Home Alone

Day 16 June 6 – Home Alone

Well normally somebody comes and knocks on my door at 8AM to tell me breakfast is ready, I don’t have an alarm. Well today nobody did and I was in bed until 11:20, oops. I totally forgot that both Dr. Ishmail and Dr. Mohamed were going to be gone today. Well I took a tour of the farm by myself, checked on my baby fry in the jar and looked around the farm. On the way I came across some donkey and cow herders who stopped so their stock could drink from the ponds. I stopped and looked at the baby donkey and the guy came up and said Salam. So I responded “Salam, Hi” he said something which of course I didn’t understand so I said “sorry I don’t understand.” Now I assumed by answering in a foreign language and looking confused the guy would stop talking; I was wrong, very wrong. The guy just kept talking, whenever he would stop I would repeat “Sorry I don’t speak Arabic”, “Sorry, I only speak English”, or “I don’t understand”. He just kept talking, I felt weird just walking away while he was talking to me so I just kind of stood there nodding along. Well eventually he ran out of steam and I wandered off….
The workers at the catfish farm invited me over for catfish dinner at 8PM. While this seems like a simple message to pass along, the language barrier is like a burning river of napalm. Using hand signals and pointing is not a good way to pass that barrier…
Well I showed up at 8 and found everyone in a small room. The room had two beds, a propane tank, satellite tv, 100 spiders, and a rug. We all sat on the rug and had a good meal of catfish with rice and tomatoes. Everyone was very nice and I even had a translator, a good time was had by all. As we finished eating and prepared for tea, the sun went under the horizon. I guess that was the signal for the mosquito D-Day, it was like somebody flipped a switch and the bugs were everywhere. I was killing them non-stop, I couldn’t stop long enough to drink my tea. Well at that very moment I was ready to go back home and avoid the carnage. Well before I could get a ride back everyone had to pray, a very interesting procedure that takes about 7 minutes. A game of pool later I went to sleep.

Fly swatters are wonderful