Dear family and friends,

Today Barbara and Jeremy wanted to go to the town market to get some last minute shots of the local people living their everyday lives. Saturday is a very busy day there. Hundreds of people set up stalls or blankets to sell everything-fruits and vegetables, hand-made shoes, cloth and cloths, jewelry, trinkets, you name it. It looks much like our giant flea markets. They were trying to film and all of the sudden 2 police motorcycles with 2 men on each pulled up around our vehicle and they thought they were going to be arrested for filming. After much talk in Swahili, it turned out that our driver, Efrem, explained they told him he was illegally parked. Efrem pretended that he was not parking but just driving through, badly albeit, while Jeremy and Barb hid the camera and were shaking in their boots. It was an exciting start to the day!

We interviewed Florentina for the film today. She is an amazing woman. A brief bio: she was born here in the village of Uru East, educated in Sweden with scholarship help, married her husband there and raised 2 biological and 2 adopted children. She was a social worker in Sweden for 27 years. After her children were adults, she returned to her homeland to care for her aging mother (who lived to 106!) By the time her mother died, Florentina had started her own travel agency business, supporting the local tourism and employing many guides, porters and drivers for climbing and safari. She then decided she had to stay here to help the people. It was truly a calling. She is a woman's advocate, a very respected elder in the community and has recently started her own volunteer organization. We have so much love and admiration for her. We could not have accomplished anything here without her cooperation, connections and complete support in our project.

We finished our afternoon with shopping at a few small stores. Then tonight there was a big surprise. The whole time we have been here, Florentina has had workers building a beautiful covered deck on the side of the house. (By the way, everything was done by hand- sawing, planing and sanding all the wood!) The ladies surprised all of us by moving the dining room furniture out to the finished deck along with lit candles, a wonderful dinner and Amarula to toast with! A final feast together to celebrate our friendship and all that we have accomplished.

Until tomorrow...

Margie, Chris, Barb, Jeremy and Matt