"Tu vais pagar muito, tu vais pagar muito," the young policeman muttered: "You're going to have to pay a lot!" I pretended not to understand him. While he called for backup, I tried to look as ignorant – and innocent – as possible. We were stopped at a police checkpoint on our way back from the beach. Even though the police do have vehicles here, they periodically set up impromptu checkpoints along major roads, just to check that random drivers' papers are in order. They don't stop everybody – just the first ones to pass after finishing checking the paperwork of the last driver. I knew all my papers were in order. ADRA is quite religious about this. What may have thrown him was my Florida driver's license. By way of small talk while we waited for his supervisor to arrive, the policeman looked in my window and asked, "Have you been at the beach?" I told him that I had. "Where is your shirt?", he asked me. "In the back seat," I replied; I don't like putting clothes onto salty skin, so I had been driving with my shirt off. "You will have to pay a lot," he repeated. "You can't drive without a shirt here." I suppressed the urge to point out to him that I had indeed just successfully done so. When the supervisor arrived, he just glanced at the papers, looked at the ADRA logo emblazoned on the side of our vehicle, told me, "Put your shirt on," and then let me go. ADRA is such a well-respected organization here that we virtually can do no wrong!

The beginning of August was extremely difficult for the AWARE project. There were many things that made it so, but the biggest was having to fire somebody from my team. It happened like this. Mr. A. was a high-level staff member that I had appointed during the Costa's absence (they left for a six-week annual leave shortly after we got here). He was in charge of coordinating all of the training sessions for the project, so I could devote more of my time to advising the rest of the team, report-writing, and liaising with our donor and parent agency. As it turned out, he hadn't been as much of an independent self-starter as I had hoped he would be to begin with; I had to constantly cover for him, pick up after his mistakes, compensate for his inexperience. That's not necessarily his fault; perhaps we appointed him beyond his qualifications. Nevertheless, he was regularly demonstrating that he was not the best person for the job. I had been vacillating between taking the time and effort to train him in or replace him with a more qualified person (the latter being the quicker option, in a project that I inherited as already being quite a bit behind schedule). Then things fell apart.

While preparing our first training session, Mr. A. recommended a specific catering service to provide drinks and snacks for a mid-morning coffee break. He said that it belonged to his neighbor, and the price he quoted ($100) was really good for a one-week training. As the price was less than the $300 limit beyond which we must get three competitive price quotes for services rendered, I approved the catering service without actively seeking other bids. Then, at the end of the week, red flags started to go up. I received a bill for $500. When I protested that the price was $100, Mr. A. said that that was the price for one day of catering. When I looked at the price quote I had approved earlier in the week, I realized to my chagrin that it definitely did not claim to be for the whole week. It didn't claim to be for one day, either, so it was at best ambiguous. But the service had already been rendered, so I reluctantly agreed to pay. Then Mr. A. asked for the check to be made out in his name, saying that he'd pass it on to the catering service. Ding! Ding! Ding! Warning bells! I flatly refused, making the check instead in the name of the company and giving it directly to the man who came the next day to pick it up.

Over the weekend, the whole scam unfolded. The catering service we had used belongs to Mr. A. himself. He had contracted his own company to render a service to his new employer. Talk about a conflict of interest! How could he ensure that he was doing his utmost to get ADRA the best price if he had a vested interest in making money off of the deal? Moreover, he lied to me to cover it up, saying that it was his neighbor's business (a fact that made it hard to believe that he didn't know what a "conflict of interest" was or that it was wrong, as he later claimed). Obviously, we immediately ejected him from my team, but that left the entire responsibility for the following week's trainings squarely on my shoulders, when I could ill afford to assume his workload in addition to my own. Needless to say, we stayed barely one step ahead of disaster during that second week of training (we uncovered many instances where Mr. A. had failed to make proper arrangements, though he had told me that it was all taken care of), and I got very little sleep.

But, we succeeded! The remaining AWARE team members were a tremendous support, and because we rallied together, we pulled it off. The training sessions in question had been geared toward reinforcing other local NGO's abilities to do their work better, so as to multiply the positive effect of the AWARE project. Local NGO's – many of whom exist only on paper and have no skills, experience, or money – received expert training in finance and accounting, project proposal, and monitoring and evaluation from consulting services that we contracted. One of the consultants we contracted is a very prominent man here in STP, Dr. Carlos Tiny. A medical doctor by training (in Portugal), he has served as the Minister of Health for his country, ambassador from STP to Portugal, UNICEF and WHO regional director, and many other impressive titles on his resume. Dr. Tiny and I both gave speeches (in Portuguese) on national television at the closing ceremony for our training sessions. If you visit the ADRA blog at http://adrast.blogspot.com/, you will see an entry at the top (which I wrote) including a video clip of the national television news coverage of the training sessions.

Zachary turned 2 years old on August 3. In Kiš family style, we held a string of parties over several weeks (instead of one big party), inviting neighbor kids to one, non-neighbor friends to another, and just family to still another. Kristi's parents were in town for the biggest bash, her mom just having arrived that day for a visit (her father arrived a week earlier). There was an American missionary family (Baptist) present with their two daughters (age 2 and 4), the Central SDA Church pastor and his wife with two of their three children (age 2 and 9), and the Costas, with their 2-year old son. We recently met two other families with 2-year-old boys (a Catholic charity worker and the director of the United Nations Development Programme), but at this age, when you invite one kid, you get two parents along, too. For every child invited, at least 3 people come (more, if there are siblings)! Since Kristi was the one cooking and organizing the party, she capped the guest list at her tolerance level. Zachary had a blast at his party, and so did the other kids; at this age, this primarily consists of shrieking when you're excited, shrieking when you can't play with the same toy your friend is using, shrieking when you're tired, and shrieking when you see that it exasperates your parents, who are trying to have a conversation (for the first time in a week) that rises above, "Do you need to go poopie in the potty?"

We have a special announcement to make: we've got another family member on the way! We just found out on the same weekend that Kristi's dad arrived. Her due date is somewhere around April 5, by our calculations. No, we don't know the baby's sex yet. But we're quite excited, nonetheless – Zachary included. We figured we wouldn't tell him until Kristi was really showing, since his attention span might not last 9 months. But when he tried crawling all over Kristi while she was laying down (as he usually does) and it was worrying her, she told him she had a baby growing inside of her. He took this bit of news wide-eyed and serious. Ever since, he's been lovingly patting her belly whenever he gets a chance, kissing the "baby", and saying, "Baby, Zachawy love you!", as well as telling the baby all about his day ("Baby, Zachawy fell down after Ginga mopped"; "Baby, Zachawy see airplane grandma grandpa goodbye!").

Kristi's mom and dad came for two weeks each this month. Her dad came one week before her mom, and her mom left one week after her dad, so we had family visiting for three whole weeks. It was nice having some familiar faces around, and getting to show our extended family our new home in paradise. For the one week where both parents overlapped, I took a weeklong vacation from work so we could tour the island. We took them to our favorite haunts: the Boca de Inferno seawater blowhole, Cascata S�o Nicolau waterfall, the abandoned Boa Vista hotel with an incredible view from up in the mountains, our two favorite beaches – Praia das Conchas and Sete Ondas, the four-star Miramar Hotel Sunday brunch, the equally lovely Marlin Beach Hotel swimming pool just down the hill from our house.

We also did something new for all of us: drove down the west coast of the island until the road ends. There is no navigable road on the southwest side of the island (same goes for Príncipe, and same goes for Kauai where we honeymooned, now that I think about it), but the road down the west coast goes halfway there. The west coast is much drier than the east, resembling the African bush that I know and remember from Benin, Guinea, and Malawi. The east coast is so lush that you think you're in Hawaii or Puerto Rico. The west coast lets you know for sure that you're in Africa, with its sweeping grasslands and squat baobab trees. The dry hills, though, are sometimes reminiscent of California, including the rugged coastline and distant views. And the ever-present sea takes on gorgeous hues during the very picturesque drive.

The gravana is now officially over. Remember, the gravana was the 3 to 4 month long cool, dry season. "Dry" season is a joke here; Saotomeans have no idea what a real dry season looks like. Sure, the rains were greatly diminished (only one rainfall every 2 or 3 weeks, instead of every day like the rest of the year), but that's nothing like the absolute absence of even one drop of rain for 6 months, like you find in the Sahel. Nevertheless, a few weeks ago, we got an absolute downpour for almost the entire day. Since then, we've had several more, and the grasses, which were starting to wilt slightly (but never reached the brown brittleness of a drought) perked right back up. Along with revitalized grass, the rains brought hordes of newly-hatched flying ants, mice invading our house (we're killing at least one per week now with a broom), and those giant burrowing land crabs that can bring a house down with their subterranean excavations. In fact, upon arriving at the Marlin Beach Hotel swimming pool during our last visit, I discovered one of those giant fellows resting quietly on the bottom of the pool. I couldn't tell if he was dead or not (not knowing whether or not he was exclusively land-dwelling, and had drowned), but then he scuttled along, eyeing me warily, so I called the hotel staff, who obligingly scooped him out with a net. He angrily climbed up out of the net and fell to the grass, clacking and waving his claws threateningly.

We've had power outages here recently. Actually, the electrical system is stunningly good here, compared to almost everywhere else we've visited in Africa. With the abundant rainfall and equatorial sun, you'd think electricity was generated hydroelectrically or with solar panels. Unfortunately, it's generated the same way we generate our own when the city power does fail – diesel fuel. Giant generators growl day in and day out somewhere in the city, powering everybody's needs almost without interruption. But suddenly last week, there was a crisis in the power supply. We were getting electricity only every other day. Word quickly spread that EMAE, the local power company, had been getting fuel on credit from their diesel supplier, since they couldn't pay their bills. The diesel supplier finally said, "Enough! No more credit! If you want fuel, you have to pay." EMAE, on the other hand, was quick to pass the blame to the government. The government, EMAE explained, demands power at all times at all costs. Yet they are much slower with payment for energy consumed than they are to demand more. So EMAE has been giving the government energy on credit, leading to their cash shortage which requires them to procure fuel on credit. Everybody blames everybody else. And while they argue, we go without city power every other day. It seems to have eased a bit now – we're getting electricity a little more regularly again, but it's probably only a temporary reprieve.

That's all for now, folks. I've posted some new pictures to my website at http://www.geocities.com/adamkis18/ under the folder entitled "Newest Pictures". I've also moved the last batch of pictures into folders by categories.

Until next tome,

Adam