POTTIES!!!

the toilets i asked for help to build are almost done! this is seriously lightening speed for africa. one of the beliefs here is that there is always more time. which is true. and lends to a slower pace of life but can often be frustrating for a volunteer whose time in the village is in fact limited. anywho. its coming along. i've included some pictures of the new ones in progress and of the old ones that are full (yikes!) and are falling apart. i wanted to take more. and some with me actually in the pics but my batteries died. so this will have to do for now. but i'm really happy and proud of what we've accomplished so far. there are 8 stalls and its already a huge improvement on what they had. the next thing i'd like to help the school with is getting enough text books for each child. as of now there are about 5 kids per book. as you can imagine, its not really conducive to learning.

other news in my work here is that i've started a monthly health class for the mama's in my village. they gather every month to weigh their babies so me and my tanzanian counterpart, an amazing woman named Olipa Mpiruka, have put together a curriculum relevant to them. So far we've had one class and it went really well. i'm excited because simple projects like this seem to have more staying power. i think its looking promising.

besides that walter is still walter. getting in trouble and making me laugh all the time. my nearest peace corps neighbor, mary, just got two brand new puppies. i realized how big walter's gotten and now walter has two little pups that look up to him. so now we've dubbed him Uncle Walter. he takes this new responsibility very seriously, hearding them up when they run too far from the house. so despite everything else i still consider him a good dog :)

* ok i have 15 minutes left at the internet cafe and the outrageously slow internet here has yet to post 4 pictures that i started to upload 30mins ago....this isn't looking good. so i apologize if i'm not successful. i'll get it next time