It’s been a while since I did a picture laden post, so here goes:

I mentioned this in a previous post – the guy is carrying 60kg of maize on his shoulder. I had trouble shuffling it 20 yards along the ground. Today I came with him into town. I’m helping to set him up with a small shop and we came to get stock. Fortunately most of the items were located near the bus station, but we had to walk some distance to fetch 20 litres of kerosene. He insisted on carrying it on his shoulder, like he did the maize. I felt so self-conscious walking with him towards the bus cos it looked like I was getting a blind man to be my sherpa. I eventually insisted on carrying it the final distance – partly so he could use his stick on the uneven ground but mainly so I wouldn’t look like a complete dweeb should there be someone I know on the bus.

I’m not sure what bird this is but I was told it had been slowly dying on the side of the road for 3 days. I asked why noone had put it out of its misery and I was told that people are frightened of it as the head resembles that of a cat with human eyes and it is much prized by witch doctors and the locals fear that if they kill it then the bird’s spirit will come back and kill them. Though they clearly had no problem poking it with a stick and lifting it in the air.

I went with Gabriel and another blind man to buy him some chickens from which he can get eggs to sell and he can also sell any chicks they produce. The chicken seller kept handing me chicken after chicken and I in turn held them up and made approving grunts when they squawked after I squeezed them. I didn’t have a clue what I should be looking for. Who on my flist can differentiate between a good and a bad chicken? I ended up picking the 6 I thought were the prettiest as I thought that way they might get some cockeral action and produce him with more income. Though I’m not entirely sure that a cockeral looks for the same things I do in a mate.

I’m not sure why I’m including this pic aside from these are two of my favourite kids.

I went to a neighboruring village on Sunday to listen to watch some tribal singing and dancing. There were 3 Japanese people there in tribal facepaint. For reasons I can’t be bothered to go in to, the Japanese are very fond of this particular tribe’s music. Here one of the Japanese women is playing a local instrument. She started playing spontaneously and the crowd quickly formed. I ruined matters though by forgetting to turn the flash off on my camera. Every single person looked up at me with a nasty look on their face. I tried to pretend it was someone else by also looking behind me but it didn’t work and the crowd dispersed. It was then that I remembered from a previous trip that this village really hates photos.

This is me with Sara. Again. I quite like this photo of me – it’s a shame Sara looks less contented though.