This morning there was an invitation for a group of monks to go to the local village for some sort of ceremony so Tan C. didn’t come on the alms round. Tan S. was transferred to a different route to even out the numbers so I thought I had to follow a thera on the walk, a herculean task.

Luckily he didn’t even turn up in the end so it was just myself, Nen P. and layman S. I forgot much of the route but luckily the other two knew it well. It’s much easier to be the pace setter and even though I walked slowly (but still plenty painful) we got back at 7:05am which was fine. I don’t know why people had to be in such a hurry. Maybe they were just really used to it and I wasn’t yet.

I spent a while translating some chants that I had been doing in the evenings in Pali into English thanks to Tan A. According to him there are 6 conditions that must be fulfilled for these chants to “work” and the first is to actually understand them so he helped me find a translation book. Since I did that I didn’t have time to take a nap at all so was dead tired during the chores.

Finally I was shocked to learn that instead of the 2 tukkae there were in fact 6 and they were all hiding behind the cupboard during the day to come out at night. The cupboard sat outside and there was just enough space for these lizards to chill protected from the sun. There were 3 adults and 3 eggs that had recently hatched into younglings. I shooed them off and pressed the cupboard closer to the wall so the adults shouldn’t be able to return. Hopefully they will migrate elsewhere since they shouldn’t be able to survive under the hot roof.

thera ‘Elder’. An honorific title automatically conferred upon a bhikkhu of at least ten years’ standing.