More Interesting Beliefs and a Funny

A funny thing happened to me the past week. I was walking down the road while talking with a woman from the group with which I work. As we were approaching the school, we saw a man who was grasping at things in the air and making what I would call very slow-action karate moves. I asked the woman what had happed to him or what was wrong. She said that “He’s a drunk and is already drunk today.” It was only 10:00am but to his defense I do not think it takes much of the local moonshine for one’s socks to be knocked off. I said to the women “It sure is sad to see people who are so drunk like him. They drink away the little money that the family has and waste their day.” She said, “He is usually like this.” I wondered and asked, “Do you see him regularly like this and does he live in our community?” She replied without hesitation, “Yeah, he’s my dad!”
I paused for a second and then apologized for what I had said, but said she agreed with me and had asked him to stop his drinking habits.

Another interesting thing happened just two nights ago when we had a complete lunar eclipse (how beautiful it was). Prior to the night of the eclipse, I gave many explications as to why an eclipse occurred and spread the word that one was coming. I figured it was something noteworthy since the next one won’t come til 2015.
That night after dinner, I watched it from the start to its climax when a ring is formed around a dark moon. Well as I was watching the eclipse and the moon was more than halfway covered by the Earth’s shadow, I noticed that someone in the house was banging on a pot. I just ignored this though because I was so focused on the beauty of the clear sky, almost free from light pollution, full with billions of stars, the shooting stars, and of course the moon.
After getting done talking with a friend, I realized that the whole community was making a racket. People were banging pots, hitting their tin roofs, smacking boards, and doing whatever else to make noise. The usual tranquil nights filled with the occasional squeal of the pig, bark of the dog, and crow of the rooster (we have a special rooster which enjoys crowing more than just at dawn) was now transformed into a festive, fantastically loud affair. I myself was impressed with the banging because it was not just a few soft taps for a few minutes; it was a good 60 or 70 hard beats for over an hour.
I soon asked what was gong on hypothesizing that it had something to do with the eclipse – it certainly did. People were making such loud noises to ward off the sea monster which was attempting to eat their moon. They believed that this beast was going to eat the moon and leave them without light for the rest of their nights to come; thus they made the noise in hopes that they could scare the animal to save their beloved moon.
Along with this belief that surrounded the eclipse was another. The people believed that the water was made impure or dirty because of the eclipse and that people could not bathe in this water for about 2-3 days. Since I have been playing basketball every evening along with working during the day, I passed on not taking a bath. I felt it was the best interest of everyone if I were taking my bucket-baths.
I should point out that not everyone completely believed that an eclipse was occurring because a beast was attempting to eat the moon or that you could not bath. These were beliefs more held by the older population. Why many may not have completely believed, they certainly still did act upon these older beliefs.



So I think as I had said before, one of my the things I am donig right now is making compost piles with the group of women in my aldea. Hopefully from here, we will be able to start making compost piles in the yards of all the women so that they will have some good soil to work with when the rains come in May. Here is a picture of the area we would use for the compost pile before we started putting all the ingredients in. We had to make this fence like structure because the dogs and pigs run free eating and destroying what they can.
Here are 2 pictures of some of the women of the group watching as one waters down the all the dried leaves and green leaves and manure we put in.