Children!

I have a lot of little kid friends. Friends in that most days I find them amusing, I am on a very similar level at speaking Malagasy as them (though I finally feel like I am getting slightly better than a five year old!!), and on their end I am fascinating. They love to come over and look at my picture books (thank god I acquired them during PST) or to look at my photo album or to talk to me or stare at me or occasionally play frisbee. I'm not going to lie it can be annoying, but here are some of the more priceless interactions...

Everything is a toy. Seriously. Candy wrappers, bottles, papaya peels. The best was the other day when the little girl whose photo I posted earlier (and who has really taken a liking to me lately) came over with a roach. Luckily after living in a pretty well infested apartment in SC and in the south in general for about 6 years I am okay with roaches. Don't love them or anything but I can handle them. Well this roach was her toy for the day. I got a really funny photo that I'll post later.

Sometimes being watched is just too much, so I'll go to get water at the pump and hope the kids lose interest. It's pretty much never successful but I still try. Yesterday I got water with about 5 kids running alongside. They arrived at my door and stood there in the way. When I walked around them I of course spilled. "Hey, Leslie, your house is wet." Thanks, kid. I didn't notice that water sloshing out because you were in the way.

We also have "salama" wars. Salama is the general greeting in the dialect of Malagasy spoken at my site. I have one kid that really likes to come up, pause for a moment, then yell "salama!" at me. They find it really fun when I respond and each kid has to try. But sometimes one kid just keeps repeating it, so it's basically us going back and forth: "Salama!" "Salama!" "Salama!" "Salama!" "Salama!" until I get tired of it.

It's been pretty darn rainy and therefore muddy. I was walking behind a little boy. In his little kid way he wasn't really looking, stepped in a puddle and slipped, almost falling down. He made a surprised noise (wah-lah!) and looked down at the puddle like it snuck up on him.