People gave Madonna a lot of heat for adopting a baby from Malawi, but in the middle of all that mess she said something that rang true for me. She said, more or less, that anyone who set foot in Malawi and saw those children would want to adopt them. The same holds true for Angola. Kids here are just great. Sure, there are a few bad apples, but that’s the way they are every where.

Kids here are just fun. They love to jump around and do flips and can make a toy out of anything- mostly because they have no toys. Adults here spend a lot of time with children, but not in the way that we do in the States. There’s not a lot of reading or imagination work going on, so kids here really like any sort of fun attention from adults. The times I've played with kids, there's an initial skepticism- "what is this branca doing?" But then they get into and ask when I am coming back to play with them.

Last Sunday we had a small party at Juan’s house. He lives in front of the beach and near a squatter’s building, so a couple of kids wandered over to see the what the white people were doing. Our friend Ze Maria had opened his car to blast kizomba, the most popular music in Angola, and they kids went crazy. I had been taking pictures of the kids, and then I told them to dance and took a little video of them. Very cute. If you look at the video, the stuff the kids are using as sunglasses is a roll of film negatives.

This is the first time I'm trying a video, so let me know if this doesn't work!