My foolishness, and my broken camera

Yesterday morning, I went for a walk. I decided to hike past the place Aaron and I had watched the sunset two nights before and see what lay beyond. It is kind of exciting hiking over a hill and not knowing what is on the other side. Eventually the hills began to curve around the valley and I got to a point where I could see the entire valley. And, instead of walking back to OFCB along the path I had just come, I decided I would find a new path, straight down into the valley. Now, I am not exactly the most experienced outdoorsmen in the world. And I’m sure anyone with any trace of logic would know that it is probably unwise to stray off the hiking trail, "to make your own trail." But I did it anyway, out of foolishness. I got lost, so I decided to follow the river back to OFCB (which seemed like a good idea). The slopes along the river bank began getting steeper and the current faster. My only options were to keep going downstream or go back upstream and try to find another path. But I kept going downstream, and after a lot of wading in the river, and a lot of rock scaling, I found my way back onto a path that I recognized. I got back to OFCB three hours after I had left, drenched in sweat and feeling fairly stupid.

At one point going downriver, I slipped into a section of the river that was deeper than I thought, and got wet up to my waist. And my camera was in my pocket. So my camera got wet. And since then, it has not functioned properly. I can still look at pictures that I have taken but can not take any new pictures because I think there is something wrong with the lens. My camera is currently buried in a bowl of rice because Aaron said that the rice would absorb any water inside the camera. Hopefully, that will work. But for now, I am camera-less.

(one of the last pictures i took....)
















After failing miserably in our first beginner and intermediate English classes, Aaron and I came back strong in lesson two. Our beginner class now understands subject pronouns (and has an extensive vocabulary including the days of the week, the months of the year, colors and numbers!) while our intermediate class is making headway on the different tenses. I was very glad that Aaron did most of the talking for the intermediate class. I still don’t think I understand what "future perfect continuous" tense is, and the like. Before the class started, I talked for a while with Gregois, our oldest student at 48 years old. He asked me to explain the difference between the words "like" and "love," which proved to be a very difficult task given the language barrier. Aaron just watched and laughed as I tried to explain the meaning of love.

Today was the first music theory class at OFCB. About fifteen students turned out to hear me explain the difference between major and minor tones and explain basic musical notation. There was no translator in the class but, luckily, a few of the students knew a lot of musical terms in Creole (major, minor, sharp, flat, etc). So, I taught the class in English/Creole/Spanish, and they somehow understood. Amilor heard me playing some basic scales and asked me if I could play piano for church on Sundays. I said I might be able to do it if I had a hymnal, and he said he would try to find me one. So, all those years of piano lessons may have been useful for something after all.

















I walked back to my reading rock today, only to find that it is not as perfect as I thought it was. I discovered that it is only in the shade until about 8:00 am, and is only useful for early-morning reading. But, I journeyed farther up the river in search of another reading rock, and found it. And it is even better than the first one. After reading for about 20 minutes, I looked up to see four kids standing in front of me, just looking at me and smiling. They were soon joined by more of their friends, and eventually there were about fifteen kids staring at me and smiling. Not saying a word. It was kind of creepy. I received multiple requests for a photo of the first rock, but will now present photos of rock #2, with and without a multitude of kids.

(before)

















(after)

















I have woken up the last two mornings at 4:30 to the sounds of choir practice from the church. And the church is about 20 feet away from my room, so it is hard to ignore the sound and go back to sleep. I asked Amilor about it and he said, very casually, "Oh yeah. Sometimes we have choir practice and prayer meetings in the mornings." I have never heard the choir sing on Sunday mornings, and I don’t understand why they practice at 4:30 in the morning. But, apparently that’s how things go in Bayonnais.

Creole sentence of the day:You ought to use your ax. A man broke his leg yesterday becauuse he did what you are doing. - Ou dwe sevi ak rach ou. Yon nomn te kase janm li ye paske li te fe sa w'ap fe a.