Four To Score

Before I left home, I was familiar with the phrase “the dog days of summer.”  However, I did not truly understand. Dog days, referring to the hot , sultry days in the middle of summer, originated in Roman times, when these days were indicated by the rise of Sirius, the dog star. They were popularly believed to be an evil time when the sea boiled; dogs grew mad, and caused in men fevers, hysteria and frenzies. Typically, the dogs days for the southern hemisphere occur in January and February.

Adam and I disagree. Yes, the hottest, sweatiest, most oppressively humid days in Nametil arrive during January and February. But the dog days have so much more meaning. The hysteria, the frenzies, and the languid humans don’t come in January. They come in November for a Peace Corps volunteer.

With no classes to teach, grades already turned in, and national exams in their lull between periods, there are relatively few responsibilities for an education volunteer. It’s like summer during high school. But in the states, there is so much one can do in town; go to the movies, go to dinner, swim, play in the outdoors, or just go to a friend’s house and hang out.

Nametil does not have this plethora of options. This leaves Adam and me with a lot of time to entertain ourselves. A lot of time. The day starts no later than 6am (the time when our house becomes too hot to even possibly sleep any longer) and ends around 10pm (the time when we are finally exhausted enough to drift into spurts of fitful napping). We have had our usual suspects of entertainment: reading books, watching tv and movies. But with this additional time, Adam and I have taken to playing cribbage. Lots and lots of cribbage.

We awaken and play two games, finish our books and play three games, or walk to the restaurant for a change of scenery and play eight games. Or maybe all of those. We play our hands, scoring at 15, at 31 and making doubles. 15-2, 15-4, run of 3 for 7. We race to 121, hoping that our scores will beat away the heat.

The dog days have us in a frenzy. But our greatest defense requires us only to score 121.