Rolling with that Cultural Flow...

Saturday, as I intimated in my "Here by Glimpses Known" post, mana_triniand I got to go to Lake Dziani. We did not go alone, nor did we go with the three kids we were planning to take to help them discover their island (despite the lake being only +/- 2 miles from here, the kiddos have never been). We also thought such an outing would give their mothers a "break."*  But things don't always go as planned, and instead of five adventurers, we ended up as a group of 12.

( This is how that happened )

* When I explained this to the mothers afterwards, I realized what a foreign concept it was to them. They leave their kids with a friend/neighbor/relative when taking the children on errands is not pratical or possible, but they laughed when I said maybe they need a break.**

** Another parenting difference is the "protectiveness factor." In our street, of course they make the kids be careful when cars are coming, but in hiking down into the crater, Sakina was telling Florine (age 4 remember) to climb by herself (i.e. not to hold my hand) and to hurry, hurry, hurry down a steep, dusty, potholed path, when I know an American mother, say, would either be helping the kid or cautioning, "Slow down! Slow down!"

*** In the Mahorais culture, everything is group/family-oriented, and they always make enormous portions of food. It is not unusual to be invited by perfect strangers to share a meal, etc.