Its been an interesting and eventful month since I last posted. Filled with both good and bad. Lets start with the good though… For the last month I have been swimming with Whale Sharks several days a week. For anyone who knows me and my love for marine life you can imagine how big of a deal this has really been. After swimming with a shark for the first time, the closest thing I can compare it to is catching your first wave. I was just so stoked and about to explode with energy and excitement. The first several trips where just for research and documentation. Our crew consisted of world renown under water photographers and an award winning film maker. And then of course me for some reason… regardless of my undefined role at the time I quickly began to prove my self useful, with my general boatmanship and knowledge of marine life. During these first couple of trips a documentary was filmed about the tagging expeditions we were doing and I am very excited to say I will be featured in it. Truly a dream come true for me. Our recent whale shark expeditions have been paid tours for the general public. We take people out and if we are lucky enough to find a shark they get to swim with it. This helps finance future pure research expeditions. The person who founded The East African Whale Shark Trust and who heads all these expeditions had a child last week and I was have been entrusted with running these tours by myself while he is away. I was of course very happy to help and honored he had the confidence in me to do so. Socially I have been very busy it seems every weekend there is a party, unfortunately many of them have been goodbye parties….This brings me to the bad.

Recall the friends important enough in my life that I felt the need to mention them by name in my previous blog? Well Malti, Jack and Dash have left. Adrian, Ben and all the rest of the Navy guys will be gone by the end of April. So yea that leaves just me Bash and Nick. On a lighter note however, I have met someone new that I very much enjoy spending time with; but we will save that for another time. Malti leaving came as no surprise and we had plenty of goodbye parties for him. Jack and Dash however, received less than 24 hours notice that they had been reassigned and where to ship out. Unfortunately I was not even able to say goodbye to them in person. We assume they are on their way to Libya but obviously they could not disclose that. I wish all those boys all the best and a safe return. Moving on, remember my water project I was so proud of? Well its all but dead. The water is more seriously contaminated then I originally thought and my school is completely apathetic when it comes to trying to fix it. I have been telling them exactly what needs to be done for weeks now. Initially they planned on ignoring the problem and wanted me to continue to sell it. Obviously, I sternly told them I would not be involved in any distribution until the problem was fixed. My only small victory as of late has been that I have finally convinced them that the water is too contaminated to sell and they have ceased production. They tell me things like “be patient” and ‘we are waiting on some money to come in” but the truth is that I have clearly outlined for them the necessary steps needed to fix our issues and it really seems like they just don’t care. It’s a shame really, the project had so much potential but lack of proper planning and lack of motivation by the school have shut it down.

All right enough bitching. That is just life in Peace Corps, something I was well prepared for. A few months down the line I will begin a new project hopefully with better results. If nothing else I did learn a lot from the experience and that’s what life in the Peace Corps is all about; experiences. On that same note, I do and will continue to miss my friends. This will be an interesting first weekend without any roll dogs but I am sure it will be fine. The truth is I am incredibly happy and loving life right now! I live in a beautiful incredible place filled with beautiful incredible people. Oh yea, that reminds me…. with the assistance of my new friend I was able to REALLY surf yesterday. She has a 6’6” roundnose with a tri-fin setup. Pretty much a mini long board. It was really fun and the waist high waves were perfect for it. With surfing back in my life I literally could not be any happier right now. Miss and love everyone, start planning trips to see me!

Dino