Cobras and other bad critters!

Yes, cobras are around.  I was wondering if it was like a snipe hunt, but we've had two major encounters in the past few days.  One night, one of our drivers came back late with someone, and since he gets to his home on a bicycle, he decided to spend the night at the school (not sure who gave him permission to do that!)  As he was walking over to the school, squarely in the middle of the road was a very large cobra--head in that cobraesque pose!  He turned around and quickly decided it was much safer to jump on his bike in the dark night, and peddle rapidly down the road.  This morning as the children were walking to school, they all gathered in a group to watch possibly the same cobra in the mango trees right by the path.  So sad to have missed it--I must see one before we depart or it won't be a true India experience.

This is one for the books.  As Gorden Gibb says, this doesn't happen in Provo, Utah!  Mary, one of our very fine teachers, travels by bus from her home in Kancheepuram every day--about an hours ride.  Last Friday she was sitting in her seat on the bus and a man standing beside her set his package down--slightly on her foot.  It so happened, that in the package was a scorpion fish (you might check that out on the internet--I've never heard of such a thing.)  It totally nailed her foot with it's nasty stingers.  They stopped the bus, and some man jumped off the bus and ran into a pharmacy and got an antihistamine and an antibiotic, to give to her right on the bus! Drugs are easy to come by.  By the time she reached the school her foot was three times it's normal size and hurting.  Dr. Kirby said the good drug samaritan gave her exactly what he would have given her.  They pulled more stingers out then she went to sleep for a couple of hours and woke up with the swelling down and feeling better.  We will now keep our eyes open for scorpion fish as well as cobras!

The roads carry our most dangerous enemies...moving vehicles!  Right now we are on our way to Chennai to go to the bank, then meet up with our friends to celebrate Ron's birthday.  First hand I can describe what I figured out last week about how the system works on these crazy highways.  What I realized is that it's the old adage that "might makes right", or the big guy always wins!  The big trucks and buses are at the top of the pecking order--whatever they want to do is okay, because they are the biggest!  Next, in order are the big cars, then lesser sized vehicles,  auto rickshaws, motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, down to the lowly pedestrian, who has absolutely no rights at all.  Dogs, chickens, and humans all command about the same respect on the roadway--you don't want to hit a cow or a monkey, however, or you are in BIG trouble.

Our storerooms are all filled with coconuts right now (a few less on the trees to land on my head.)  We are going to make our own coconut oil so we don't have to buy it--both the men and the women use it as hair dressing every day.  We are going to make a lot of oil from all these coconuts!

Our main crop right now is sesame.  Three women have been coming each day with their sharp curved blades to harvest the stocks. They receive 40 rupees a day--less than a dollar.  They are bent almost double for the whole day--tough work.  Murugan, our gardener, has been carrying bundles onto the school rooftop to spread it out to dry.  His wife cleans the school each day--she has not been happy about the sesame droppings up three flights of stairs. 

We've also had our peanut crop.  Vicky Gibb came rushing over a few days ago to see if we were on fire in our house.  It was across the hall in the kitchen.  They were not on fire, but were roasting the peanuts at a very high temp in a big wok type of pan.  Apparently, they pop open with the heat--they were burned black, but the peanuts inside were delicious.  The children had bowls of them for their afternoon snack.  Lucky children!