Tuesday, April 28, 2009

how the ants were told a lesson

Yesterday was a very interesting day, full of little adventures. At seven-thirty most of the Sylhet staff piled into vans and headed out for the far end of the Field for the first Coordination Meeting. The meeting took place in one of the government clinic facilities, and was a meeting between Projahnmo staff and government staff to clear up data collecting process and hand out the contraceptives that are to be distributed. I did not understand much during the actual meetings (though I wrote down pages of vocabulary words) but it was in the times in the car to and from places that I learned a lot. When I can post pictures to go along with those stories, I will share them.
In the meantime, I will share with you the story of How the Ants were told a Lesson, roughly translated from Kahala's, words by a laughing Pintu. She said this was a story that I should tell my children so that they would know more than I had.

One evening (last evening) a young white woman came running down the stairs without her shoes on. She told Kahala, who was cooking rice for dinner, that there were many things running around her room. Kahala did not understand and came up to look. She saw that there were a great many ants making a line from the bathroom to the wall.
Seeing that the young white woman would prefer not to have so many ants on her shoes, Kahala called Pintu who brought a newspaper and rolled it up. Kahala took matches out of her waist band and lit the end of the roll on fire. Pintu swept at the ants until they died. The young white woman thought this solution was great and said thank you many times, until Kahala told her to shush. Pintu got the stick broom and swept up the dead ants into a piece of paper and tossed them out the window.

It was very smokey, so Kahala told the young white woman to open the porch door and keep the fan on. Worried that she would not know to close the door again when she left the room, Kahala came back up the stairs with her after dinner to make sure that she did. In the morning, there was burnt floor butthere were no ants.
The end.








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