fishing and rain

Thursday, December 3

I awoke this morning a little after 3:00 a.m. to the sweet sound of falling rain.  It has been cool and rainy all day today.  Our rain tanks are slowly filling again, a big thanks to all of you who have prayed for our village!

 

Yesterday, Felta and I enjoyed our time together.  My comfort zone has expanded once again.  First, we smashed the shells we collected on Tuesday.  Inside were small, slug-like animals.  We left the bottom of the shell intact to provide weight.  I caught on quickly, but I didn't like tearing up the slug's home and I felt like apologizing every time I cracked into one.  Then, we pushed the boat out into the water and climbed in.  Felta borrowed a big wooden canoe from Grace so it would be harder for me to dump us into the ocean.  We began to paddle over the beautiful water beneath us.  Felta told me I could rest if I got tired from paddling, but I wasn't about to quit!  I just switched sides when my triceps and back began to ache.  (I'm only a little sore today much to my surprise.)  The water changed from blue-green to almost black as we paddled over deeper water.  We paddled past a small island just north of Marulaon, then the water began to turn back to the beautiful turquoise color again.  Felta through the anchor, and I just stared down below the boat.  I felt like I was fishing with Jacques Cousteau!  I never knew coral grew in so many different formations.  As we fished, Felta told me about some of the different kinds of fish and how to catch them.  My fishing line was wrapped around an empty water bottle, and Felta's was wrapped around a piece of wood.  You just toss your line out as far as you can throw it.  It took me awhile to get the hang of it.  I baited my own hook and removed the hook from the fish whenever I reeled it in.  I ended up with four small fish, and Felta caught eight nice ones.  At one point, one of my fish swallowed the hook so deeply that Felta had to cut into the fish to remove the hook.  It made me sick at my stomach.

 

Felta had told me that we would only fish for an hour since this was my training, but we headed back to shore more than four hours after I left the house.  I hadn't taken my knife or anything to drink, so after I helped pull the canoe ashore, I hustled back to the house to fetch my knife and some green coconuts to drink.  All of the way back, women stopped me to ask about my fishing expedition.  By the time I returned to the canoe, Grace had already begun to gut the fish.  She showed me how to scale and gut the remaining ones.  I learned to cut a slit from the gills back toward the belly and then to stick my finger inside to pull out all of its guts.  The hardest part for me was when the fish was still flopping around as I was trying to disembowel it.  Again, it made me sick at my stomach.  Aaron and the kids came as the sun was setting and cheered me on.  Felta sent me home with most of the fish, and Grace sent me home with two dry coconuts so I could boil the fish in coconut milk. 

 

As I was tucking Sarah in after eating some of my catch, I told her it was a good thing that my family didn't depend on my fishing or gardening skills for their only food.  I really enjoyed my time with Felta, but I'm certainly not the "hunter/gatherer" type!