“Who ever heard of a Grandfather who can’t fix a computer?” This is one of my favorite little-kid-lines, care of Dan’s niece, Angela, who gave her Papa a whole lotta grief for his less-than-standard printing skills…. And, she has a point.

So we're going to an elephant reserve to do some overnight camping and we're going to have a little braai by the praia.

But what do you bring to meet the elephants? Pants, paints, shorts, scrabble, bathing suits? Can you bring an acoustic guitar? What if the elephants don't like the songs? Don't tell me you've never seen pissed off pachyderm? It ain't pretty. They huff, snuff, snarl and stomp their feet and flap their ears as if to fly away. Imagine something as cute and spunky as Gidget, as unpredictable as a Flying Nun, crossed with an ornery Snuffleupagus. All the while, keeping in mind, that at any time they could just walk on top of you. (There's a puzzle there somewhere). ((I think)).

Hey folks, I’m back with a blog post! This is not because I’m itching to share my personal thoughts and experiences with the public, but because the last few weeks of my life have consisted of conversations such as this:

Dan: “When are you going to post to the blog?
When?

So, in case you live in a cave (and I hope its comfy you techno-fearing luddite), here's a bit of news f or you. This just in: Blogs are becoming more and more popular. (And you thought they would just go away. D'oh!). Did any of you see the link I posted to the Blogs Of War site? (Did'ja click on it?). It has some really interesting material they have collected (everything, so they claim) about the war in Iraq and has tons and tons of comments from both the far right and far left wings of... just about everything you can imagine. (including links to marines in Iraq who are keeping blogs). Also, on a more local note, Jamy & I have begun to discover that there are a few other ex-pat bloggers here in Mozambique. For example, there is a Peace Corps Volunteer by the name of John Dutton, that is blogging his whole experience up in Chokwe, Mozambique. After reading his blog, Jamy & I contacted John and asked if we could come and visit him and his site, sit-in on some of the classes he teaches and ask a few questions of his students about their views on AIDS to help further Jamy's project. He responded with a resounding yes! (John is in a unique 'blogging situation', as he doesn't really have Internet access at his site and is having someone else maintain his blog for him... But his blog is great and his experiences really worth while reading). So, as we sat in our apartment making plans to go visit this digital stranger, John in Chokwe, that got me thinking: if John Dutton has this great blog that enabled us to find him and visit him... perhaps there are others out here in Mozambique that are also keeping blogs. (If you haven't clicked on any links yet: The community chest (aka blogster, aka dungeon master) says - You must return to the top of the page and re-read it. You do not pass go. You do not collect 200,000 metticais. BTW, what's up with the exchange rate? I'm losing my shirt on Ventnor Avinida.

Who the heck wrote that last piece? It read like a half-baked brochure put out by some park rangers so desperate to save costs they decided against building the anual firewall that surrounds the entire park (during fire season)! Oh wait, that wasn't the park rangers... it was just their officials that are supposed to be running the park (Nature Preserve, really). Oh, well. Mother nature will have her way, no matter what. As proven by Jurassic Park and that always cuddly chaos theorist, mac computer selling, supa-fly, Jeffrey Goldblom). But that is what we were up against. Wildfires (not human-flies) were burning in the Malolotja. And no, they didn't warn us when we entered the park. Sure we saw mountains on fire... I think I got the guitar out and we sang a song a about it, but we didn't think those were the mountains we would be climbing... long story short: they were.