I should probably talk about all the animals here at one point. Probably the wildlife highlight so far, much more so than the solitary giraffe ambling in the desert, are the monkeys; in Kakamega and also in Ndanda, monkeys jump back in forth among the trees, looking for bananas. Last week I was cut off by a troop of maybe 25 baboons wandering through the jungle behind the mission. It was cool but also a little scary, as apparently they can be dangerous if provoked and I was on alone and on foot. I kept my distance.

Of course most of the creatures I see are not nearly as exciting. Butterflies (kipepeo or "little fan") of all colors are always flapping around, termites build tunnels of dirt up my walls, huge grasshoppers leap across my lawn and wasps with huge, threatening stingers buzz around my office. Last week I saw a small spider with a huge pair of fangs- on closer inspection i saw the fangs were on the wrong end of the body, a decoy to warn off predators. Long lines of army ants march across the jungle and occasionally swarm through people's houses ("surround your bed with kerosene and wait for them to leave...") I have three or four geckos living with me, who feast on all these little ndudus. All these bugs are at the same time fascinating and repulsive.

Back in training my next-door neighbor came to class with a good story. He had arrived home and found a great comotion around his choo (outdoor toilet). "We saw something in the bathroom," said his baba. "We don't know what it is, but it had more than a hundred legs and it was at least a half a meter long."

March 16, Palm Sunday, Ndanda - I just returned from a trip to Masasi, about 30 km away. I rode in a dalla-dalla, a minivan, with some 25 other people, threegoats, two chickens, five leaky jerrycans of gasoline, three sacks of maize flour and a six foot stack of buckets. We stopped every 500 meters so the tout could try to flag down new passengers, and the driver leaned on the horn for the entire hour-long ride. as there were no seatbelts i broke one of peace corps traveling policies, but at lease i wasn't hanging the side of the vehicle like several other passengers. the ride cost about 90 cents.

I'm a chemistry teacher stationed at ndanda secondary school in Tanzania's deep south. Ndanda is a mission town complete with two secondary and several technical schools, a water-bottling company, a towering white church and a modern hospital (the only functional hospital in hundreds of miles.) My school, once one of the best in the country, was nationalized in the 1970s and since has gone through a long, steady decline. The laboratories are rotting and nobody knows who has the key to the library. There are not enough school supplies and the textbooks are fourty years old. teachers often skip all their classes and then charge students extra for tuition after hours; last term there were 13 teachers for 720 students. The (ex) second master stole about 2000 dollars, so for the last three weeks of the term students ate porridge for breakfast, lunch and dinner. problems here are far beyond the ability of any one person, no matter how dedicated, to fix.

When I first arrived in Africa I was repelled by what seemed to be crushing poverty and ugliness. There were no Mcdonalds or SUVs. Women here cook with charcoal and burn garbage in pits, electricity is a rare luxury and clean water does not exist. It took about a month to adopt to life here, studying Swahili by candlelight and drinking warm coca cola at the nearest hotel. NGOs here drive around in jeeps and gape at the locals, but if you ever get the chance to come here, walk around the market and drink chai with the villagers and ride dalla-dallas - its a lifestyle you'll never forget. Safari Njema! (travel well!)