St. Patrick's Day Blog...a wee bit late

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Dear Friends at home.
Happy St. Patrick's Day to all. Our celebration will be a wee bit different this year, but I will make Irish soda bred and we have potatoes, cabbage, and carrots are grown locally. Breaded steaki will sub for corned beef, but the real bummer is no grasshopper pie! There are plenty of grasshoppers here, but they're too quick to catch. All around us we see green as the Usambara Mts. are always green, at least in the 7 months that we've been here.
We are in Lushoto to pick up the 2nd 20 box shipment of books for Mtumbi Secondary School. Jim Greco has done a super job in Carmel getting so many books from so many sources as has Judy Kirk. We thank all of you who contributed. The bookcases are being constructed and we are so excited to see the progress. We now have 1116 books!
A word on International Women's Day is necessary. We piled 96 Mtumbi students into a rented lorry - SRO in the back. Teacher Edith, PCVs Dave & Wendy, and community member Kim accompanied the uniformed and singing kids to a village about an hour away. There was a district sponsored day supporting women and our gang sang & danced. There were other schools there, although ours was the biggest and most energetic. Women showed their various income-generating projects: goat raising, tree seedlings, clay cooking pots, and growing veggies. All these so they can help PLWHA (People Living With HIV/AIDS and OMVC (Orphans & Most Vunrable Children). It was inspirational to see them and to hear their story. The keynote speaker, a women in local politics, spoke on HIV/AIDS. As you may know women are almost twice as suseptable in contracting this killer disease, just because of biological reasons, not behavioral. There is so much education to be done here.
On that note I'll close. This blog was to sent on 3/17 but alas no power. So, I'll continue next time. love, Dave & Wendy

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