The Fishing Trip…
So after two days of planning to get to a river with water in it, finding adults to come as supervisors and getting fishing gear we left on Tuesday 30th March 2010 to go to the River.
The children were all wild with excitement – literally. They were jumping in the van, hanging out the doors and screaming for us adults to leave. We took all the boys about 10 minutes down the road and arrived at a place surrounded with horses. I was thinking we must be in the wrong place but the boys led the way, running ahead and as we reached the bottom of the hill – lo and behold there was actually a river with water in it.
It was beautiful!
We trekked the rocks and boulders and rounded a corner only to find (please don’t read this part if you are queasy with blood and guts) – only to find local men roasting a pit-bull dog. They were making lunch for themselves and it just so happened to be the same time we were there fishing. The men gutted and cut apart the dog and washed it in the river – all the boys oblivious to the horrendous sight while all the adults gawked in disgust – not being able to turn away from the horrible sight.
So we moved on down the river and found out that this was definitely not a fishing spot. The locals let us know there are no fish in this river but being out for adventure we didn’t let the children know and just kept looking for the perfect spot to “fish”.
As fishing rods we cut bamboo from the trees and then tied some nylon onto the poles with the hooks attached at the end. After the seeing the first children whipping their sticks around, Daniel came up with the good old fashioned “Lasso Method”. Since the children were being very careless about the hooks, Daniel created a technique of tying a loop at the end of the size of the fish the children wanted to catch. And so the lasso technique was a big hit.
After moving from rock to rock and running to find a new pond every ten minutes the kids finally found a place where they could walk across the river with only getting wet up to their shoulders. Some of the boys prayed to God that they would catch a fish as the first hour hadn’t been so successful. But despite not having found any fish they were having the time of their lives.
After a wonderful two hours of this we started on our way home, even though the children didn’t catch any fish they were all so happy to have been able to explore.
WAIT A MINUTE… Kel caught two fish! As we made our way to the car, Kel pulled out 2 silver, 40cm size fish. It was a success after all!! The children all gathered around and taking the fish from Kel, claimed the catch themselves.
(Secret information to be published here please use your discretion) Scott and Joy, two of the adults on this outing had slipped off to the market and bought some fish which Kel managed to catch from them. J
