Big Brother

I was telling these stories last night and it dawned on me that they may be good to share here to show a little more of the culture here.

A couple months ago Roomie M and I were coming home. The group of boys who hangs out on our street and plays soccer said some things to us in English, that were not-so-sweet and meaner than just your usual "Hey, whatisyourname." We were a little fed up with these boys so we called the family we rent our floor of the house from and they sent "Big Brother" downstairs to help us. He went out on the street and we pointed out the main culprit. He grabbed the kid by the forearm and told him to leave us alone then he grabbed that kid's Big Brother and told him to take care of his brother or get his dad to do something. This is a totally normal interaction. Big Brothers are really important over here. We found out a few days later the same kids kicked their soccer ball over our gate and our "Big Brother" slashed it and tossed it back over, telling them to play in their own neighborhood. You just don't mess with his sisters! These boys are SO polite to us now. They never talk to us and always stop their game while we walk by so they won't accidentally hit us with the ball.

This family is awesome. When we had a rat in our house we trapped it in the bathroom. I slipped some poison-on-tuna under the door which the rat consumed. Unfortunately, the rat was bigger than I had estimated and when we went to check on it, the poison had obviously not done its job! The Mom of the family came down and being an amazing village woman, she chased the rat around the bathroom and killed it with the wooden stick end of the plunger!

I hope you are all happy to know that we are well taken care of in our house...