Pounga, in the daytime

I did not fall through the bathroom floor. But it was very, very close.
Pounga during the daytime was lovely. I woke up early enough to see the mist rolling over the hills, one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in my life.

We had heard of a most delicious way to get ready for the day. Everyone here does it. If everyone in an African village does something, well then, that settles it. We girls decided to take our morning showers… in the river!
The girl’s part of the river had the clearest water ever. Every underwater pebble and swimming minnow was unveiled before my adoring eyes. Even knowing that the boys’ part of the river was upstream did not quell my enthusiasm for bathing in this most pristine of environments. And then I got in. And I have never been colder in my life! Who would have guessed that water from a high mountain stream would be so freezing?! (Ok, so apparently everyone else EXCEPT me knew that. But that’s why learning from experience is so important. And, I like freezing my head off. Really.)
While we screamed and shouted about how much we enjoyed trying to wash our hair while turning into human icicles, (or…not) my father was having an adventure of his own.
Dad and my adopted Congolese big brother, Viclaire, had found a lovely hut to stay in, at the foot of the cliff that we girls were condemned to climb every day. They even enjoyed a local wake-up service, complements of the rooster who lived in the coop right next door. Or rather, they would have been woken up by the rooster, if it hadn’t just been harassed by a snake…
Dad and Viclaire heard some commotion outside and emerged to find everyone gathered in a large circle around the offending snake, throwing stones and hoping it would strike true and kill the poor thing. They were too afraid to get close enough to chop its head off with a machete (which is the humane way of killing a snake, did you know that?) so instead they were bludgeoning it with pebbles. So my dad, being the no-nonsense American missionary that he is, just walked right up to that snake and humanely ended its egg-stealing life. Everyone was mightily impressed by his bravery, because everyone knows that snakes are the epitome of all things scary and evil, more so even than a rabid baboon or a hungry panther. I have a picture of him holding up his prize, which is longer than he is tall. I’ll try to find that…
This particular snake is unidentifiable, according to me. I’ve never heard of a snake that does this: Dad described it during its death throes (he picked it up right after his head got chopped off, and I unfortunately cannot explain why in the world Dad would do something like that, but the only reasonable conclusion I’ve come to is that he’s a boy. They are incomprehensible) so the snake wraps its body around and around dad’s arm, and tries to poke him with this sharp pointy barb on the end of its tail. So, does anyone know of a snake that lives in the Congo that has a poison dart in its tail? Yeah, didn’t think so. Dad has discovered a new species!
So, I was never able to personally see the snake whole, because it all happened while I was bathing, but when all the fun was over, some village mamas (ladies) came and took away the snake, and then we ate it for dinner. And it was delicious! Lots of little bones though. That got annoying, but still, delicious.