masai medicine woman in the district, who was in the next village visiting....hopped back into the World Vision landrover, our taxi driver lying in the back of his car his feet hanging out the window, refusing another wild goose chase...found his wife Rehema - huge, warm smiling welcoming, and jerked our way back another half hour to her mud hut enclave in the middle of nowhere - our group sitting on animal skins while Rehema took Mwajabu aroundtheback of the cow coral for an examination....the Masai don't think HIV/AIDS..they look at symptoms: in this case, Rehema declared liver, lungs and stomach...and sure in ever way she could treat her...it would take two full days and nights with her staying in the mud hut with Rehema, her husband and 7 childrentwo of whom were nursing all the while we were there..Mwajabu agreed....I must say i would have had second thoughts, but she was determined I guess.
We paid the Masai equivalent of $30 Canadian (a lot of money here) for medicine, treatment, food and bus rides to and from Handeni for Mwajabu, the husband and Rehema, who assured me that she would be up and running in ten days, and that was that!
So Imdying to hear what comes from this..imagine, if she gets healed and becomes better...then what!
I left for Moshi the next day on a busride i won't forget, the seat i am sharing to hold three people, held two hugely wide girthed women with two standing kids when i arrived, wedging my own self into the aisle seat - every seat taken with standing room only, people standing jammed in all the way to the back, and on my other side a man holding a live chicken flapping in my face, fortunately not for the whole ride, six hours later we pulled into Moshi town, where Doris, the Tanzania director for ICA met me, my three big bags wrapped in plastic to discourage dust and the goat wedged into the baggage area under the truck, from peeing...and over to Doris' lovely home to rest for a few hours. She is wonderful, heading up the many ICA projects in Tanzania: HV AIDS education and voluntary testing, home care, water projects, orphan care, children's rights workshops....we talked into the night.
I'd been depressed the night before i leaving Handeni...so many incredible people and experiences, my time with Digna, her two sons....everyone i met and those i was trying to help, some dropping by our house, asking, pleading for help: one whose son had just passed his entrance examinations from primary to secondary school, a very bright boy, whose mother collapsed