A boa tried to eat my chicken....and I have a new name.

The morning after I returned home from watching the elections in David, my host dad woke me up to show me the 8 or so foot boa that had tried to eat one of our chickens. There are pictures of it in my Flickr, check them out. So after we stood talking about it and poking it with a stick, we buried it in a hole. I tried to convince him that we should eat it because I needed and still need more protein in my diet, but he didn't think it was a good idea. Which brings me to another rather trouble area, my diet.

The people in my community eat what they have, which makes sense. So for the last few weeks I have been eating rice and green bananas. Occasionally I get some protein, but it is only when I bring home some type of protein rich food from the store. Even then, it is only a small amount. So I've adopted the hot sauce diet. I load down all the food with habanero pepper hot sauce hopping to add flavor to the food or eventually kill my taste buds so flavor won't even matter anymore.

Life has been a little slow lately, I've done a substantial amount of reading. I find I've started to miss home a bit. Every now and then I spend too much time reclining in a hammock thinking about what I'd be doing if I were in the US. I just finished Atlas Shrugged. It's a great book, but a little too long. The weather has been relatively nice, not to much rain. I have another soccer game this coming Sunday.

Wednesday, the 11th of Nov, the community gave me a new name. My new name is Koguira Noin. The village had a big meeting where they talked about and eventually voted on what my new Ngabe-Bugle name would be. I was named after one of the founders of Rio Oeste Arriba. He may have also been a "botanico" or the equivalent of a witch doctor. The botanicos here know all the herbal remedies for different ailments. Some of the remedies work well, others not so well. One botanico said he could cure AIDS..... I slowly walked the other direction....

Anyways, I have to go buy groceries get some food and get home for soccer practice.

Aqui en la lucha

Koguira