these are the days of our lives

I just fried myself an egg and accidentally poured white wine vinegar in the pan instead of olive oil. Aha! - I just caught several of you thinking: "She has white wine vinegar??" Indeed. We're not savages.

Well, the real reason is because I'm at Marina's house for a few days, working with our partners here in Beira again. (And she probably bought it in Joburg, South Africa.) Anyway, the point of this post is to tell you that on Monday I am traveling to Niassa province which is in the far, far north of Moz to investigate about a potential HIV project up there.

Niassa is really far away. It's shorter to cut through Malawi, but apparently a big hassle to cross their border so we're going the long way around, mostly on dirt roads. Luckily, we got ahold of the Pajero for the week, which is similar to driving a small continent. It's truly fine riding, if you go for the "rich expat taking the easy way out, thus avoiding 4 days of interminable, bumpy, dusty, bladder-stretching, share your seat with a
chicken public transportation" approach. I do. Absolutely.

Sara is coming with me and we're also giving a ride to several local ladies. We're meeting Youngson, the pastor I'm working on this project with, halfway up, near Malawi. He's never actually been to Niassa before, and these are very, very rural communities we're visiting, so we will be tenting during the week. Luckily, Leslie recently mailed me some Fruit-by-the-Foot ("Berry Tie-Dye Fruit Flavored Snacks, Naturally Flavored, Can't Beat 3 Feet! With Tongue Tattoos!"), so I'll bring a couple of those along in case the car breaks down. I believe a human could live quite a long time on maltodextrin and corn syrup, if it came down to it, I mean.

(In full disclosure, I specifically requested Fruit-by-the-Foot from Leslie.)