Extra Reading Diary: Nigeria Unit

For the extra reading diary this week, I chose to read some of the stories from the Nigeria unit.  I thought the story of Why the Bat flies by Night was kind of demented but overall had a funny ending as to why the bat only flies at night.  The overall plot and theme of the story was strange just because the animals essentially boiled themselves into the soup and that’s why it tasted so good. 

I like how a lot of these stories kind of propose the answer to a question in the title.  It lets you know what the story is going to be about and how it went about being that way.  One of the stories I wanted to know the answer to was Why the Fish lives in the Water or The Fish and the Leopard’s Wife.  I thought it was strange that it was a fish and a leopard making love in the story because it just sounds weird but it was an interesting story.  I still don’t think it explained that well why the fish needed to live in the water though.  But I thought the punishment of man or animal should kill and eat the fish whenever they could catch them strangely familiar since so many people fish all the time.  It kind of set up a different reasoning as to why people fish. 

Another thing I learned from this unit was what African driver ants were.  I had never seen them before and I thought the image that went along with the Why Worms Live underneath the Ground story was fascinating so I did a little bit of research and looked at even more images.  To me, they look like a cross between a spider and an ant, my worst enemy.

Driver Ant by Alex Wild