Sunday I went with Doug Funk to the Eastern Highlands which is in the North East of Zimbabwe. Doug is a great and very dear friend from Victoria. He works with the Solong Foundation as their Africa correspondent. He has a 20 ton container shipped from Victoria filled with books and school supplies. The Eastern Highlands are known as one of the most beautiful areas in Zimbabwe. The drive up was unbelievable. There wasn't a crane to lift the container off the truck so we unloaded all the boxes and hooked the container by chain onto a tree and pulled it off. This was a brilliant piece of creativity and I was impressed with the skill. We took our time driving back and stopped a some places along the way. First we stopped at Troutbeck which is an old English resort. It is on a massive property with squash, swimming, horseback riding and other activities. The bar is an old English pub which is one of the most authentic I've seen outside of England. The building is wood and stone. It's definitely a place I'd like to stay and just relax and get away. We also stopped at a fruit stand and I bought some apples, nectarines and peaches. Finally we stopped at Bonda to talk to some women who teach Batiks which is Africa painting on fabric which is made into clothing, place mats, table clothes, duvet covers etc. It's run by 4 women, part of the training includes living with the women and being apart of the community. These women help orphans in the community with food and education which would be perfect for our project as the orphans we help would be with other youth in similar situations and make friendships for life. These women run other projects that we can get involved in that would help our orphans.

In other news, there are 2 possibilities for me to use the environmental bricks. In Nyunga where we went for the container unloading, one of the places the books are going to is a library that has been donated by the community. It's a small building on a large property that they want to build on. I offered to help with the design and construction. The second is an orphanages and learning center in Chipingi. Carl was out there last week and land has been donated for this project. What is exciting about this project is that I would teach the orphans how to make the bricks and build the buildings so it would be ALL ORPHAN made.

We are interview more orphans for the house in the next few weeks and so we are buying bunk beds today so we have more space.

Missing everyone at home. Lots of love