Toenails

so im back in the regional capital after another short stint in the village. i was there for only a week and now i came back up here to do some emailing, buy some garden materails, and drink some beer. oh cold beer... really ive started enjoying the simple delights of cold drinks such as cokes or beer. in the village i drink water, room temperature water from my filter. occasionaly i get alittle wild and add some foster clarks which is a drink mix like koolaid but without the familiar nastalgia of koolaid. and it doesnt taste the same. none the less that is when im feeling a bit wild and need to spend money. yea so i literally dont spend money in the village. ok not true, i buy a bucket of water each day which costs me the equivelent of one american penny. other than that my needs are taken care of. there really isnt much to spend on. we have a small boutique with rice, suagr, candles, and matches for your daily hut needs but i dont really need much of that. so after a couple days i just feel the compulsion to spend money, for really no other reason than because im american and thats what we do. so i ride my bike , if it doesnt have flat tires which it currently does, numbers 3 and 4, 5k into a neighboring village to charge my phone, learn alittle woloof, and drink a cold coke. but hey im pumping money into the economy right?
so i ate lizard the other night. no kidding. about 2pm the talibey, the young boys who live in my compound, work in the familys fields, and learn the koran from my host father, come waltzing in from the fields with this lizard, about 2 feet long, 8 inches in diameter, head chopped off just hanging lifelessly from omars hands. they couldnt wait to show me what they had. they throw the lizard onto my mat to show me what they had caught and the thing splatters down spraying blood onto my sandals. i didnt know what to say. i wasnt so worried about the blood as i was in disbelief that there was a lizard that big and it looked so fake. it looked like a rubber toy i would have played with. anyways that night, after dinner which was a delicious meal of neverdie tree leaves, peanuts, and sorghum (sarcasm) the boys decide it is their turn to do some cooking. so using the campfire we have most nights that they use for reading light to study the koran and pray, the chopped up the lizard, got a nice concotion of spices and onions from my mom, and boiled the sucker. i had a fellow PC friend in the village for the night and he was captivated. he lives in a city with woloofs and had always heard that pulaars love lizard but had never actually seen it. well so it boiled, and it smelled awful. just terrible. but these boys were having the time of their life and couldnt wait to dig in. naturally being the wonderful people that they truely are (no sarcasm, i really enjoy these kids) they offer me one of the finer peices of the lizard, a leg. of course im going to have to try it but a leg? scales still on... toenails still attached.... it felt like a rubber toy. and it was spicey, i dont know what they put on it but it tasted like chewy, spicey, chicken. i guess.... i dont know, but i liked it.
last bit of news, my garden is beginning to take shape. i have a huge plot that is 20m by 10m with a nice sacket sorghum fence. think corn stalks attached together with three bark used as rope. it is what all the fences are made of in villages. there are some holes that need patching so i can keep out the baby goats, kids, and the chickens. those damn chickens and roosters keep me up at all hours of the day. anyways my hands are terribly torn up from spending two daysd ripping up weeds from my plot and starting sunday i am going to begin plowing and seeding, hopefully be done by monday. im going to have some beans, tomatoes, cabbage, salad, basil, and of course my new favorite food item in the world, watermelon. its going to be sad in a month when the wtermelon season is over. hopefully not too long until papaya, cashew, and mango season. we shall see.

enjoy america everyone. it truely is a wonderful place despite all of its obvious problems. enjoy cold beers and cheeseburgers, daily if you have the opportunity. everyone here wants to be there and im sure few of you want to be here so.... do the math. alright enough of that stuff... so yea, go colts. broncos fans are losers... i wish i was in vail skiing 25inches of pow.