had another mouse incedent -this
one a baby who was skittering around. Luckily a local friend was over to
handle the event (reluctantly!- thought it was women's work! but i
assured him that it's man's work) the cats keep skreeching and yowling
and landing on my roof like handgranades going off, so i'm hopeful
eventually they do their job.

things here are good. i've been working on curriculum and such things
so more in the office, but wanting to get back out to the shamba...

just had the greatest hike this weekend with three fun tourists in their early
twenties, my guide friend elly and his friends MS and Jerry as our guides,
and friend solomon. it was great- out in the high foothills,
gazing out over vast expanses onto mount meru and mount kilimanjaro,
then decending into little dugout shacks for drinks at night. we had an
incident with a thief and elly and fellow-guide M.S.were quite heroic in apprehending them. They caught one and delivered him first to me to appologize, and then to the village leader, who
happens to be ms's father. then they held the thief there until the
second one appeared with the rest of the stuff, they actually sent out
'warriors' to search for him, and found him very drunk at 3.00 am,
having used my cash to good purpose. it was nerveracking at one point as
our 3 guides had disappeared to catch the thieves. so solomon, one large
male tourist and i ran the half mile to see what was going on- found them w/
thief, surrounded by villagers, with ms holding a machete.... we didn't
know what side villagers were on, turns out they supported the
apprehension of this notorious thief, but it was hard to figure out at
first. In the morning we had a meeting with the father and wife and
someother associate of the first thief, the thieves, and a friend of the
thieves, and the village leader, and my bag, to itimize the returned
things, to determine that only the money was missing, $15, which,
unfortunately as it had gone to booze, was not going to come back. In
this case, once returning the possessions the theives went free, as
opposed to being killed, so it was all quite benign.