thanks!

for writing everyone! i love it. i had a great trip to the mountains this weekend, but work is still hard and the trip home wasnt so great today so i decided to come to the cyber cafe and check my email and it was so great there are so many posts from you all!

also, when i got here, i ate a piece of cake! i have found the one patisserie in all of town and was so excited. cake was pretty much all they had left because it is the end of the week, but i very much enjoyed it.

i spent thursday and friday motorcycling around the mountains doing home visits. i dont even know how to describe it. im not good with words and i think you may have to see it to understand-so in the mountain village i have stayed in a few nights before, there is no electricity, everything is entirely traditional, except with cell phones and some tin roofs. on the home visits, there is electricity and people live near the city-but its still all huts and homesteads and cultivated and it makes for an interesting mix. many of the patients families do not know they have hiv, so at almost every house, the social worker i was with had a story for why he was there-to look at the fabric a woman sells, to buy beer (the local kind, all made by women), to talk about microfinance, etc. and then he interviews them as much as he can. he works really really hard 6 days a week to help about 2000 patients that come to the clinic with any sort of medical or social problems they have.

then i went up to the village because there was a group of duke students visiting from ghana, and because i just love going up to the village on top of the mountain. of course, i was excited for a night of cool mountain air, but instead it was the hottest night they had had in weeks. no relief!

tomorrow i am taking the kids to the pool!i bought them swimmies-12 bucks for swimmies! but they are so excited .

whitney