The dry and "cold" season has begun. I am hoping that contour-ridging on my farm has managed to save enough moisture to push through my remaining crops: a little bit of wheat, broccoli and sunflowers.

My main activities these days have been AIDS-related. I just finished a seminar for a group of about 15 out-of-school youth who were interested in becoming AIDS educators. I looked forward to teaching them every day because they were pretty enthusiastic, and so grateful for my time. Tomorrow we are having a pretty big party for those who passed the test to become AIDS educators. They organized the whole thing and invited all the village leaders from surrounding areas. I only have to provide them with certificates. There is rice involved, and you know that if there is rice involved in any kind of party, it must be pretty special. I'd say it's pretty much the same way a birthday cake makes a birthday party.

There was also a big village-wide meeting that came at the request of another NGO which is apparently giving money for AIDS education. The point of the meeting was to determine why villagers thought AIDS was so prevalent in the area. They divided into groups and then were supposed to say what caused AIDS. Topping the list was drunkenness, followed by "careless sexual practices," which I took to mean without a condom, but there was absolutely no mention of condoms outright. It was a very interesting learning experience for me. I gave a short speech about life skills, AIDS testing, and stigma about AIDS, but was careful not to alienate myself by bringing up the topic of condoms. On Thursday, all interested villagers are invited to a lesson about AIDS, which will mainly be determining what they want and need to know about the disease. But I will be very surprised if anyone shows up. Farm work has died down, but there have been so many deaths in the village recently (averaging 2 per week for the last month) that it has been hard to get any work done.