Rachel was in M preparing a program in environmental education for some of her teenage friends. She sounded great this morning (her evening) and got to talk to Kevin, another friend, and had a long chat with mom. She had some amazin stories to tell, as usual (see above or below). Her second project the rice-hulling machine that would serve several villages is now up on the Peace Corps website–not with the good description that is on this blog, unfortunately. She really hopes it will get funded and so does the butterfly-grower who was a friend of Rachel’s predecessor and is now one of Rachel’s contacts. Rachel visited him recently and saw his two potbellied pigs–very thin because there are no scraps for them to eat; the villagers consume everything and leave very little that can be fed to animals. The pigs, it turns out, are fed on rice hulls, and their owner has problems finding enough rice hulls to feed them. He has to go a long way to find any right now and has no way to bring back enough for the poor pigs. The rice-hulling machine Rachel hopes to get funded would be located relatively near him so the pigs would have more to eat–and the humans would profit in other ways.