Getting a Little Crazy

Things at kafule have taken a dramatic turn in the past week. In the past week alone we have had a leopard spotting, a man killed chopping down trees near the school campus, and finally to top it all off we were informed that there was a “wizard” killed. Needless to say as per usual things have been interesting.

I will start with the leopard. On Tuesday morning we were walking to school and Gretchen noticed some weird paw marks in the mud. I say weird because we really don’t have any dogs up in the village, and these paw marks were big. Anyway she didn’t think anything of it until later we were at home and a friend was over and informed us that in fact around seven am there had been a leopard wandering around. All this time I thought I was in fake Africa with only goats, cows, pigs, and chickens. When really there have been crazy wild animals lurking out there. The people were a mix between scared and nonchalant. Apparently this has happened before and it was “old” so NBD right? Others were terrified. Our good friend Mr. Mbughi was scared to come out of his house that night. We were informed that it did eat three chickens but did not bite anyone so it was okay to roam around. I know if I were a super endangered animal Kafule would be one of the last places I would go.

The project of cutting down all the trees around school/ the village is still in full force, but don’t worry because every Wednesday instead of having class the kids have been going and planting more trees. The justification in cutting the trees down was A. the school needed money and can sell the wood for a good price and B. the need to make desks/chairs/doors for the classrooms. The poor form one kids are sitting 4 deep at a desk and some have to stand up all class because they don’t have a chair. It gets distracting. Anyway they have hired “professionals” to cut down these trees and this week there was a small accident. One of the guys cutting down the tree miscalculated and the tree fell on him and crushed him. Thank God I didn’t see it and only heard about it after the fact because that is really sad.

Finally the last thing that I found out about this week was the fact that a man was burned alive for being an alleged “wizard” In the village there are traditional healers, or “witch doctors” if you will t\hat are totes fine and people go and see them all the time to try and fix their problems. I was surprised to hear then that someone was burned for being a wizard. I was more surprised to find out that it happened at one of our teachers houses. Again like the leopard issue this was brought up in a really casual way and a blasé attitude was taken by the guy who was telling us about the event. I mean really its like I am living in the thirteenth century sometimes with the things I am dealing with. Its all part of the cultural experience