I got a couple pieces of jewelry for your friend today. I looked at some I really liked, but the lady wouldn't bargain very much, so I'll look around some more. I might have to give in and pay her price, but if I go back again, there maybe someone different there, who will give me a better price. This is a complicated business.

It has been raining a lot the last few days, and I was out driving so now you'll get my "Death-Defying Adventures and Basic Driver's Education Lecture".

There is still a river across the old road, so we use the new road. Someone at the Ministry of Highways decided that the opportunity to redo (notice I didn't say "improve") the road shouldn't be passed up. So now there are big piles of coral rock about every 10-20 feet down the middle of the road, and what formerly was a very bad two-lane road is now a very bad one-lane road, with as much heavy truck and bus traffic as ever. There was a bus rolled off the side of the road a few weeks ago. Last night, a truck went off the road into the bushes, with another double trailer blocking the whole road behind it. Today there was a little white pick-up that had driven underneath the rear-end of a medium-size truck (maybe his brakes were in the same shape ours are in?), and another dump truck turned over on its side in the middle of the road. It's really hard to imagine how some of these situations came to be. Maybe they just decided it needed a repair right there, and found a crew to turn it over.

With all the rain, the big potholes are all full of water, so you have to have a good memory to figure out where the little potholes, inside the bigpoles, still are. And there's a lot of soft mud, so it helps to be good at reading tire tracks, to pick out the securest path, and avoid the traps. Puts your wilderness tracking skills to use!

It feels very strange to drive on the left here, because there are usually headlights facing me up ahead. It seems that the middle of the road, or the right side of the sidewalk, or the garden next to the road, are all fair game, if that's where the best track is. And if you stay in your lane, people wonder what is wrong. The pedestrians are the most alert people I've ever seen. As you approach, they will always turn around and watch alertly until you have passed by. I used to think it was because they wanted a ride, but now I think it's because there are a lot of out-of-control vehicles on the roadway, that are a major threat to health. Anyway, next lecture: "Identifying Those with Suicidal Tendencies, or Traveling by Daladala Bus."

Your letters of 5/13 and 5/15 arrived today. There were 4 or 5 days without any mail, so I figured it must be stacking up somewhere. The last two letters mentioned an envelope of stuff, but it has not shown up yet. I hope it isn't lost. Some things must be, but most things seem to be getting through OK. There are a lot of people that haven't responded to letters, but I'm just assuming that that (Time to light a candle, as the power went off.) is them not writing. Since the electricity is off, the fan went off, so the mosquitos will probably have a heyday. A little wind from the fan seems to keep most of them away. One of these days, I will write about "Narrow Escapes from Being Eaten Alive while Sitting at the Dinner Table". Watch for it!

I can't believe that girl would give you another rat, when you killed the first one in one day. One of the guys told me that there is a nice rat colony a little north of here that gives people plague every once in a while. That reminds me-I have seen a Tanzanian rat. It was downtown on one of the back streets, near where we get ice cream cones, and it was laying in the road with its feet up in the air. I'm not kidding. Just like a cartoon! It was a big grey one, like you'd see anywhere.

When the electricity comes back on, I'll have to check and see if my elephants are purple. This candle is kind of feeble. I did get some copies of a picture of impalas, and the grass in one picture is brown and in the other copy is green. I'm impressed with how they did that. I can't remember which one is right, but I think the green one is. The place I get them developed is a 3 hour place, so I don't expect too much.

That was funny news about Biosphere. If my experience here is typical at all, they have probably all lost their appetites because they are, how shall I put this diplomatically, having difficulty appreciating the diverse aspects of each others' personalities. Boy, it will be a long time before I sign up for living arrangements like this again. Even makes me think twice about the rest home. I may go down fighting.

It's Thursday morning now, and there are half a dozen little blood stains on the sheet, where valiant maryters gave their lives for perpetuation of their kind. I think I am better at killing mosquitos while I am asleep, than I am while I am awake, or maybe there are bigger hordes of them while I am asleep. I don't know if I ever told you about mefloquine. It's the pill that I take once a week to get rid of the malaria. It gives a lot of people nightmares, but I haven't had difficulty with that. But a few nights ago, I did feel like I was being bitten all night long, and scratching, and not sleeping, but now I think maybe it was a mefloquine dream, because it was so strange, and I have never had a night like that before, or since.