Fishing

By: Tawni Johnston and YiQi Xin

The villagers in Kalasin were able to share their cultures with us in many ways. One way that we learned more about their daily life was when they taught us how to fish. The villagers have a very different way to fish than Americans generally do. When we found out that we were going fishing, we immediately thought about how we fish back in the United States. We were previously told that we would be catching the fish with our hands and neither one of us could imagine how we would do this. We thought that we would be on the shore or that we would be in a boat. But, this was definitely not the case. They explained how they fished and showed us, which was getting into the pond, throwing the nets, and getting down and catching the trapped fish. Some people were afraid of fishing because they didn’t like the fish, but both of us were very excited to try this new way of fishing. At the beginning many people were a little scared to be stepping around on the nets because this was a new custom for us. But, towards the end, most people were getting really into it and weren’t afraid to jump all over the net in order to find the fish. In fact, people were rushing onto the net in order to find the fish first. For us, it was incredibly fun and it was so amazing that they shared something like this with us.

Some of the villagers came to watch us fish and they had as much fun watching us fish as we did actually fishing. We also caught a good amount of fish for the villagers to eat. The guys who taught us how to fish seemed to enjoy showing us how they worked everyday and how they do this every day to make a living.

We learned how in a new culture you need to learn how to do things their way rather than your own way. You can’t tell people that what they are doing is wrong just because you learned how to do itedit fervently. We need to be open minded which will allow us to get more out of certain activities and learn many new things that we wouldn’t be able to learn on campus or even in America. You need to try new things and now that we are further in the trip we realize that it’s crucial to participate and get as far out of your comfort zone as you can. We had a lot of fun fishing and at the same time, it gave us more confidence to try new things and be more open to the new cultures.