Getting to know the community is one of the benefits of living in one place for a long time, particularly a place that sees hardly any Mzungus (White folk, the literal translation is something like 'dizzy and lost') is that you really get to know folk...that also leads to some odd conversations...

One such was for about twenty minutes on why the British don't eat goats. To begin with it was utter disbelief and convinced that we were kidding, kid-ding…got it yet?Actually, we don't know the answer as goat is lovely and nearly every other country we've been to eats our little furry waste disposals. We have goat milk, so what happens to all the male goats?Mwajabu, the person we discussed this with, was so convinced we were pulling her leg that two hours following the conversation she saw someone she knew and burst into Swahili for a few minutes. Our new arrival stared at us, paused, looked as if I'd just killed his favourite pet and then said 'You don't eat goat? Why'…indeed

Another such cultural exchange involved a trip to the market where we saw all the local ladies carrying heavy bags of all kinds of things around, balanced nice and easily on their heads. Of course, we commented that we didn't carry things like that at home. This drew a big gasp and a laugh, 'How do you carry things then', 'well, in our hands', 'Oh my god, that's hard!'

Then we have the mis-understandings. On the forty minute walk from the office to our house we pass an area nicknamed by previous volunteers as the drunken village. This is just where one or two local huts sell fermented sugar cane to the regular fifteen or so drinkers. Apparently it used to be very busy here but we are informed they all died as they didn't eat enough. We had bought a couple of bottle of beers one evening and had taken them home. For the next two weeks we got enthusiastic waves and greetings from the locals. We replied to the bits we understood and for the rest we just smiled and laughed and generally tried to give the impression that we understood what they were saying and that, yes, it was very funny indeed... One night, the son of the man we are staying with entered our house.

'Do you know the men down the hill?',

'Yes we do, we bought some beers there a few weeks ago',

'I know, they want their bottles back. They said they keep asking you'.

Ah…we of course had just been laughing at them.

Then there's the language, we were visiting the home of a local lady for lunch recently and following the meal she decided to show us around her grounds, this was essentially a round kitchen cum cow shed as is in everyone's home here. This lady though, had two cows including a Fresian which are more difficult to keep. We admired her cows for a few minutes and then I commented on her chickens,

'Mama, your cows are very healthy, and you have so many chickens. Your chickens are all very big'.

Of course, Mama was very flattered with this and pronounced,

'Yes...'

then a pause...

'and I have a massive cock'.

I looked around and saw a very large cockerel sitting atop a large boulder, with nothing else to say I stated.

'Wow, Mama, you do! That's the biggest I've ever seen'

Oh how we still giggle.