Corn on the cob

After my hour of Language learning the other day I was making my way to the pitch to do some touch rugby, which didn't come to fruition on that day. I walked past a teachers house and there were a load of students there, so because of my sheer nosiness I went to investigate. Turns out they were there for punishment for not turning up to the morning jog. The punishment was to scrape the uncooked corn off the cob, the corn is then ground into flour to make ugali (see a previous post for ugali description). I thought, I'll give that a go and I did one in the time it took another student to do four, so either I was really slow or he was super quick, it was the latter. After this I stopped, then some student said something so I thought 'I'll show him'. Well pride certainly does come before a fall. I stayed and did about 15-20 cobs, my hands felt a little sore after (not the fall). Later on as I was throwing the rugby ball around with a couple of students and I looked down at my hands and saw that I had a nice couple of blisters on my thumb, ouch! (that's my fall)

The next day I'm there and a student just rips a branch off a tree, nothing unusual about that but I tried my Swahili and asked what he was doing. He started walking towards the pitch and said 'snake'. Ok, I followed closely behind; they were still playing football until they saw him trying to pick it up with a stick. He couldn't quite pick it up so I gave it a go (with the stick) and carried it off the pitch. By the way it was a tiny, tiny thing probably 40cm long but not even 1cm wide. As I was carrying it off a student said 'alive' or something to that effect, and sure enough it was moving a little. Once off the pitch I picked up a brick and threw it at its head once to kill it twice to be sure and a 3^rd time as a safety measure. That's my first kill of a snake, as I wasn't the one who killed the black mamba on Christmas day. Snake related the students were telling me how they don't like walking through the forest as there are a lot of snakes in there in particular, cobras. Oh ok thanks for letting me know and absolutely petrifying me. I'm thinking about getting a walking stick encase one literally crosses my path. The idea of standing stone still till it has gone doesn't sound even slightly attractive.

I don't like talking about snakes, it makes my imagination go wild. I'm trying to not let it get running by believing myself that there could be a snake at my feet and that little itch isn't just an itch, I'm just going to stop right there and go and do something else!