JAMBO!! Excitement reigns in Mto Wa Mbu, if you can imagine this little town has finally an INTERNET CAFE!! which seems impossible for me to imagine, but a Dutch bank is sponsoring a brand new, ten computer rig, with tables nicely apart, clean, airy with a fan, computers which don't skip, stop, leap, erase! even with access to cameras..spent half the morning selecting,editing, cutting, cropping,resizing, incredible, so now this blog may show pics i hope! No more busing up to Kiratu, just a quick walk through town..they're beginning computer courses here with local people, how to apply techniques to their work; we are sponsoring TIKO a local artist dying to learn English, now he will learn both, English and computer, and how to use paint, photoshop, etc...on the computer for his work, great...

Charles still away, over a week now..i need him to work with the Masai, all the villages are over an hour away, across rough tundra with no transportaion, language, coordination. \he is incredible the work he does - and \i couldn't possibly begin to do this work without him, again i am reminded of how lucky i am, to have this opportunity, to work with, meet, know these people, how they live, eat in their homes, again, thanks to ICA... and besides can't buy latex house paint here, or in bigger town Arusha, no paint, no art courses! so while I wait....settled into the orphanage big time this week - the table and benches are built, gorgeous, the rest of the furniture ready next week..see pic, talking to safari tourists every afternoon: Dutch, Australian, American, Swiss, Japanese...money for the orphanage and every morning taking the hot and blistery mile long walk out of town, under massive yellow and black fig trees covered in huge white stork like birds with black tips on their wings, sitting, flying, landing, breeding and shitting, once in a while upon beleagured walker below! \yesterday a long talk with Juliette, beautiful Swahili woman coordinator, her brother director of the orphanage, she is working as a volunteer for a year before university - why? her father married five wives - with over 25 children, she is the third of four with her mother the fourth wife. The first and second wives have 8 kids each, and have both died of Aids, the kids now being looked after by the father, grandmothers, and Juliette's mother; her aunt also has passed away with Aids. I took Elizabeth and Sabina in for a few hours from ICA, both nurses and social workers...who talked about danger of positive kids mixing with non positive- toothbrushes, cuts and sores on fingers, legs, knees, razor blades used to cut fingernails...sores on faces....it is a big problem, dangerous...Juliette works with two women only, a teacher, and a woman who cooks for kids in a make shift kitchen, with open fire hidden under a doghouse of logs, big metal bucket of creme of wheat porriage brewing, plus bent over in half working laundry and soap in a big bucket all of this done in the dusty courtyard behind the classroom. Both women make $45. a month.
Geofrey, 26, a farmer, who voluntarily came into the ICA office asking for counselling and hiv aids test...two kids, he and his wife divorced two years ago, he was worried. Wearing an old pajama top, dirty, with work pants and red flip flops, he held out his arm for Sabina to take his blood; today, his third and last time for testing, each time three months apart, and each time he registered negative. Today was a celebration! Still negative, wearing condoms, and bringing 30 friends to ICA information on hiv aids in December during aids day....his friends running away from the testing, running back, scared, hiding behind trees, and finally signing up...
\yesterday the big masai market five miles out of town in a huge scruffy field surrounded in the distance by blue purple mountains, the rich reds and blues of their sheets brilliant - swords, sticks, acres of stuff, mostly second hand, shoes, clothing, bedding, kitchenware from Europe, America, strewn out on the ground in piles, hundreds of Masai, local people weaving their way in between, herbs and medicine in blue plastic bags rolled up or in cloth rag bags, the medicine man with a chart showing what each is for\; tb, pneumonia, diahhrea, aching bones, arthritis, malaria, sore throat, bronchitis, cholera, wounds,you name it. They have a treatment for everything, everything but Aids. it has taken years for them to be convinced, what happens is that a sick person, showing signs of pneumonia goes to the traditional healer, he gets healed from the pneumonia, but then gets tb, gets healed and on it goes, the virus meanwhile weakens his immune system, so he gets sicker and sicker, with all forms of disease, weaker, and then finally dies of something..all the while not convinced of what he has is actually full out full blown aids. So now they are considering ARVs, the Anti retro viral medicine long used in the west, which can not cure a person of this virus, but which can stave it off. for years.

Cows, thousands of them, goats bleeting, all out there on the hot dry field with Masai warriers milling about, checking, observing, looking at the animals, to buy, to sell, to auction...a thriving and thrilling event which happens on the 22nd of every month here. We bought a goat leg for $3. propped up on a skewer and roasing in a circle with other goat legs inside a grass hut where women were slicing the hides off the animals preparing them for cooking. they cut the mean into small pieces with two big bones and we carried it out under a huge canape of cacti trees, wedged ourselves onto a bench in a big square sharing with \masai men .....the goat, and the benches, with big bucket in the middle filled with foaming brothing banana and corn beer, home made, which looked gross. \i didn't try it this year, but did last year...not! Bought 5 backpacks for the kids for school...met a great couple from Colorado, dinner last night, plenty of talking about Clinton, Obama, everyone is routing for him...Bush...Masai, Africa, war, peace, love of course, great books...just finished HALF OF A YELLOW SUN, by Chimanmanda Ngozi Adichie...one of my very favourite best! She is incredible....
\news from home, of people being accepted into university, babies being born, people being sick and sisters passing.....i think of you all, and wish you well.....till then next one!! xxme