Feb 26 Dinner

Feb 26 Dinner

Dinner in a local home: we sat on the floor and ate with one of the neighbors (a man). Neither the man that had invited us nor his family ate with us. Served to the three of us was enough food for a small army. There were large crabs and three dishes with shrimp from small to 5 inches or so, all caught in the river. There were also fish from our ponds. After we finished eating, I asked again to meet his wife. Reluctantly she and two other neighbor women came in and sat with us for awhile and talked. I held one of the babies on my lap and he promptly watered it. They asked if I wanted to hold the other baby and I asked if she would pee on me also. They said no because she had pampers. One of the neighbors invited me to come back anytime. I think it would be easier to interact with the women with a female translator.

 

Yesterday when I came home and someone asked how my day was, I said – just another normal day here, troubles, difficulties, and set-backs. The water gate had just been finished and the pond was almost pumped out, so the next difficulty was deciding how much black mud needs to be removed. I went by the pond to pay the workers and get a mud sample to take to the aquaculture center so I could consult with someone there. My translator was not feeling well and I wasn’t expecting to need him, so I left him at the house to rest. When I got to the ponds, there was more water in the pond than last week. This isn’t supposed to happen. Turns out, water was leaking around the outside of the water gate (between the gate and the pond wall. I pictured the side washing out and the river filling up the pond again (it was high tide). I called the translator and asked him to call the supervisor (of the workers) and tell him what was happening. So the workers came and started digging next to the gate where the leak was. So now I’m picturing that when they dig down far enough, the river comes rushing in. So I called the translator to explain the situation and told him to tell the supervisor to have them stop digging until low tide, then handed the phone to the supervisor. I couldn’t think how they could fix the leak with the river ready to come rushing in. Frustration! Later that night, I realized somehow they build the walls with the river there, so they must know how to repair it. The next day when I came to the ponds the leak had been fixed. So I’ve concluded, maybe I shouldn’t get so freaked out about these “little” set-backs.