Can you believe that near the end of my language learning journey, I had no idea what the Kovol word for “laugh” or “funny” was? It’s crazy the gaps there can be in vocabulary and it’s another reason our system of learning language by making sure we cover all aspects of the culture is really helpful.
As I near the end of my culture and language study and my ability to use and understand the Kovol language keeps increasing I’m able to dive into some deeper areas of the Kovol culture. A big, important area for the work we do is that of gods and spirits.
Our coworker’s cat cookie is a kitten-making machine. She’s been having 2 to 3 litters a year for as long as we’ve been here. At 4-6 per litter, it’s incredible the number of kittens she’s produced and young kittens tumbling around by our houses is the norm.
We’ve finally given in and we’ve taken one for ourselves. After many days of umming and aahing, we finally said why not?
The first step was to gather all 4 surviving kittens (2 went… on holiday with a village dog) and look up Google images of how to tell males and females apart. We were sure we wanted a male kitten so we don’t end up doubling the flow of kittens around here!