The other day I went to a village to check in on a Man who came to us about wanting his child to join our Orphanage. The man has 4 kids and doesn't have a job, just a farm where he grows his food for his family, and wanted us to take in his youngest- 11 months. His other kids are 11, 9, and 6, with the two oldest still in school. There is a long process for us to admit a child, and we scheduled an appointment with him, but the man never called us to instruct us where he lived exactly. I went myself to the village and asked around if anyone knew him, and there was a women selling maandazi (like donuts sort of) who did. She told me that the child had already passed away.

I felt like garbage, and told her (I never met the man, no one knew where he was at the time) to have him call us from a friends phone, and we'd reimburse his phone credit. I didn't know what else to do, and so my drive back to our village was pretty depressing. It was the first time really that I saw the responsibility of this new job in a really tangible way. It was also the first time it seemed like there was actually something I could have done to make a difference in whether or not someone lived or not.

I've seen Chimps, and Jane Goodall since I last posted. It's been a while, so I can also say I've taken a 43.5 hour train ride, met a publisher who I wrote a paper on for University before I came here, and I killed and skinned a goat!

Things have been going well with my new career path. I've stopped working as a teacher in the town of Mafinga, and am now volunteering as an Administrative Manager at an NGO in the village of Igoda. I now live with my fiancee, which is better then seeing her on the weekends as it was, and I commute back and forth from our village in Mdabulo to Igoda (7.5km) on a motorcycle. To get a better idea of our NGO you could check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkufSbWZYlc

My new volunteer position puts me in charge of the Orphanage, and the NGO projects basically, and it has been a lot of fun work is the way I'd put it I guess.

We went to Kigoma for my birthday and saw this guy up close and personal. It was quite an experience seeing wild chipanzees. We went to Gombe National Park, and on our hike we saw this family of chimps just hanging out with us for over 2 hours! The pictured guy you see here is named "Titan" and he is apparently the trouble-maker of the park. At one point he charged me, and picked up a rock to throw at us... The guides told us he was upset that we were taking pictures while he was trying to sleep. I guess that's pretty understandable.