Fishing with Dynamite

“You have to know languages when you go to sell something…But when you go to buy, everyone does what he must to understand you.” -Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera.
Even though the setting is a church and historic Biblical site money seems to attach to anything it can and that is why Leither and I are so valuable. There was need for an English speaker again in the gift shop today because the usual person who speaks many languages, Sammi, is gone (Leither and I both worked in it yesterday afternoon). It is challenging because even those who speak English when coming in to buy something are using it as maybe their third or fourth language so they use short commands which are often very hard to understand. The shop gets extremely busy when a bus of tourists comes but then can be empty for 30 minutes again. I would much rather work outside, even in the hot climate, so Leither and I played paper-rock-scissors and booyah-kasha; I won, to the store you go Leither.

We were working outside at the back end of the compound, near the sea, clearing grass and doing some landscaping for future garden plots when all of a sudden BOOM…BOOM. We all stopped and looked at each other. Fr. Basilius gave a hesitant smile and everyone started talking to each other in German very quickly. One of the times I really wish I could understand them. After a couple minutes they started smiling and laughing a little and I asked one of the zivis “Auf English bitte” (In English please). His reply was “I think you call it ‘fishing with dynamite’”. No way are they fishing with dynamite in the Sea of Galilee I thought and asked “Seriously?”

“We don’t know what it is”, I was told by another zivi. Okay, whoever is reading this stop, take a breath, I’m alive and in one piece. Put down the phone because Br. Paul will only let it go to his answering machine if you are not an actual Benedictine Volunteer. If it were some type of military action, we are so far below sea level (and radar) there would have been fighter jets soaring by in the next couple of minutes. We went on working and every so often would hear another distant BOOM. Our mood was light and we would joke about it and I will tell you what Fr. Basilius told us with that same uncertain smile, “Try not to think about it.”