In an octopus’s garden near a cave

Well, as of Sunday I’ve been in country for four months. September feels like it was a lifetime ago. Although the first few months here seemed to drag by painfully slowly, I have a feeling that time’s going to fly by now that I’ve started teaching. I had my first week teaching at the teacher’s college last week, and I’m really happy with how it went. There’s one group of advanced students who knows how to use computers impressively well. They have either taken classes before or have computers at home, as right off the bat they’re at the point where I can start teaching some pretty cool stuff.

The vast majority of students, however, had never touched a computer before. At first I was a little worried that I’d find teaching ultra basics mind numbingly boring, but surprisingly it’s quite the challenge. I have to break even the simplest concepts down completely (we’re talking click the left mouse button, simple… I fear for when we get to the double click)… and I have to do it in Swahili, as most of the students speak minimal English. The whole thing is kind of a head trip. The first week went well though. Many of the students were wary about using the machines at first, but by the end of each class everyone was truckin’ right along. The students were all great sports as I massacred their language, and they didn’t seem to hold the fact that I’m the same age as they are against me. I gotta say though, it’s nice to finally be doing what I came all the way out here to do. We’ll see how my sophomore effort next week goes over. No teaching for me this past week as I'm out sick with a wicked case of malaria. 104 fever, anemia, body aches, unbelievable exhaustion and nausea… basically I feel exactly like bad. Being really sick all alone in Africa was pretty scary, but I’m on the mend slowly now. Kidogo kidogo as the folks here say, (means little by little).

Teaching, the four months in country mark, and malaria aside… the real excitement of the last couple weeks was octopus hunting. That’s right, octopus hunting! This past Saturday I trekked down to the southern part of the island to visit one of the Peace Corps health volunteers in his village. Don, (and his site mate Chris), are the other two Peace Corps folk on the island aside from me and mike. I arrived just in time to see some of the locals manage to get an old wreck of a truck running and proceed to tear circles around a field. Pretty ridiculous. They were loving it. Kinda reminded me of home… oh Maine.




The next morning Chris came by, and the three of us headed off towards the ocean. Don had met some fishermen from his village who’d agreed to meet and teach us how to hunt octopus. The half-hour trek through field and forest was not particularly pleasant, (and the trek back was particularly unpleasant), but eventually we reached the water.





We met up with the fishermen down at the water, and after waiting for the tide to go down we all waded on coral until we were a good half a mile out into the Indian Ocean. It was incredibly hot out there in the open sun, (I managed to cultivate quite the sunburn by the end of the morning), but it was absolutely breathtaking. Felt like we were walking on an alien planet.




We had to take it slow getting out there, as the coral was speckled with hundreds of spiky sea urchin land mines. Don and I were fortunate enough to avoid them… Chris was not so lucky.



Once we got out a ways, the octo hunt began. During low tide the octopi take shelter in little cracks and caves in the coral. It’s hard to spot them, but the local fishermen are really good at noticing the little bubbles that rise out of the octopus homes. Whenever we found a live cave we’d stab these small metal spears into the hole. It takes a couple of tries, but you know you’ve hit the mark when the water fills with bellows of black ink. At that point it’s only a matter of time for poor ol’ octy.



Often enough the octopi were still alive when removed from their holes. To rectify these situations our guide had a nice habit of beating the hell out of the critters with the metal spears. Problem solved! Don was clearly enthused:



After a few hours the hunt was over and we headed back. On the way home our guide showed us how to gut and clean the day’s kills.



So there you have it. Octopus hunting in Africa. And now I'm off to lie down for awhile. Malaria is no one’s friend.

Mpaka mara halafu, (until next time)!