the life and times of minnow fries

E te fia tasi i’a Tanielu? That means “hey Dan, want more fish?” Now, I like fish, I honestly do, always have...but the minnow fries have got to go. I’ve begun eating only ten or so, just so maybe they’ll give me less next time but I don’t think that trick works in Samoa. You know, it’s not that the little critters taste bad, I just don’t like eating fish scales, bones and gut sand for dinner that’s all.

I went fishing today, we go every afternoon to get for food that night. There’s a lot of people to feed here so finding and preparing food is always the first and foremost task for the family. It feels good to go fish and bring back food that the whole family needs. working together to get locally available food caught, husked, peeled, boiled or chopped makes the meal extra satisfying. We usually spend the hours after fieldwork throwing the cast net for bait and minnow fries (leftover bait) and then some time out on the reef edge fishing for larger edible treats.

On an archaeology note, due to the ever present...uh...presence of water in the excavation units we’ve all decided to become terrestrial maritime archaeologists and just bail water and dig as we go (this part is true). This is not the way to do archaeology, kids, cover your ears (also true). But, since I am rapidly approaching time left = 0, I’ve issued the crew blue jumpsuits, red beanies and matching white sneakers. We do jumping jacks on the beach to stay ready for pirates and use dry-docked dolphins as echo-locating ground-penetrating radar. This approach seems to be working rather well so far if I may say so myself (third truth).

fish

so long for now