I haven’t been sleeping well, and as such, my will to write has faded. Nonetheless, the past two days have been eventful, and so I owe this entry ( Read more... )

After a brain-jarring ride into Loibor Siret, Neo, Kelly, Andrew and I proceed to teach and socialize our way through Saturday. We don’t take weekends off here ( Read more... )

The day passes in a blur - work on the survey and business plan training. In the morning Kelly sits with us and we name all the items on the table in Swahili. I’ve memorized most of them by the evening, but have no idea how to put them into a sentence. Baby steps ( Read more... )

Last night Christy and I see “eyeshine” - the reflection of light against the back of many mammals’ eyeballs (consequently, also what makes your dog look like a freak in every flash photo you take of him/her) - in the trees. Christy goes closer and we discover bushbabies, no taller than a sheet of printer paper, with eyes the size of teacups. ( Read more... )

Crop protection can be a dangerous thing. Two nights ago a gentleman in the village shot a huge bull elephant in his fields; it died right outside of his house. He got taken to jail, and so for the past two days it has been up to APW to decide how to deal with the carcass. The wildlife department came and confiscated the tusks as they always do, ( Read more... )

I’m tired today, so this entry will be shorter ( Read more... )

When I wake, I find myself on a knoll above rolling hills of tawny gold. Dark green trees spindle their way across the landscape, like candy from a party piñata. I feel the closest civilization must be a hundred miles away, for I cannot see it, and yet, there is Laly’s incredible camp all around me. This sensation persists throughout the day. ( Read more... )

We leave Arusha at 5pm, when the day is already late. And yet, a day’s worth of activity follows. In Laly’s expert hands, the Land Cruiser “Indiana” rumbles and rambles down roads the color of rust and potter’s clay, following a path that carves southward to Noloholo. Homes stand squat and square along the way, their red-clay color a striking, ( Read more... )

I wake to the sound of rain pounding on the window, only to hear it fade into the distance and realize that in fact it was the sound of a metal bike careening across the dirt road. In fact, the day is bright and only speckled with clouds. The light glints off the metal roofs of the nearby shops, and the city glistens green from the recent rains.

( Read more... )

Yesterday I came back from Chunhua, grimy from five days spent in the villages of rural China, my hair and clothes filmy with the scent of cigarettes, of wood-smoke, of soil. You may think that I sat in the middle of cornstalks for five days, and in a manner of speaking I did. But in each village, the roads are well-paved. We check to make sure ( Read more... )