At dusk, we visited a metalworkers' village. When we arrived, all the forges were shut down because Tuesday is a holiday, but a bunch of guys tried to start one up for us and were having trouble with the matches, which immediately reminded me of Gavin's tale of hanging with stoneage tribesmen in New Guinea and waiting for them to start a fire with traditional means in a cave in the rain, and getting impatient and using his lighter and the white gas in his campstove, and scaring them out of their wits. (if that really happened; when the Gavins of the world go home, do the stoneage tribesmen break out their gameboys and lounge around in their International Male dressing gowns sipping whiskey sours?) Someone led us to another forge where some guy was cranking out useless metal bells that sounded like crap in a two-and-a-half minute repetitive process using inappropriate tools of a century ago. I took a couple of photos because they were insisting. Dave offered 2000 CFAs at the end, and the guys turned up their noses and demanded 5000. They had done nothing, it wasn't even the "blacksmith" character doing the asking. It was some clown in a dirty tshirt. He wanted to show us his snake fetish and I refused to be interested, show some pride man, if you believe all this nonsense then you don't want me to violate your space and if you don't believe it then find some other line of work. Or find the same line of work, with more appropriate prices and attitude, like the drama students who work Renaissance Faires and Colonial Williamsburg and the Romanian Village Museum. Then he wanted me to take his photo and I said, not a chance. It was ten minutes to sunset and rain was threatening in the way it does at the start of the rainy season, a bit of lightning on the horizon and gloom. By the way, the sky was clear here for the eclipse, everybody we've talked to saw it of course. There was a broken down car frame that will have to exemplify the many others we've seen on the trip — the view is a little blocked by cute kids.