So these past two weeks have been interesting to say the least! I’ll skip the more mundane details and get right down to it… I ate rat two weeks ago this Sunday. Yup, that’s right, rat. R-A-T, rat. It wasn’t too bad, once you take out the fact that I watched it go from a lifeless being to something that was going into my mouth. Yeah, I watched it get cleaned too. I watched my friend’s younger brother walk out of a hut holding a foot long (not including the tail) rat by the tail with a small bundle of hay. He started a fire, roasted the damn thing until all of the little furs were singed and the skin was black and tough. He then pulled a Joker (from the Dark Night) aka, he slit the mouth open in order to pull out the teeth and the jawbone muscles. He then decapitated the thing, with his family (an 11 year-old girl, 12 year-old boy, 50+ year-old mom, and 19 year-old brother) mostly fixed on me and the interesting facial expressions I was making along with the subtle, but substantial movements to the other side of the bench. Yeah laugh it up, really funny. He then gutted the thing and put the meat into a pot with water, peppers, onions, salt, and something else that slips my mind. 30 minutes later it was ready to be eaten!
Don’t worry I tried to escape multiple times. I was actually at the house that morning because I was going to accompany my friend and his family (the two younger siblings are friends of mine as well from the school) to the church at Agbang. The monastery masses were getting a bit old and I wanted a bit of a change. Plus there are a lot of students who attend that mass, and it’s always good to see the kids outside of class. Anywho, Agoza (the little girl) wanted to leave for church and tried to get me to go along so that we wouldn’t be late, I figured okay why not, but then we were called back promptly to the question of “don’t you eat meat?” Well of course I do, I eat tons of it….oh snap, that meat. Kinda walked into that one. I couldn’t tell you why I did it and I can’t even tell myself why I did it, but I sat down and after peeling the skin off of a rib like bone, ate part of a rat. I couldn’t eat the skin that was attached to it and politely refused saying I could try the meat, but not the skin. I would’ve puked right then and there, which actually in hindsight, would have been the best possible thing for me considering the damage was already done.
We walked to mass, where a white priest was presiding, and sat through a half French, half Kabiye mass in another concrete sweatbox of a church. Afterwards, I conversed with some of the students and then returned to the house with the family for some time as the monastery mass was currently underway and there was nothing to do there other than sit in my room. I’d rather talk with people, and that’s what I did! I saw another side of African life that had managed to evade me for the first two months of my stay here. Side note! On Saturday, while Nebraska was busy dropping the basket full of eggs that they had laid with big T’s written on them, I was picking and husking corn! Lesson learned, don’t do that on Saturday in Africa. It equals bad news bears for Nebraska football. I'll sit and twiddle my thumbs in anticipation this Saturday. Not really, but I sure as hell wont be picking corn! I also stumbled upon a wedding after party in the nearby woods of the monastery. That was pretty cool too, and I even managed to get a little Tchuc out of my curiosity! Good thing curiosity only killed the cat.
Ok back to the story. So I mingled with the family and then made my return the monastery jut in time for lunch! Kinda like fraeuline Maria, never late for a meal, but late for just about everything else! Anywho, we ended up having yogurt for desert after lunch, and that could have been the secondary cause of my troubles this week, but its not very likely. I was in serious pain, and it wasn’t for fear of not being able to drink milk for the rest of my life…which would still suck.
A few hours later I was having some stomach pain and bowl movements. Nothing out of the ordinary for Africa. Except, that night for dinner, I could hardly stomach (pun intended) to eat anything. I went straight to bed, and the next morning I was approached by the resident doc John de la Croix. He had been told by some of the other monks who had seen me doubled over in my room at random points throughout the previous day or so that I didn’t look so good. He helped me to a few medicinal remedies, pretty standard anti-diarrhea and ibuprofen.
The next day and a half was spent running from the school to the bathroom or squatting over the toilette and going through tp like crazy. And you’ll be glad to know that on Tuesday I found out that my sphincter’s threshold for distance while walking is roughly ¼ of a mile. You guessed it; I was proctoring a two hour-long exam (was only supposed to be an hour and a half, but Colin decided to gash open his toe on the concrete stairs right before the exam started). I was sitting in the chair when nature decided that it wanted to make a run at “the Bad Timing Awards” (so far it’s uncontested) and I yelled at one of the other professors to watch my class as I scurrywaddled my way back to the monastery hoping to God that I didn’t shit myself on the rocky road back. I made it, but just barely – it was close. At that point I couldn’t believe I still had anything left in me! Later that night I received some more heavy-duty medicine and that seemed to help. I was actually really worried that I was going to have among other things, dehydration problems and stomach parasites. It was a pretty lean few days in the meal category too, not that I could eat anything I was given anyways.
Wednesday morning came, and I decided that I was up for the trek into Kara, which turned out to be a pretty awesome trip. My stomach didn’t bother me at all, and I am proud to say that my health was pretty much back to normal by mid-day, although I was still taking it easy and not pushing things food wise. In Kara, I had some time to check football scores, watch Colin get his hair cut with a razor blade, talk with a French professor at the university (who invited me to take some courses to improve my French!) about a recommendation that I need for another program.
And then the night culminated with a mass celebrated by Notker Wolf the Abbé Primat aka the Pope’s right-hand Benedictine. He was the main supporter of starting the abbey here in Agbang, and decided to swing by since it’s so close to Germany and all. Side note! Hey Br Paul, remember when you told me the next time I tried to pull a prank to make sure that I did the job right? Check the picture below J But the mass was pretty standard, although the homily was centered around spreading God’s love, which included the line…” Jesus gave us the Good News and we made a Catechism out of it…(in a dejected tone, saying that the Word of God should be a heck of a lot more exciting than that book makes it out to be tone)” That one was said by the Primat of all people! He also played his flute after the mass and told us that he is on YOUTUBE with Deep Purple playing smoke on the water! Check it out, its pretty sweet!
Later that night, I ended up having to wait two hours beside the van (reserving my place 1 of 20 people trying to get back to the monastery in a 10 passenger van) before we finally got on the road. Colin and I were pretty much guaranteed spots on the bus since we had classes the next morning, mine at 7am Oh Boy!, but there were some feisty monks who weren’t happy about staying behind in Kara for the night. I almost rather would have done that! I was on little sleep and not much food from my illness, was kinda tipsy from the after party/mass, semi-Closter phobic in a loaded van cruising down a dark, pothole-filled road in a thunderstorm. I was on edge the entire trip back.
I got about 4 hours of sleep that night, before waking up to an awful pain in my side (liver region). My first thought was that it was the rat again, but then I remembered that the night before, the only drink I had at the time I had to take my medicine was beer and I was pretty sure I took the stronger anti-diarrheal that I was only supposed to take after having said ailment by accident and kind of shrugging it off at the time. Yeah I paid for that mistake too. My side hurt until after breakfast, when the food and water/coffee made its way through my system kind of cleaning everything out. But that was after struggling through a class that I was unprepared for due to the night before, and having a classroom of students who still don’t understand what it means to do their homework. Side note, they do it for the other teachers because as I witnessed today they get whacked in the derriere by a baton if they don’t do it. I don’t hit them and I think they are taking advantage of me (shout out to Eric’s middle school math teacher)
Later that morning I bid my "farewells" and "don’t smite me's" to the Head Prior as he was heading out the door on his way back to Lomé. I also managed to snag a picture with him before he took off! I then returned to my room to do a little cleaning and take advantage of the newly fixed ELECTRICITY!!! Yes the electricity was fixed on Tuesday night, I wasn’t exactly in a position to take advantage of it then, and is available for 3 hours at night and occasionally throughout the day (haven’t figured out that schedule yet). We also have running water now as well! And although we can’t drink it, it is a lifesaver when it comes to doing laundry and showering! And to top off a pretty darn exciting week, I got a care package from my mommy! Life is good.
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