animal planet

so i'm in solwezi till the 13th on business if you will (work permits, provincial meeting, etc.). that also means cell service all the time, so anytime after noon EST on those days give a call. it's been just shy of three weeks at site. so how's it been? awsome.

so why animal planet?

at my site for less than an hour and i have to rescue a baby goat from my trash pit. side note: this was before i realized that goats are extension agents of the devil.

after 80km of cycling one day i played chicken with two dozen cattle in the road. they really don't like to move when they are headed in a straight line.

after writing a letter to the staes and leaving it outside for five minutes, finding it partially eaten...i did my best to repair it and mail it anyway, so one lucky reader will be getting an authentic piece of zam-wilderness!

i-pods arent just for people anymore...a mouse ate one of my headphones.

but rats are also for people...so i ate bush rat for dinner one nite. not as gross as it sounds, kinda like turkey and beef jerkey mixed. trying to explain to my family that people get big bucks to do things like that on tv in the staes was amusing. the next day when i told a fellow volunteer that i ate rat, he asked why. my only response was, ít was for dinner'which made me wonder if 'bush rat, its whats for dinner'may someday trump 'beef'. and you may wonder whats grosser than eating bush rat for dinner? eatining it two nites in a row...yup.

friday bloody friday...found a snake in my dirty laundry, bashed its head in with a pot, showed my family and burned it. 1/2 hour later dropped ten kgs of books on a rat and burned that too.

but other than those episodes the animal life is pretty cool. no large game (elephants, etc.) but tons of bueatiful birds, lizards and butterflies. and the skys are geourgeous. i've seen two shooting starts and the moon is so bright at nite when its more than half full that you don't need any other lite to get around. it feels like a planet that is much more god-made than man-shaped.

work is moving nicely as i also split time watching 'this old house''meet 'national geographic' aka watching and trying to help finish my house. i've been visiting an established group of farmers with another volunteer every week and i'm planning to build a pond for the local catholic church and some for the school. the headmaster of the school expressed this interest to me so that children whose parents can't continue to pay the school fees will hopefully learn a skill they can generate income from. sounds like a good idea, i'm stoked for it. once the house is done i'll try to find more farmers to work with, if theres time before the rain starts. it's pretty sweet to get to go to ork in shorts and a t-shitrt...from the boardroom to boardshorts, nice. and in case you thought i wouldn't be busy enough, its a roughly 80km cycle round trip to check my mail, which i will do weekly. so by virtue of checking my mail weekly over the next two years i will cover 8000km or 4971 miles, just about 500 miles short of riding from my parents house in jersey to los angeles and back...yeah i'm gonna be in great shape.

oh and just the other day i saw a mass UNHRC (united nations high commission for refugees)convoy of two suvs and three full buses headed down the road towards angola. no sine of brangelina or the kids, they must still be out on maternity.

and i only have nine toenails currently. if you play football (soccer) barefoot, be sure to keep the toenails trimmed very short to prevent the ball from getting under them and ripping them off.

thats it for now, keep that sweet mail coming!