Catfish!

Hajahawa handed me a dried catfish. A dried catfish, for some reason, is much creepier than the usual dried fish sold in the market, which are not actually creepy at all. But dried catfish looks like something out of a museum diorama. A museum diorama located in a natural history museum’s Prehistoric Life exhibit.

The catfish was tasty, for the most part, but there wasn’t much actual catfish meat to eat, after I’d peeled away the skin and plucked out the bones. I made the mistake, though, of eating the large black blob of something that was near the head. I thought it might be edible. It tasted so disgusting I worried I might poison myself. I spat it out.

After I'd finished chewing the catfish, word gets out that the girls had stolen them. Neene lists off the names of all the girls who she saw nibbling a catfish. "Hajahawa, Adama, Kumba..." Kumba adds, “And Binta!” I look up startled. Neene says, no, Binta was sitting here the whole time, she ate it but she did not take it.

I love that I live somewhere little girls steal dried catfish.