Per my bother's request

hey Buti....

My new friends

its a beautiful day in the neighborhood....

All is well here - feeling MUCH better, especially after a self-imposed quiet week. am loving work right now, and the level of complexity in the projects that i am involved in. meet my new friends. not the most exciting friends that i have made here, but the only ones around long enough to snap photos of them.

Malaria

Once the cure for HIV is found, or there is perfect prevention, and i decide to switch fields of focus, i am going to study malaria.

on saturday and sunday, i was so sick i could not move. my fever was high, i was cold on an africa's summer day. after a few courses of treatment, i worked a full day on Tuesday. amazing!

i still don't recommend that any of you get malaria!

signs

we were supposed to have the day off to day to mourn Pres. Ford, but am slammed by work. so i went into the office to find that for some reason my computer there is not working... hopefully not fried. and then i tried to log onto another computer to have my access denied, who knows what that is about. so then i logged in with a co-workers loggin, to find that our server is down and i could not access the shared drive with all of my files and that the internet is out. then i came to a hotel to just catch up on email. first, i ordered coffee, and then went to buy the internet card, and when i went to buy the internet card, they only had big amounts (5 hours) and no hour cards, which is really expensive, but i had already ordered the coffee and they wouldn't cancel my order. so i went ahead and bought the big amount. sat down to start working and drink my coffee, but they had put tea in the coffee, so it tasted awful and so i had to send it back and get the coffee remade (because i am now stuck here for five hours checking internet) and then they FINALLY brought the coffee and i am FINALLY on the internet. and i went to take a big satisfying gulp of the coffee and there was a huge bug in my coffee. i drank it anyways.

i think that maybe i should take the hint and go home and mourn.

la-la-la-la-la-la

happy christmas and merry new years to all. i had a fantastic and relaxing holiday. very much low key. i went saturday morning to a wonderful spot called kayak Africa with my roommate. it just felt refreshing to get out of town a bit. the drive along the lake was beautiful, and we decided to kayak out to the island that we stayed at. i have no regrets about the 10 km (2.5 hour) kayak ride, in fact am proud to have pushed through the very serene and calm waters. however, i might have gotten a tad too much sun (even with lots and lots of sunscreen), which didn’t taint the rest of the trip, but surely my agenda a bit. we stayed on Mumbo island, which has five “tents”, the kind with beds and tables put up inside, each tent had a private view of the lake, with a hammock on the deck. i spent a good amount of time in the shade of our tent, lying in the hammock, watching a family of fish eagles hunt on the lake. we were only there one full day, but managed to get in an hour hike, a couple of short snorkeling trips (pretty, pretty fishies!) so that i could even out my sun burn on my back, and another round on the kayak. the place was so great that even though we were only there 2 nights, i left feeling like a whole new woman!

on x-mas day, we drove to macdonald’s village (nellie’s husband) for a full day of very African celebration. what did we do? well, sat under a tree for hours and chatted, drank and ate, ate and drank, and ate and ate and ate. people came and people went. we danced a little and laughed a lot. it was very nice. my favorite x-mas moment was giving grace (their 16 month old daughter) the cutest little baby doll, which sent her off on a little “BA – BY, BA-BY, BABY, BABY, BABY” rant. she is precious.

i was back at work last week. no one was around, which made it SUPER productive. no complaints.

we left Sunday to go to nellie’s village. her village is three hours north, macdonald’s three hours south, and it was interesting to see how seemingly different in comparison. we had been told that there would be all night traditional dancing, and i guess things have changed over the years and so we were likely to miss the dancing. but, never one to disappoint, Nellie took us on a walk at 7 pm – it’s a full moon, so could see perfectly fine! – and went to a few homesteads until finally got to one were a guy picked up a megaphone and started yelling in chiTonga the equivalent of “calling all dancers”, amazingly within minutes, there were at least 30 girls there singing and dancing in these INCREDIBLE harmonies. i loved it.

ann and i had planned to leave at 9 am to visit some friends on the way back, but well, one thing led to another and we ended up staying until 3pm. we went to visit Nellie’s mom, and the brood of kids that hang out with her (a few of whom she cares for) and then Nellie took us to these hot springs, where if you dig up the sand on the lake shore, the pools fill with piping hot water. it “wasn’t far”, or so we were told. it only took us an hour and a half to walk and boat there. but life is an adventure here, and was glad that they shared their “favorite” spot with us! continued to get more sun than i had hoped, even with lots and lots of sunscreen. am beginning to think that there is some truth to the fact that the antimalarial drug i am taking really does make me more sensitive.

i hope that everyone else’s holidays proved as fun, exciting and interesting. or at least enjoyed with good friends or family. i missed my family lots over the holiday but was 1) happy to have the distractions and 2) thrilled to be adopted for the holidays by other great families.

i wish everyone extreme joy in breaking resolutions, which is really the only reason i make them! cheers!