Sugar Cane

Today we visited a Care for Life village called Chiverano. We followed one of the Care for Life workers (Chichonga) around as he visited families in the village to check up on how they were doing on their goals. After we finished visiting the families we stopped by the house of one of the local Care for Life community leaders so that Chichonga could teach her a bit more about her duties as a Care for Life leader in the community. While we were resting the leader's father handed Summer and I two huge sticks and told us they were sugar cane. So, after a few seconds of starring at the sugar cane and making it very evident that we had no idea of what to do with it, the man started peeling it for us. Then he handed me a knife so that I could peel it myself. Then they decided that I was going to kill myself trying to peel the sugar cane (maybe not kill but DEFINITELY injure) and they took the knife away from me - probably a good thing. So then we were left with a huge cane of sugar and the top part peeled... so we figured we'd just suck on it. No one told us that the correct way to eat a sugar cane is to break the cane in segments and cut the segments up into pieces, chew the pieces, and then spit out the fibers. And, of course, they waited until we decided we were done struggling with our canes to model the correct way of eating sugar cane. We didn't look foreign at all!!!! :) We had a great time though ... they got a total kick out of us and we enjoyed the sugar cane and the experience! :)