Thieves in the Night

So the wedding wasn't really a wedding.... it was more of an engagement party with the wedding to take place the following morning at 0500 hours... We arrived and were greeted with much enthusiasm and much video-taping. The camera man had a blinding light that he was using and filmed us meeting the bride, standing on the stage with the bride and groom and then eating.... yes, he filmed all of us awkward Westerners shovelling food into our mouths with our hands. The local people make it look so easy but it really does take a lot of practice to eat with just your right hand - rice is small.... and the sambar is pretty gooey... Dinner was lovely though and we made a quick exit immediately afterwards - which seemed a bit rude to us but which was accepted well enough. We were barely there 20 minutes.

There was more excitement to come however.

Some 4 months ago, thieves came in the night and chopped down one of our Sandalwood trees near the main office and stole all the wood. This was done about 40 feet from the night watchman's shack. Last night they came again for a second tree at about 0330 hrs. This time however, the watchman saw them and called for reinforcements. One of the male volunteers along with some of the older boys chased them off but alas the damage was done and the tree had been completely sawed through and had fallen onto the office. We called the police though and they came and looked. We won't be able to even keep the wood from the tree as Sandalwood is protected so the government came to collect it this morning. We have just one left.

I had a great afternoon yesterday - I bought some small, soft yellow balls with happy faces on them and went out to play catch with the small boys. There were very impressed with my throwing and catching skills and even though I tried to encourage them to play against one another, they kept yelling for "Auntie" to come back. Levor and Sarah also brought out a large number of bottles of bubbles and we ran around blowing bubbles at each other. It was really wonderful just to run and throw and play and listen to the sound of the boys' laughter on a sunny Sunday afternoon.