Il y a toujours l'argent pour le Tchouk!

3-28-2008

12:23 in the afternoon. I’m buzzed. Wait… probably more like drunk at this point. It’s the day after the local market and everyone’s shooting the shit and having a calabash…or two…or three. In the effort of integrating into my community, I accept an invitation to go drinking. I have no idea what the conversation is about since it is all in the local language, so I am left to caress my calabash of local brew. All sorts of silly things enter my cranium when I drink, including and not limited to an unnatural sense of “Cut the bullshit. Give it to me straight. I’m tired of the games.” If only I was drunk more of the time. I can’t help but feel like one of the boys seeing as how I was the only female drinking in the mud hut with 10 other males. But I’m white, so I don’t count. God damn it. They keep refilling my calabash before I can even make it half way through my first. Somewhere in the middle of my drunken daze, they bring out a bow (as in: bow and arrow). I tell these men I can shoot, determined to show them statistically females have better aim than males. My motivation is renewed to master the art of archery! Huzzah!

I almost forgot to tell you about my adventures in rodent extermination! Actually, I didn’t forget at all. I was simply waiting for the perfect opportunity to relay the events of this morning, and what better time than after a couple calabashes of Tchouk! I speared my prey with the dexterity of hidden ninja prowess, lacerating his hind leg and cackling at his cries of pain. I trapped him under my trusty Tupperware instrument of torture and fed the little bastard to the dogs, all the while feeling especially accomplished. After all, it had taken me 3 days this time to incapacitate the vermin. Sometimes I wish I had drawn blood… perhaps next time.

So these ramen noodles I’ve prepared taste like plastic. I only say this so you can appreciate how I suffer. I’ve been reduced to drinking before noon and eating plastic pasta.

The ants (and lizards) in my house provide a valuable service to me. They clean up the droppings of food abandoned on my floor. They are like the shrimp of my underwater abode. The lizards eat the insects and the daddy long legs catch the flies, but they are doing a terrible job. So they may face demotion soon.

It’s time for a little repose.

I have taken to carrying around a handkerchief wherever I go to wipe the sweat from my brow. You will too if you people ever decide to come visit me.

(In case it wasn’t clear, this blog was written while intoxicated. I have kept everything as I originally wrote it, even if it doesn’t quite make sense.)