my bday and the beginning

so for my bday we went into the boma and had dinner at a restaurant :) i had chicken and rob finagled some one in the boma to make a cake, very impressive. and we celebrated with the other pc volunteers in petauke area. it was nice.
i'm in the boma today so i get internet for an hour or so ;) i biked 30k to get here and it is hilly so you know i really wanted a meat pie ;) they sell them in the boma and cold soda!!! big treats for me for the next 2years ;) we are good. i'm just trying to introduce myself to everyone in our village now and tell them that i can do health ed for them and stuff. really then i sit and wait to see what they want to do because since pc focuses on development they dont want us to start things that the community doesnt want and wont keep up, makes sense ;) i've meet with the clinic staff and shadowed the doctor and the public health officer at a under 5 outreach doing immunizations. the staff our my closest neighbors and are really great. i have sat in on an antenatal clinic with the traditional birth attendants (one is always bringing us food from her field-she's so nice--so ive made a pumpkin cake from a fire, i will be such a great camping buddy when i get back ;). i have also met briefly with a community organization that work with aids ophrans (i might do some health ed and iga's with them), a drama group that does hiv poetry performances(hopefully we can have them do performances when i speak sometimes), a ngo that does voluntary testing and conseling (they seem really put together and hopefully we will do some testing in my village sometime and gettig arvs there too ), our chief (he's really nice and very educated--he speaks better english than i do ), and much of the rest of our community ;) I have also befriended someone who sells tomatoes, so hopefully we can get those regularly. i have met briefly with some neighborhood health comittee members who i hope to work with in the future (now they our working on improvements to our place, like putting a roof on our bathroom and they made me a toilet-ish ;) our community is great. the clinic i work with is very busy. please write when you get a chance i would love to hear more from you.
love
laura