Australia

The sun is warm and undermines the feeling of conflict. The Australian coast seems more porous than it should be, the river delta immediately outlets into a vast archipelago. It is impossible to tell where the delta ends and the archipelago begins. The current is slow and inviting in all the waterways. The swaths of land in the delta are dotted with old western style wood buildings, some are even on the larger islands in the archipelago. The locals are primitive but have developed gondolas to travel between the land masses and islands. Not everyone uses the gondolas and many prefer to swim across the narrow channels instead.

I'm visiting during a local holiday. As a tribute to their hardy ancestors in honor them for being the fit enough to pass on their genes to the current population, water balloons and rocks are thrown in a giant citywide dodge ball like activity. The rocks thrown are usually small and thrown slowly, more quickly between friends. Water balloons are plentiful and rain down on everyone. Even villagers on their primitive gondolas are not safe from the bombardment. Finally figuring out the motives behind the chaos of the day make me more at ease but there is still the tension of conflict and danger in the air. I worry about the stones as some are thrown with little care to where they land, not getting hit by random missiles is good luck and shows fitness to pass on genes. There is even a mostly water balloon gauntlet and upon completion without getting hit yields high honor and sometimes marks the ascension into manhood.

I cautiously make my way from island to island, savoring the warm tropical air and lush green vegetation when I find myself alone and away from the celebrations. I have no official business today so I'm just visiting friends. I'm almost dancing through the streets, dodging balloons and the occasional rock, picking up pre-filled balloons and throwing them at particularly energetic revelers. Enthusiastic youths find my participation amusing, not only am I an outsider, but my active involvement is somewhat unusual for adults. Adults mainly stay out of the unpaved roads and throw balloons from the relative safety of the wooden boardwalks that line the muddy avenues. The boardwalks act as de facto safe zones, but even the most absent minded adults are weary when passing by small ancestor day skirmishes.

I'm soaked when I arrive at my first friends house. We have a great conversation about something, and I'm off again. I choose to swim between sandbars as I'm already wet. I visit three other friends with greater success at dodging projectiles and even earn some respect from a group of boys that tried to ambush me. I was lucky mostly and only had a small rock hit me in the chest, I scored two hits with water balloons.

Feeling confident, I lazily floated out to an island closer to the ocean. Enjoying the sun, the sense of danger finally passed. As I was getting out of the water I looked up and -- POW!-- squarely got hit in the face with a large rock. My had flew up to my mouth just in time to catch my front four teeth. They looked strangely white in the small red pool in my hand. I noticed that behind my front two teeth there was another pair of small teeth, as if I had a second row of teeth and the rock had knocked out the front four on my top row and then two more from my top second row. I tongued the gap in my teeth, tasting blood, but not finding my second row of teeth. The kids who knocked them out ran up and grabbed them from my hand. Souvenirs!! I plead with them that I need them back. I offer to buy them with the coins in my pocket. The girl sells me my tooth back, but I have to use mild force and the rest of my coins to obtain the one from the boy. I'm not mad, but am panicking about my teeth. The blood won't stop.