Now that we are back in the tribe and things are starting to settle down a bit, I am going to make the effort to start regularly updating this thing. Right now I am fighting off a case of amoeba or giardia – wow, the medicine really saps your energy when you are taking it. The first 2 days of metronidazole, well, I will just say I was in a lot of pain. I am on the 3rd day now, and the book says my body should start getting used to the medicine. I think it is, because I have enough energy today to get up and walk around a bit.
When the evaluator came in, I had to do what are called “communication tasks.” One of these was to describe in the Palawano language a place that my language helper had never seen before. I tried to describe the airfield we lease across the mountains. As part of it, I wanted to say that the caretakers there have 3 dogs. The Palawano word for dog is ideng. The correct way to say this would be tege ideng dye talo. I knew enough not to say tege adung dye talo, because that would be saying they have 3 noses. But I did slip up and say tege idung dye talo. The problem is, I said idung instead of ideng. Well, idung doesn’t mean anything, except that it is the name of a fat guy that lives downriver. So in effect, I said, They have 3 of the fat guy that lives downriver.
This set them off in quite a laugh. I had my language helper there, Raji, and another helper, Tabung. They couldn’t stop laughing at my mistake! Well, we all had a good laugh about it.
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