PS: Hi!

[Not sure why this got cut off from the last post...]

But we were there to be underwater, and it was very cool. I've only been diving once and I didn't like it -- I found all the gear to be way too distracting. I'm converted. It was several days of the courses, but since all the "training dives" were on the reefs, the whole thing was pretty exciting. We saw a bunch of animals, and bunches of animals. I never really appreciated what a coral is before -- that was nice. It's like an apartment block. So cool.

We went back down to Stone Town for a couple days. Learned about the history there. It was a hub of trade around the Indian Ocean rim. Interesting how for most people through most of history, the action all happened along coasts and in the bodies of water between them. Going inland was hard and unrewarding -- maps sort of petered out in interior lands. Now it's the opposite (except maybe for the oceanographers out there). Land is where the action is, we crisscross it with highways the same way that people used to crisscross oceans along sailing routes, and crossing water now seems so difficult and unrewarding that our awareness of it sort of trails off a few miles off the coast.

Also, Swahili culture is very mixed, which is cool. Arabs, Indians and Africans lived there. It was a slaving town, but they had this custom where slaves purchased as wives became free if widowed, and the children of free men and slave wives were free. The difference from American slavery shows, it seems, how our racism was separate from (and longer-lasting than) our slavery.

The food was disappointing, all around. Nothing to be said about it, really.

We went across to a smaller island, Pemba, for the rest of the stay. We rented a scooter for a day and explored around the south of the island. Ate my last octopus, for the rest of the year anyway (new year's resolution). Talked with some shipbuilders. Went to an outlying island for a day of snorkeling and admiring hermit crabs. The island is actually a massive coral rock that rose up out of the water during some ice age. Took another scooter to the northern tip of the island to a cute little joint that was full but had a tent and a beach. Then came back, by boat and bus.

Since then the massive news has been Clara's completion of her film workshop. It was a two-week sprint to finish up the six films, with the constant traffic of cineastes from December culminating in a 48-hr sleepless session and then, on Saturday, a premiere at the French Cultural Center. It was a huge success. The films were great (some greater than others, of course, but all great) the house was packed, the workshop participants dressed for a prom, and just the right combination of earnestness and irreverence from everyone.

Otherwise, things have been continuing along. My work is going ahead. Less photogenic: here's a photo of a lady salvaging some carrots from her field after government tractors plowed it to make way for a new presidential palace.

Tomorrow we're leaving to go to Rwanda for a couple days. We've heard really interesting things about Kigali and we want to check it out. Rwanda's president apparently runs a very tight ship -- too tight, as free societies are supposed to go. So it might be interesting to see the differences between there and here. We're going for just a couple days, and then I'm going to Mali for a few weeks to follow up on stuff from last year.

Missing you all, and the snow -