Yeah, that's the female one, more or less...

"Si, esta es la hembra. Mas o menos."

Arisitides likes to say mas o menos. Even in less than "more or less" situations. Like when I asked him today about the two parakeets pigging out on the pile of rice left for them on the floor. And I believed him that the broken footed one was the female, for no reason other than, of anyone, he should know. I mean, he carves them out of Cocobolo. But then he said mas o menos, and got me all confused. He also told me that Pipeline Road also comes out at a highway, mas o menos. Mas o menos does me know good when I'm trying to plan a weekend hike along Pipeline and would like to know if I will be able to find a trafficked road to get home by. I should have known and stopped at the more or less female parakeet.

Aristides also works 40 hours a week, often putting in overtime. I know he’s working even when I can’t see him working. I’ve become accustomed to the solid clunk of his make-shift hammer log pounding the butt of his various sized carving tools. And then when I do see him, like this morning during the confusing bird gender conversation, he’s covered in deep red cocobolo chips. His legs are most always bent at the knees, almost in a cross leg Indian position, if only they were crossed. He usually stops with the bottoms of his feet together. His simple seat raises him a good 6-8 inches off the floor. But now that I come to think of it, that’s probably intentional. He likes to grab his artwork with his feet to stabilize it, giving him two free hands to chip away with.

He is also a lover of geography. We often get into conversations discussing locations of various far off (and other seemingly far off) countries. And that’s when his fondness for the mas o menos phrase comes to my benefit. I often leave Africa close, mas o menos, to Taiwan in my appraisal their geographic locations, when necessary.

Ok, it's been less than sunny and my battery doesn't like that. Time to stop.

Here's a picture for you. And it happens to be of Aristides uncle, Nando.

Ropes that swing and monkeys in trees

It’s a swinging kind of Sunday. I mean like rope swinging. Mateo and Bladimir were jumping and hurling themselves around, all 6 inches off the ground, with the help of a random rope tied to one of the supporting beams below their house. Then with all the excitement of a six year old they sprinted full out, mouths straining, for the banana tree. I had no clue as to the excitement a banana tree could hold but to my amazement it can be used for swinging as well. The dead leaves turn into a thick fibrous vine that now that I think of it would be excellent for swinging. To carry out our weeks supply of green bananas, my mom also interlaces it through the racismo and then loops it around her forehead. Kind of like a natural banana backpack. So, if it can support 50 pounds of banana weight I’m sure it’ll do just fine with 50 pounds of swinging muchacho weight.

As I was watching them play I remembered how packed full of fun Sunday afternoons can be for a six year old. It’s constant adventure; from the rope swing, to the banana swing, to the bamboo pole. And this is all with no mention of a ball. Now they are on the ball which seemingly has an infinite number of play possibilities.

After watching for a while, I climbed down from my house to look for a little excitement of my own. I found Nivardo calmly looking out to the canopy of trees that border our community. “Un mono,” he tells me pointing. And a monkey it was indeed. The first I had seen this close to our community. After joking with Custodio about the blow dart gun para comerlo, I spent the next 15 minutes immersed in a world of wonder all my own. This is the monkey whose yawn sounds like thunder, and I only wonder how big he has to open his mouth to get all that sound out. They must wake from one hell of a hard sleep because they really only yawn in the morning. So rather then roosters (there’s only one here) I have howling monkeys in trees to wake me up at 5 in the morning. That is besides one of those “bird sounds” cds someone puts in just around that time.