Road to Indonesia---BATS

 I just got caught outside in the rain.  There is no church here now and I was up early, and my  lessons for next week were weighing on my mind, so I went to school at about 6.  I feel relieved now about things for next week, but as I walked home at 7:30, I heard the rain start to chase me. It was an uncomfortable feeling, because I could hear it and even see it sweeping in off the mountain, but knew that I could not outrun it. If it had been Panama I might have just stepped into a doorway somewhere and waited the 20 minutes that it took, but one is never sure here in Papua how long the rains are going to last. It also was not a Panamanian Embarrassing Rain, so called, because it rains so hard that one's clothes are completely soaked to the point of embarrassment. So I just walked as fast as I could the 1/4 of mile or so I had yet to get home and arrived soaked. It is always warm and it is easy to change clothes, so everything is fine. Why didn't I have an umbrella? (I am now ready to sit and have a Sunday morning time of reading my Bible and prayer.  I miss our church services.  A prayer concern that we will soon be back in Church and face-to-face school.)

But what I really wanted to write about was the pasar (market) yesterday.  I have never thought of it as a "wet market" of Wuhan covid fame. There are huge, huge amounts of fruits and vegetables of every description. It is mango season so they were all over this Saturday.  I bought 3 big ones. For the first time I had the banana pods pointed out to me: just the pods before they produce bananas which they cut up and fry. hmm. And we buy meat regularly there. A long row of chickens, but they are dead and plucked and waiting to be cut to our specifications. Most Indonesians just like them chopped into pieces, but not separated into leg, and thigh and breast and wing etc., but just chopped up bones and all.  There is also a tremendously long row of spectacular whole fish.  I mean from the smallest half -the- size- of- my- finger smelly dried ones, to huge huge whole ones, to eels that are still wiggling,  to tuna slices a foot across. (what size was that original fish?)  We also regularly buy wild boar there, that they kindly skin and cut the leg that I am buying into small pieces.  But yesterday they were selling BATS.  I mean really big fruit bats, about 8 inches long or longer. Whole bats, with wings and feet, and everything attached, all laid out in a nice 3x3 row. They were dead, and I did not touch or buy them, and I think when they say "wet market" they mean live animals to buy, kill, and eat, but I still looked at those bats and thought about Wuhan and covid and connections.