You've Been WINCHA'd!

The other night my site mate, Amanda, and I were walking home from a juice shop committee meeting [she just started a KICK ASS juice shop in the market with a group of special education kids that she's been working with for the past two years. The shop is doing AMAZING and it's my new hang out spot.]. Anyhow, we were strolling along on our usual path when I noticed something on the ground. Looking closer, I realized it was a wincha! Or, as you Americans might know it as, a tape measure.

Earlier that day I had found myself in need of a wincha and didn't have one. In fact, I really don't have any tools of my own. As my trainings have died down, my actual projects are picking up and set of basic tools would definitely be useful in getting things done as well as in earning the respect of the people I work with (that part depends more on me knowing how to use the tools properly than it does on actually having them but I'm working on that, too). Basically, I needed that wincha!

So I picked it up and exclaimed to Amanda, "Look! It's a wincha!!" As we both looked at the wincha sitting in my hand debating whether or not we should take it, a moto taxi drove toward us and the driver yelled, "Wincha!!" as he passed by. We froze and watched the moto drive a little further down the road until it suddenly began to turn around.

Amanda looked at me and whisper-yelled, "It's a trap!" So we dropped the wincha and quickly walked the other way, yelling to each other as we separated at the end of the road to get online once at home in order to check that we both got home safely and weren't snatched up in the wincha trap.

Remember the situation at the juice shop the next day we laughed hysterically. We are constantly caught in traps throughout the day. Whether it's the precarious tarp ceiling at the market with it's hanging strings, the random wire coils and plastic bags in the streets that get caught around our ankles, sweaters caught in our bicycle tires or everything that I've ever slipped on in this town (mango peel, an egg, maracuyá, onion, business card, and lots of mud) there always something odd out to get us. So of course we believed the random wincha in the street was laid out there by a moto taxi man to trap us in some way. We knew we were about to get WINCHA'd.

I ended up just having to buy my own cuz I wanted my own wincha so badly. Just trying to keep things profesh!

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