Tchouc!

So the first Saturday of every month is supply day, I think. Not totally sure on that, but I will find out in a month and let you know! As fortune would have it, I ran into Br. Johanas as he was passing out the soap, toothpaste (with an ungodly amount of fluoride), tp, laundry detergent, and razors. I made sure that Colin and I received plenty as we had previously been wandering around and asking anyone that we saw if they knew where we could find some. But now we have our own!

After obtaining the supplies, I spent the better part of my day cleaning and rearranging my room; if you can believe it. As my mom said, she called in the middle of my cleaning, “It only took you 22 ½ years and 3 continents to get you to do it on your own!” I will admit, it is amazingly helpful and satisfying to have an organized and clean room.

Later that night, Colin and I made our way to the rather small, but quaint market of Agbang. As we soon found out this, is essentially a let’s get together and drink tchuc (local beer) and eat food type of market. I don’t know how this had been going on right under our noses without us every knowing  about it! It’s like they tailored the market just for me: food, alcohol, and people! It was awesome, especially since many of the villagers have kids in the school. They were all very willing to send as much tchuc as we could drink our way along with a some huge smiles and amicable greetings.

I also had the pleasure of sitting back and watching Colin fumble around with his French when trying to bye some food. Even though I couldn’t hear anything, watching the exchange (words and looks of complete concentration from all parties involved, the exchange of (too much) money, the proceeding giving back of the money, the confused look on Colin’s face, the looking down at his hand with all of the money he had at the time (different value coins) and then the all-time favorite…looking at the vender and extending his hand so that she could pick the right amount out for him!) I had a little giggle fest along with a few of the villagers, but Colin got the last laugh because he came back with the most delicious fried piece of green bean based dough that I have ever eaten! It was amazing. However, before he got that last laugh in, he ended up biting into this cupcake shaped (I don’t know the French button for the hyphen so you’ll have to excuse me on that one) morceau of food. He had bought it thinking it was a pastry and didn’t realize until after he had bitten into it and seeing the interesting look on the villagers faces that he had just bitten into a huge hunk of cooking butter! LOL Oh never a dull moment here! That’s a lie, but the good moments!

So Colin and I skipped mass in order to pick up on some of the local customs and language at the market, but did manage to stumble our starlit way through the cornfields back to the monastery for supper. And surprise surprise, supper was this slimy gooey sauce with pate! Yummy, Colin and I ate the entire bowl of pate again and left the sauce untouched. But luckily Br. Blaise came to the unneeded rescue with another bowl of escargot! Colin and I had eaten the pot, rather joyfully knowing that we had eaten quite a bit at the market and figured that we would be good for night. Nope, on top of a full bowl of steaming mush, tchuc, and other assorted local foods, we had to try and eat an entire bowl of beady eyed little critters so as not to seem ungrateful or unwanting of the extra help, which we desperately needed on just about any other night! Needless to say, we had some uncomfortably full stomachs that night. But there were no vivid dreams so I am fairly certain that the nuts were the cause of my previous concerns.

Also, after dinner this night and before the escargot, I started speaking the one and two word phrases of Kabiya (local language, spelling is off though) and the monks got a huge kick out of it. I am pretty sure that Colin and I are now the punch line for a lot of harmless jokes because whenever someone says something that we don’t understand we always respond with one of two answers that don’t really have a translated meaning in English (aka I cant write them for you).