January 15, 2014

One day Greg, Sarah and I decided to go hiking in Darmang, a village where the NGO ran an orphanage. It was one of the weirdest experiences I’ve ever had. We basically were on a quest to find this old guy who lives in the hills and sells palm wine. It turns out he wasn’t that hard to find and the guy who we asked if he knew where he was, was indeed him. I can’t quite remember his name, because it was complicated, but it was along the lines of Oefry.

 

Oefry could not have been happier to share his palm wine with us. He scooped it out of the bug filled vat in a big blue pot and we obligingly drunk the sour wine, despite the scum floating on top.

 

Palm wine darmang

mmm tasty

But we did then have to tip it away when we thought he wasn’t looking. It turned out Oefry sold some other goods and wanted to take us up the mountain to get them. It was the steepest, most exhausting unexpected trek along what I’m sure must have been goat paths and not meant for humans. Then once we got to the top he made us wait while he went off on his own, making us wonder why we needed to have gone through that. He did happen to leave his machete with us though…

 

machete darmang

So that happened.

What else would we possibly have done in that situation?

 

Also, the view was pretty nice.

 

Darmang

 

Oefry eventually returned and we hung out for a little while by his little shack, slyly tipping away the palm wine when he wasn’t looking, before heading back down the mountain. He was one of the most interesting and strangest men I’ve ever met. I think he actually lived on the mountain, but it was hard to tell, he didn’t have much stuff besides his machete and his vats of wine. Quite the surreal experience up on that mountain.

 

Xx

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

Ewwwwwww there is no way I could drink that. You are far too kind. I know he was kind to offer, but bllerrghhhh. Thanks heaps for linking up this week.

Claire said...

Haha I know. Brits are too polite. I figured it was gonna be okay because the alcohol would have killed anything too awful...

Unknown said...

Thank doesn't sound very pleasant at all. Sour and scummy wine? Blehhh good on you for being polite! Thanks for linking up to the #SundayTraveler! See you next week :)

Ashley said...

Bleh...yuck! Thanks for linking up to the #SundayTraveler this week...come back for tomorro's link up! :)