Dead Frogs

Lately, Ben has been busy in Chey Saen district, which is just adjacent to where we are. He is working on repairing a dam. We had contractors lined up to do it (and another one) but they didn’t jump on the stick and so the decision was made to coordinate it ourselves (by that, I mean ADRA). And so Ben now has a big headache to look after. Chey Saen is about 50 km away from us. 30 km is very good road just graded. The rest is very like oxcart trails. The road used to meander through beautiful dryland forest but lately, with land prices soaring, they have cut many of the trees (in order to claim the land). Anyway, because of this bad section of the road, it takes about 2 hours to get there and so Ben is overnighting there.

This is normally not a problem. We have an excellent guard that looks after all the animals and the house. But then last week, he wasn’t here. The guard at Jombok Haos called to say he was sick. It sounded like he had malaria. Now, it has been difficult to find a “spare” guard for Jombok Haos. Just for one or two nights a week, we can’t seem to find someone responsible, trust-worthy, or – for that matter, wants to do the job! So, for the last few months, our guard has been going and covering there. Normally this isn’t a problem. Well, last Wednesday, he went to cover there. The Jombok Haos guard came home. He did have malaria and quickly got started on the medicine. Now, I can normally manage at home. On Wednesday, someone came by with some frogs for sale. We had had trouble getting fish for the stork that day and normally, the frogs are very welcome. So I bought the frogs. He wanted a dollar a kilo. Which is a lot. But cheaper than the fish (which we had just bought for $2.50 a kilo). But I still bought the frogs. These were live frogs and usually we can keep them for a few days. But, he had 8 kilos. It didn’t occur to me that it was too many. So I just bought them -- $8 worth of frogs. This was before our guard had left. That night he fed some of them. And ran off to Jombok Haos. The next morning one and a half kilos of the frogs were dead. I put them aside, trying to feed some of them (doc, the stork wouldn’t eat them). I fed a live frog. He still wouldn’t eat them. So if left them. That evening, more were dead. Or rather, most were dead. I forgot to put water on them. So that was Thursday. Ben had said that he’d be back on Thursday morning. So I waited. And I waited. Long (our project manager) went out and saw Ben on Thursday and brings back the news that Ben wasn’t coming back on Thursday. So Friday comes. About 5 frogs are left. Ben finally comes home at 3 or 4 pm. Only 2 frogs are left. Ben feeds the two frogs to doc and surprisingly he eats them. He buries the rest. I won’t write about the smell. And I’m not going to buy frogs again. And I didn’t take any pictures to show you either.