So this is long overdue, but here's some pics from our safari in Tanzania. I don't even know how to begin describing how amazingly beautiful and wild and wonderful it was...so here's the pictures!

/>

Back in January we did an HIV/AIDS Know Your Status Campaign in our community. We had a local filmmaker produce a film about HIV in the local language and it then showed it in conjunction with HIV testing and counseling and condom sales and demonstrations. Most of the implementation of the project was done by our supervisor Joe, who really did an incredible amount of work simply out of the desire to help the community. He makes our job so easy. Three hundred people were tested that day and over a thousand participated in at least some of the event, hopefully learning a little something. the film has been passed around to individuals, shown in another Peace Corps community, and will hopefully continue to be shared in years to come. We're hoping to have enough time to do another HIV event in our community before we leave.

For funerals, people bring baskets of millet which will later be turned into food and alcohol and served to the guests.

At a big funeral, this guy comes out and starts playing with fire, breathing it out and dancing around with it!

One of the many dance parties that happen during the funeral season here.

Random shot of a street in Bolga, the regional capital where we do most of our shopping, internet, meetings with people, etc.

This is Ayo, and he's quite a character. He's got style, as in he often wears safety goggles around and his bike is decorated with a stuffed elephant! He's really into planting trees and gardening and is a really really hard worker who's always happy to help out with projects.

This is Akuriku, the old man who lives next door to us, and because he's the oldest person in the big compound house he's called the landlord. He raises dogs and is always very interested in all of our animals. He gets a pretty big kick out of us and all of the wierd things we do, like eat oats and occasionally sleeping past 6am. He comes over most mornings to greet us, and he's a pretty big part of our life here.

Kirsent and I spent a day on an island off the coast of Zanzibar. It is a nature reserve and only open to a small number of visitors each day. We snorkled and hiked, saw the elusive coconut crab (large nocturnal crab that climbs trees and eats coconuts).

Kirsten looking all elegant in Zanzibar. Mike and Mara gave us a dinner at an amazing restaurant on a rooftop in the middle of stonetown (stone town being the main town on zanzibar, called stonetown because it is super old and made of stone/coral. The town is intersting because of it is very old and well preserved and also because of the diverse cultures that have coalsced there (omanie, indian, african).

I had a neighbor of ours weave this smock for Kirsten for Xmas. It is a traditional dress that women wear for special events.

So our cat is like 9 months pregnant now (or the equivalent in cat months) and she looks ready to burst. She barely moves these days, she wakes from her near constant napping to drag herself over to her food and then back to napville. This is a pre pregnancy shot. We will get out photos of her post birth with her babies when it all goes down. We also need to get a picture out of our dog with her puppies. We just discovered that she has five puppies, we thought that only three survived (she keeps her puppies tucked away in a small crevice where its hard to see them).

Just down the beach from where we stayed with the fam was a super old slave castle in the midst of a fishing village. (These pics are a bit disjointed - sorry)

Kirsten celebrating the Nabayeska (harvest festival) with some of our neighbors.

Does it get any better than hanging out on a beach and playing in the waves?

Mom and dad look happy here, mom's enjoying her pre-sickness time.

Mo seemed to enjoy Kirsten's company, specially when he was grabbing her necklace and her cool hat.

I was glad to meet my new nephew. I think we had a good time, except for when I made him cry.

I think Morgan is the most well travelled baby I have ever met.

Walking the road to the small market that is near us. We often go there to hang out and get some local cuisine, drink some millet beer.

Our dog Kalulu hanging in our garden with a gaggle of Guinea Fowl in the background. Every so often a flock of Guinea fowl come tromping by, they often jump up on our roof with a loud thunk, about twenty of them .... thunk thunk thunk.....

Kirsten helping our cucumbers to grow big and mighty. Our garden was a lot of fun this rainy season (and continues to be, although it is slowly dieing from lack of water now).

So I guess it’s been awhile since we’ve posted anything. The past few months have been filled with…well, er, let’s see, tomatoes and basil in the garden, rain glorious rain that brings cool(er) weather and fewer buckets of water needing to be carried on my head and tall tall millet that gave us some privacy for a few months. In August we went to Mole National Park and hung out with some elephants while working--I'm trying to start a girls environmental camp there and I needed to do some "research", right? The camp progressed a long way and then it got derailed but I'm still hoping to make a version of it happen). September was filled with trainings—one on how to help groups function better, one on HIV/AIDS, and one for my environment group—so lots of traveling and socializing with other volunteers, including a really fun surprise anniversary party they threw for us. The Gama-Lobo’s came for a visit and while it was really awesome seeing them and meeting our new nephew, illnesses and other misfortunes sadly turned the visit into a bit of an fiasco and we spent most of their trip in Accra, instead of actually coming to the part of Ghana we know and love and live in. Accra meant tasty food, swimming pools, hot showers, air conditioning, a little wine, and some live music sprinkled in, all of which are very rare treats for us Peace Corps volunteers! Especially when in the company of family you haven’t seen for so long. If anyone else out there wants to give Ghana a try, you’re invited! We miss you all!

A few days after we got back to site we received the sad news that JJ’s grandma Rose had just passed away. She was 96. We tried to figure out a way to go to the funeral but ultimately, we’re just too far away. Instead we looked at pictures of her and listened to some voice recordings JJ had taken on our last visit to Chicago. She will be missed.

Last Sunday was the biggest festival of the year, called Nabayeska, and it’s a little like Halloween, and Thanksgiving and Groundhog’s Day all squished together. It falls at the end of the harvest and people cook and eat a lot, which makes it like Thanksgiving. Before the event, all of the women cook rice and meat while the men wander from house to house eating plate after plate after plate of rice and meat (I saw one man eat seven plates). They say that anyone, even a stranger, can go to anyone’s house and demand that that person make them happy by giving them food or drink or money or whatever (there’s the Halloween bit). Its like Groundhog’s Day in that it’s the day when the chief of the village emerges after a two month-long house arrest. He’s not allowed to see bean flowers during those two months and if he does then next year’s harvest will fail. So he emerges and the whole village comes out in their finest new clothes and celebrates.

For us it was an exciting day because it started with a rain storm! The rainy season ended about a month ago so we thought we might have to wait until next May to see some rain but low and behold a gust of wind blew and all of a sudden there was torrential downpour, which was exciting news for us and also for our tomatoes that had stopped producing since they were so thirsty.

Meanwhile, our dog Kalulu, who had in the past few weeks grown so pregnant she resembled a goat, had been missing all morning which worried us a little. After the rain subsided we discovered that she had given birth at our counterpart’s house next door (where she stays when we travel)! We went for a visit and attempted to peer into the little hole that she had chosen as her birthing place and we could see a few slimy little pups wiggling around. We later got a better view and learned that there were five, but only three survived. A friend took us to bury the two and we were encouraged to pour some pito, the local millet beer, over the ground as an offering. Another ritual that they have here is that whenever someone (a human) gives birth, for two months the mother can only eat sagabo, which is the staple food here that’s made from millet flour, and nothing else. Since Kalulu gave birth, it was necessary that she eat sagabo as her first meal so our counterpart’s mother prepared some specially for her to celebrate the occasion.

We had planned a celebration for when the Gama-Lobo’s came to visit and had arranged for someone to make a big batch of pito and another of a nonalcoholic beverage called zonko (also made from millet—are you sensing a theme here?) but since they didn’t make it up here we decided to do it for Nabayeska since the ingredients had already been paid for. I prepared a giant pot of jollof rice (basically rice with tomato paste) and boiled eggs in case friends or strangers came by asking for food. Which they did. It was fun. Then we went awandering with two of our local friends and were given some bowls of rice and some pito and eventually made our way to the chief’s house where there was a mob of people gathered. There was a singing group that promptly welcomed us by singing an “Amalatinga la Ayintara” song (those are our local names), which was fun. People were all watching a bunch of men in smocks doing something but it was loud and they were speaking Guruni and so it’s hard to say what was really going on. Finally the drumming started and there was a dance party until dark when it got, well, too dark to see anything, so we went home. And that was our Nabayeska.

Some things in store for us:

1. Kittens! Our cat is starting to look kind of goat-like and could pop any day now!

2. Thanksgiving! We’ll be spending Thanksgiving with a bunch of other volunteers in Tamale, where we’ll cook a feast. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

3. Tanzania! For Christmas we’re going to visit Mike and Mara and Morgan and giraffes and lions and bushbabies!

4. Work! We’ve got lots of little things going, the most noteworthy maybe being an HIV/AIDS Know Your Status Campaign which will likely happen in January.

It seemed that most every Ghanian at this event was wearing some kind of Obama fabric.

The after hours party when our enviro event was finished. It turned into a giant dance party with our huge speaker booming for the whole village to hear.

This is the regional director of EPA speaking during our enviro event. We had a good line up of speakers from local government and environmental institutions. Unfortunately there are not too many women in high ranking positions here, so it was nice to have her there as a role model.

This was part of a drama entitled "Trees are life" that the school kids performed at the event. They did a really good job with the drama, the crowd loved it, and the song they sang throughout the performace I kept being heard sung by random people over the next couple weeks.

Yeah, so these guys are as awsome as they look. They are a men's acapella singin group. They struted around working the crowd during one of the many musical interludes at our environment event.

Another women's group we work with performing some songs and dances at our enviro event.

One of the Women's groups we work with on their way to our environment day event. These ladies usually make a dramatic entrance to any event they attend by gathering together in matching shirts singing, clapping, dancing. They are a sight to behold.