Bad-assery

Ok, so I've had an interesting week. Lets back up. Not much has happened since my last entry. Basically I've just been chillin' at my village and working on finding a Camp SKY location, which I believe I've finally done. Let's hear it for Lilongwe Girls! At this point we're planning on having SKY in August 13-21 or so at Lilongwe Girls. It's a pretty nice campus and seems like it'd be able to accommodate our camp well.

I'm trying to keep the library open as often as possible, so I leave school earlier than the other teachers so I can have a break during the mid-day. I come back to the school around 3 to open the library, and the students usually stay until around 5:30 or so. By this time it's starting to get dark. For those of you in the northern hemisphere, it's our winter down here, so our days are just getting shorter and shorter (and colder, though we'll never see snow). At this time, I close the library and head home where I find a nice hot meal ready, or almost ready, thanks to Leah. She's been amazing! I don't know what I did without her!

So yesterday was a day that will go down in the history of, well... just me I guess. I was reading on my couch in the early afternoon when I heard some yelling and running around outside my door. This is fairly normal on any given day. I figured people were just playing games. Then I heard a loud bang! like someone hit my door with a brick. Wondering what was going on, and a little upset about throwing things at my house, I opened the door to see that, in fact someone had thrown a brick at my door. I was a little upset until I saw the last bit of a snake slithering underneath a pile of maize stocks. There were about 5 or 6 men trying to beat it with sticks and hoes, while others attempted to throw bricks at it to kill it. It was then that I was informed of the large snake that was found just outside my house. Leah found it as she was going to enter the house, and screamed for help, at which point, the village people came (as in the people of my village, not the band that sings YMCA).

The younger boys started taking the maize pile down a little at a time, while the women, including myself, watched on the sidelines. Eventually, they found it trying to slowly sneak away from the pile and its imminent doom. Fortunately they killed it. After hacking it into about 4 pieces they used sticks to bring it to the footpath so everyone could see it. It turned out to be a 5+ foot-long black mamba, one of the deadliest snakes in Africa. It was HUGE! I couldn't believe this thing was found in my front yard! Crazy! I decided to turn this dead snake carcass into a biology lesson, so I ran inside to grab my pocket knife. I was the only one who would touch it, so I had someone put plastic bags over his hands to help me. I cut it open down the middle of its underside and showed my "students" the internal organs, ribs, rib muscles, etc. Then I skinned it. Luckily, there were a few long pieces left over from the massacre. I'm making a belt out of it. How bad ass is that? It probably would've been a better story if I had killed it myself, but I still feel cool. How many people are going to come back from Peace Corps with a black mamba belt that they made themselves? At least one! I'm also going to try to make a bracelet out of a smaller, tail piece. Here's hoping it works out.