Mills writes on August 14th.......

Hey Momma,

Gabe has come down with Malaria, he felt it Monday morning and has been laying in bed since. As of this morning he is much better though.

Yesterday I was playing hide and seek with some local boys and I saw Louis drive up with all of his workers and their bikes on top of his Land Cruiser. I went and asked why he brought them all into town and saw that in the back of his car he had 2 cows. One had just died and the other was lame and hadn't been able to stand for a few weeks. He gifted the lame one to the church to be slaughtered and took the other away. Aubi looked at me and said, "Aye you must slaughter this cow". I started laughing and then realized he had never killed a cow before, and neither had I. Long story short, I took that new knife I ordered and while some of the locals held down the cow I cut it's throat. We then cleaned the cow and butchered it. The funny thing is that the only thing that goes to waste is the actual waste in side the cow, the things that were in line to get sent out of it's body. Everything else is used. I asked Aubi (ignorantly) if we would just bury the head in the field and he laughed and said no they would eat it. He said they even eat the ears! For my part in cleaning it I asked for the hide, instead of meat. I want to maybe make a drum or something. We will see. I just laughed though, these locals were very afraid to kill the cow, and then once it was dead they jumped on in and helped skin and divide the meat. Sorry I didn't take any pictures.....

Yao is the local language of this part of Mozambique and Southern Malawi. It's not the national language of Malawi though, that is Chicewa(spelling?). It is very African, no Latin influence like Portuguese. Which makes it very very hard to learn. I asked Aubi when eating at his house last night how many languages he speaks. It was 8. Very humbling, most of the languages are African languages that take people many years to learn. Yao is extremely difficult for outsiders to learn and take many many
years.

I gotta run send this before we lose our window to connect to the server in SA.

I love you and look forward to the email that is probably waiting on me there from you. haha

Mills