Sno Cones and a Lost Shoe

We usually make pizza on Thursday nights (equivalent to your Friday).  However, the dough that we use isn't being made during the day anymore.  They start baking around midnight.  So, we decided to buy the dough on Wednesday, so we could actually have some for our earlier dinner on Thursday.

On this particular Wednesday, we had a single lady over for dinner, and we talked until around 11pm.  That was also the time we knew that the bread ovens around the neighborhood were getting fired up.  So she, Kylie, and I went to the bread shop at 11, and asked for dough and some bread.

The dough was ready, but the bread hadn't started to be cooked yet.

The locals here go get their bread late at night so they can have it for their 3am breakfast.  Bread spread with a type of thick butterish-yogurt is a very common breakfast.

We took the dough, said goodbye to our guest, and went home to roll out and cook four pizza crusts.  If we had let the dough sit in our fridge, it would have grown and spilled out like a science experiment gone wrong.

When Kylie finished baking the crusts, it was close to 2am, and then everyone went to bed (don't worry, Keira had already been asleep for awhile).

About that time, I sat down to study language, and I realized the street was a little noisy.

The kids come out to play around 6-7pm, and they stay out until around 1 or 2am.  Granted, they go in at 7:30ish to break fast with their families, and then they return to the streets.

At around 8pm, 9pm, and 11pm, the sno cone man comes down the street yelling about his wares.  Kids treat him as if it's actually a blazing, hot afternoon, and they flock to get their sno cones as usual. 

We're so used to hearing the sno cone seller's voice yelling throughout the day, that the first few nights, we didn't even realize how strange it was that he was advertising his product in the middle of the night.

But this particular night, it was a little louder at 2am than the normal kid-play I hear as I fall asleep.

I went to the gate to peek into the street, and about 4 boys were having a fight in front of my gate.  Hitting and wrestling.  Very normal in this culture, but it just seemed louder.

I turned to go inside, and I saw a man's sandal on my porch.

Remember when someone threw a shoe at George Bush, Jr., in 2008?

It was to insult.  Someone was angry.

I'm guessing some neighborhood gentleman had had enough of something (maybe the boys???), and he had tossed his shoe, and it had flown over my wall.

I didn't want to put it outside my gate for fear that the boys might take it or play a trick with it, but I knew someone needed it.

So, I opened the "chicken gate" (as I call the one we don't use that is buy the chicken butchery), and I quietly set it down.  A young boy saw me do this and started yelling something.  I hope he was telling the gentleman where his shoe was, but I will never know.