Looking up

I've been going out in the boats a lot lately. Most recently to help construct aquaculture racks and train the oyster harvester on how to make them. The racks are really simple. It's just nine pieces of bamboo tied together with wire and strung with lengths of rope with oyster shells attached.
The baby oysters will grab onto the old shells, grow, and you've got a little oyster garden.
My favorite part of the whole thing, though, is the trip to and from the building site. The mangroves are beautiful. The women paddle us in the dug out canoes while we just get to sit and enjoy the ride. I love to look at the fish jumping out of the water, like there are so many they don't all fit, and the crabs skittering through the tangled mass of mangrove roots.
More than that, though, I love looking up and seeing the sky filled with birds. I have never seen birds like I see them here. They are all shapes and sizes. There are herons and eagles, and loads of these tiny little swallows that look like jet fighters in formations when they fly. The sky is never empty, and it never fails to delight.
At night too, as I walk home from Kawsu and Binta's house I see some pretty incredible stuff in the sky. First the vultures swoop in to land in the mango trees and I always think they are going to break something- either a bone or a branch- because they are so huge! Then, the bats come out. You know they are coming because the trees come alive with noise. They start squeaking and shaking leaves and finally emerge from the trees by the hundreds. Thousands. Just at the sun goes down the entire town is covered in a shadow of bats. It's incredible.