The mumu (moo-moo)

I would give you the typical greeting from here but I don't know how to spell it :). It's pronounced ah-bee-noon. Which means good afternoon. I have manged to learn a few words/sentences though.
First of all I will NOT be flying into Mibu tomorrow like we had planned. The pilot is sick, and no one else is available, so.... I am here one more day. Actually I'm kind of glad. Shocking huh?? Tom and Karen Bowen, who run the guesthouse where I'm staying, have some friends who flew in last night from Australia. Mark and Therese, are really nice, so it'll be good to have more time with them. Plus I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to all of my new friends here. But Joey Tartaglia, and Jeff Husa, Chris's co-workers, who I'm flying into Mibu with, are really disappointed. They've been away from their families for two months and two days now. Joey's 11-year-old daughter who is here too, has been keeping track.
Yesterday I went to the mumu! Tom, Karen, Mark, Therese, and I all went. We had about an hour long hike, with lots of steep muddy trails. We even had to cross a river! It was terrifying! The bridge, has a metal lattice type walkway, and wire fencing for the sides, with the sides being held up by a cable. Doesn't sound too bad does it?? Until you realize that the support for this whole thing is tilted pretty far over! Tom said it used to be straight, but then the water level went up and the bridge support shifted. You almost have to walk on the sides while holding on to the other cable in some places. PLUS we'd just walked through all this mud, so our feet kept slipping. We also had to do this with backpacks, and I was carrying the umbrella then too. It wasn't what I would've liked it to be, but I survived. The fencing had wire ends sticking up everywhere, and I was so scared I was shaking really bad, so I was just trying to get across as fast as possible, and ended up shredding my hands up. Now a couple of the cuts are infected. Oh well.
We finally got to Obenufu (oh-bee-new-fu), and our hosts had waited to put the mumu together until we got there. They already had the rocks cooked, so we didn't have to wait for that. After the rocks are cooked, they moved some of them to the side. Then they put sticks into the ground around the rest of the rocks. Some type of grass was then put around the edge of the rocks up against the sticks (this is really hard to describe. I hope this makes sense). Some of the greens, are then put on top of the rocks, along with the corn. Then they had a wire basket that held the "Americans food" (theirs was kept separate), that went in, and then kawkaw (cow-cow, aka sweet potato), and more greens, and their lamb chops, and the other hot rocks, went on wherever it fit. After that they used burlap and covered it. Then they buried it. OK fine. They didn't exactly bury it, they packed dirt all over it. Except for the top. Then they cut a hole through the burlap on top, and jabbed a stick all the way through, and poured water into it. It steams the food. The trick is not to put too much in or it'll put out the fire. Then the last rock covers the hole, and then is covered with dirt as well. It cooked for a little over an hour.
While it was cooking, all of us except Tom (he's sick right now), went down an even steeper hill to see the river. And the coffee beans they grow. By the way, our hostesses name is Anna. Tom says they think she's a Christian. Isaac, her husband probably is not... he likes his bottle too much. Anyway the river was really cool. I managed not to fall in. Since the natives are all barefoot, they just jumped in (it was only about ankle deep where we crossed), and then they took turns "holding our hands" to help us across the slippery rocks.
We got to the top again, and then took a hike...somewhere else. I'm not quite sure why we went down there, but we did. As we were nearing our turnaround site, we heard a sudden roar of voices. This group of probably about 30-40 kids came charging down the hill to meet us! So we practiced our new language skills, and got some pictures taken with them. Then they followed us back to Anna and Isaac's home. It was really fun.
The food after all that waiting was... different. I can't really say it was bad, but it was definitely not what I'm used to. The chicken was good, the corn was extremely tough, the sweet potato was... sweet potato (meaning that I don't have a great appreciation for it), the pitpit was weird, the ferns and the rest of the greens were kind of slimy, and barely tolerable. But it was still a really cool experience.
I wrote all this late last night to send as an update for my Church. I reread it this morning and corrected some of my mistakes. I spelled hole with a "w" last night. Oops! Everyone at Church probably enjoyed laughing at me.
I'm going to go soak my poor infected hands for a while. They keep oozing. Wow. This is a long post! Enjoy it. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post after this.