Rude goats and polite cows.
Today I was doing laundry while my host sister was sitting on the steps studying for a test she has tomorrow in math and english. Now goats are everywhere here. I mean every-freaking-where. They wander the streets, cross from yard to yard, and are jokingly called rude animals by Malawians because they are constantly free roaming themselves into mischief. My host family grows maize, and the harvest this year was piled up in the corner of our compound near the fence. While we were outside, this group of three goats kept sneaking into the compound and munching on the bits of maize on the ground. My host sister kept getting up to scare them away, but each time it took her longer and longer to pull herself away from her books because she was trying so hard to study. I thought I would help her out so I started hopping up when I could hear them behind me munching away.
Now my family here thinks I am a bit of a fighter because I was trying to explain to them that in America, I used to do kickboxing for exersize. Well 80% of what I say is lost in translation so now my host father proudly tells people I was a fighter and I have no real way of correcting him.
Back on track: so to make scaring the goats off more fun, I kept turning around and pretending like I was going to box them. I would put my arms up and fake some jabs and uppercuts and they would get the hell out of dodge because that was some weird stuff, all the while my host sister would roll with laughter. This happened probably three or four times, where I would hear them and round on them with my Bruce Lee fighter stance. Now on the fifth time I hear them, I stood up, assumed the fighting position, and rounded on the little buggers, only to find that a full grow huge BULL had found its way into the yard. Needless to say I was not going to take that thing on and it scared the crap out of me because he was so close. My host sister laughed, then went right back to studying, so I assumed it was no big deal to just randomly have this big cow hanging out in our front yard. It can be so weird here sometimes. So we just let him hang out until he decided to try and drink my laundry water, then we politely shooed him away, no harm done.
16 July 2019