We have currently 3 American couples and 3 German brothers from a Lutheran monastic order in and around Vanga, who will be celebrating Thanksgiving together Thursday evening, since we don't have the day off.Ours will be a little different from the classic Thanksgiving menu.Instead of turkey we'll be having chicken.Other years we've had rabbit and even duck.Instead of cranberry sauce, we'll have pineapple-raisin chutney.We'll have roast field corn, and summer-type vegetables.Someone will move heaven and earth to find something to approximate a pumpkin pie with, and we'll have mango and mulberry pies and probably a tropical fruit medley or sliced pineapple (it's pineapple season here).We are very thankful here.However one thing we won't be celebrating this year is the beginning of our neighbors' harvest.It is going to mature late and very few people have any peanuts developing in their fields.

This Saturday I picked my courage up in both hands and bicycled out to Mupulu,

25-28 miles from here for urgent talk to a literacy colleague (and incidentally the teachers and students we have there).Lots of road with heavy sand, puddles to manouver around and some heavily ravined canyons of road on clay slopes.God favored me with a heavy rain the night before, packing down the sand, and a relatively cool overcast day, with light sprinkles from time to time:ideal bicycling weather.In spite of it, it took me 5 hours to get there.It was a very good visit for the literacy program, and also for the agricultural cooperation between that village and Lusekele.We talked about both, mostly Sunday morning before I left.They're anxious to get this new healthy manioc from Lusekele, and are asking Lusekele what they can do to avoid disaster with the bad harvest they foresee of their protein crops of peanuts and squash or melon seeds.They have two options for the second part of the rainy season: replant peanuts and possibly lose that crop as well, or just plant cowpeas instead.On the way back a young man returning to Vanga showed me a different way, shorter with a short-cut over some steep hills and dales.Again, God only gave us strong sun the first part of the way, and we made it in under 4 hours.

Now I will have the courage to attempt going to others of the more distant villages.

Miriam