A Rainy Day at the Ocean

One Sunday morning I was waiting for the bell to ring to signal it was time for church. My host dad came over to tell me that church was happening in another village that day, so instead we were going to go swimming. Good deal! It didn't really look like swimming weather- it was gray and windy- but I don't get to go swimming too often (well, I go swimming more than I ever have in my life, but relative to other volunteers who live closer to the water) so I take any chance I can get! 

People from my village have land at the coconut plantation by the ocean, so that's where they go when they want to go swimming. Avoiding the main road so that we wouldn't pass any church-going people, we walked through the bush trails. On the way we picked papaya, cocoa, and navara (dried coconuts) to snack on. My host brother used a long bamboo pole to knock down breadfruit from a tree for our lunch. Almost two hours later, we arrived at their swimming area. The waves were rough and the tide was low, exposing a lot of coral, but we had walked all that way to go swimming so swimming we went. It wasn't so much swimming as try-to-avoid-cutting-legs-on-coral, but it was enjoyable nonetheless especially since we had brought snorkels and I saw a lot of colorful fish.

My host dad had made a fire and roasted breadfruit, so as soon as that was done we got out of the water to eat. Almost immediately, it started to downpour. There wasn't any shelter, so we just stood there, laughing and eating soggy breadfruit. My host dad started calling people who own trucks to ask if someone could pick us up, but no one answered. After a while it stopped raining, and we walked the almost 2 hours back soaking wet. It was a pretty hilarious Sunday.