motorbikes and too much tamarind

I haven't been taking motorbikes home from school lately. When it's been raining, and the streets here are less like streets and more like canals, my dangling feet and calves get soaked on the 30 block ride home. We wear skirts to school most days, so I ride the bike sidesaddle. [This, I learned after an uncomfortable encounter one day which probably doesn't need describing, is what women in skirts do here when mounting bikes.] To avoid soggy shoes sometimes I flex my thighs and straighten my legs, so I'm an L - legs sticking out at a 90 degree angle. It works great until you fail to notice the fence or the dumpster or the dog or the child or the other motorbike whizzing past you. Then, it hurts.

I knocked over a parked motorbike, doing exactly that a few weeks ago. Got the entire neighborhood's attention which the whack, screech, crash of my ankles making contact with the front of the bike, my motorbike driver yelling, braking hard, and finally the unmanned bike teetering and falling into the street. I'm a bit less of a novelty in the neighborhood now, after almost 10 months here, but doing something like that will inevitably draw a crowd. Which is exactly what happened. I should also mention that as I stepped off the bike to apologize and check for damage, my leg plunged thigh-deep down into a ditch full of some sort of vile sewage/oil/death sludge.

So there I stood, leg throbbing and swelling and caked in black slime, face like a drippy tomato in the afternoon sun, looking pathetically around at my witnesses... and they just erupted in laughter. these are the coolest people. they made sure i was fine/happy/not dying and a few of them offered a ride to the school where I could wash off whatever this stuff was that was, by now, probably eating away at the skin on my leg.

[I've recovered nicely, by the way, and no harm was done to the motorbike I attacked.]

And so I haven't been riding motorbikes lately.

Lethargy got the better of me yesterday afternoon, however, and I took a bike home from the market. Halfway through the ride home, the driver exclaimed something completely incomprehensible from inside his helmet, reached behind him and thrust a tamarind pod into my face. Taking both hands off his bike for a moment, he showed me the universal "Consume this food!" motion.. and (yes, while driving) sat watching me in his side mirror. so I smashed that pod open and shoved the sticky sweet tamarind in my mouth as fast as i could. big, exaggerated chewing and eating motions to demonstrate that I was, in fact, giving it a try. now please look at the road again.. And he did exactly that ...until I expressed to him how delicious I found the tamarind. At this, he started shovelling handfuls of the the pods over his shoulder, insisting exuberantly that I accept what ended up being about 3 pounds of tamarind - enough to keep me full for a week. Luckily I was able to bring them into class with me today and share them with the kids.

3 school days until end of term.