Fast Times in Village Life… Ok, maybe more just Funny Times…

We were sitting in our compound working on language (as usual…) and talking with our brother when we saw the chief get up and start to go into his hut. He paused at the door and began shifting his weight back and forth like he was dancing. (Remember the chief is a very old man highly respected in the community.) I’d never seen him bob around like that, so we continued to watch him. Then we heard a chicken squawking from inside the hut and Chief was cutting him off from the exit. It wasn’t long before this skinny old man had snatched up his prey with incredible speed and began beating the tar out of it with his free hand. One look at our brother and all of us fell over laughing hysterically. I’d never seen a chicken taking its spankings like one of the kids before…

The other night we were preparing to eat our typical meal of To and Sauce, washing our eating hand in the small bucket and digging in… Reaiah was trying to pass the water/hand washing bucket over to me and some spilled into the bowl with the To in it. (Side note—To is bird seed, pounded into flour and mixed into a super thick mashed potato consistency, k… got the picture? actually its not nearly as bad as it sounds) So, me being the genius thought it a good idea to dump the water back out of the To… I mean, I don’t want to eat wet, soggy mush, now do I? Course not, so I pick up the bowl and tilted it to let the water run out of the side, with my hand bracing the patty of To in the bottom of the bowl. Apparently I didn’t have a good enough hold on the To, though, cause it only took one little shake of the bowl and the whole patty (our whole meal..) of To dumped right out onto the rocks, upside down. Now our younger brother was watching all of this little drama and just died laughing when he saw me ruin our dinner. We quickly retrieved as much of the To as could be saved from the small rocks and dirt that now covered one side of it. (Course, me and Reaiah were laughing even more because we knew that neither of us were all that sad to lose some of the To, like the little kids who secretly wish they could some how sneak some of the unwanted veggies into the napkin and throw it away later… now, we would never actually intentionally dump out our To, which was prepared carefully by our wonderful sister, whom we appreciate… but that just made it funnier cause it really was an accident). Instead, brother just went and got some more from another bowl and gave it to us, and we still ate our gritty, rocky To that night…

Not long after we got in the village, we noticed that the chief stopped eating dinner. I thought, well, he’s a very old man, perhaps he just isn’t hungry this late in the day and we often have an afternoon snack of rice just an hour or so before dinner, so maybe he just can’t eat that much. Well, one day it was almost time for our sister to bring us our dinner of To and Sauce when the chief offered us some food that he had. It is polite manners here to invite everyone within earshot to join you when you eat, but the normal response is “No thanks, I’m full” whether you’re actually full or not. Knowing our food was on its way, we said thanks, we’re full, and continued to wait. Once our own food (To) arrived, we, of course, called him to join us. His response was something like an emphatic ‘uh-uh! (no way, I ain’t eating that!) I’m full.’ We couldn’t keep from bursting out laughing, and he just smiled and settled back into his chair.