For world AIDS day HHA has gone to the Maasai to treat as many people as possible in one day. I have stayed at home in bed. The sheer amount of work has finally got to me and I am exhausted and have a very sensible vertigo which means I can't get up. Davy headed off with the others early this morning to get some more film of the Maasai people and the HHA mobile clinics in operation.


I blame part of my exhaustion on the making of the news letter which has been a huge task. The news letter is a 15 minute film of Jeremy and Camilla telling the latest comings and goings of HHA and is put together with all the film Davy has taken since he got here. It is a bit like a carefully considered patchwork quilt and hopefully it will be on you tube tomorrow. There is also a six minute version which was even more work. I don't think that the short version is as good as the long version because the long version is newsy and has things to chew on and a news letter should be fat and juicy. The long version is more captivating though the short version was made for people with a short attention span. Watch the long version. I will put the link here as soon as it's up.


Since he arrived in Moshi Davy has taught himself editing from scratch and before that filming from scratch and has loyally traipsed around from clinic to clinic collecting film where he can. There was a real film crew here for a week so we know what a real film crew is like and just how many times a shot might have to be repeated to get it right. Davy is at the bottom of the pecking order here and mostly has to stay out of peoples way. He never gets to tell us where to sit for the best light or composition and he never gets to tell us to “do it again”. Everything you see in the news letter is a first take – some of it is rocky but the story gets told. There was over 60 hours of work in the editing alone and it is very much to his credit that he has stuck it out. He is fifteen after all.


Sometimes we think about the school that he is missing with regret for the subjects that he loved but there are always other things to learn. In January we return to Malawi to see our students there and teach them the next step and Davy will be one of the class again. It was an eye opener last time for him to be in a class of adults where the teacher never shouts at the students or gives them detention or lectures them on their bad behaviour. Strange world.


The other thing that is occupying our thoughts this week is the fact that the software that we all use must be updated and the license renewed by the 2^nd of December which is today. However we do not have sufficient bandwidth here to do that. It is quite possible that none of us will be able to repertorise as of tomorrow and Archibel, makers of RADAR homoeopathic software, will have successfully shut down our whole project!