Today’s highlight was the village circumcision. Well, not really a highlight, but that was today’s big event.

The tough part is that it’s boys 8-12 years old. Yipes! If I were them I think I would have run away and hidden in a cave if I knew what was coming. These kids did pretty well though. There were a lot of stoic little boys in the village when we came in around 1300. The doctor had arrived on a longboat from the next island chain north of here and he lost no time setting up shop at the nurse’s hut. Ann and I (mostly me) couldn’t bear to watch or listen so we went for a long walk down the beach. When we came back a couple of hours later they were just finishing up. We saw a couple of very sad looking boys being taken away by their fathers in…wheelbarrows. Yup, that’s the equivalent to a stretcher in this part of the world. I should add that one young boy really toughed it out. He refused the wheelbarrow – said he would walk and then veerrry gingerly walked toward his house holding the gown they gave him (his mother’s sulu rapped around him and tied behind his neck), between two fingers out in front of him. Oh well, a local rite of passage.

The other thing we discovered today is the dreaded cassava root actually fries up in coconut oil (and salted) into a great potato chip like thingy. They eat a fair amount of cassava here and give it freely to “friends”. We of course have been gifted with the thing and don’t want to waste it but…it’s a little tough to love. If you take a potato, make it denser, starchier and blander you come close to the cassava. The villagers typically boil it into submission, which really doesn’t bring out any gastronomic value, and serve it at every meal. But, we now have a way to love it. Fried as above it tastes like something between potato chips and popcorn. Great with Charismas at sunset.

(Comments from Ann) Batai, the nurse, repeatedly offered to let me come watch the circumcisions. Really? He said I could photograph it if I wanted. On behalf of my two boys, I respectfully passed. And thanked the US medical system for circumcising my boys in the hospital before I got them home!