Things Students Say.

Sometimes the strangest things come out in class. One of the things we do with a new group of students is get them to fill out a questionnaire in English which asks such penetrating questions as ´What is your favourite ´pig-out´food ´and ´What kind of animal would you like to be if you could?´. Judging by some of the answers, some of the students are stuck in a dark and frightening place.

Anyway, one of the less screwy questions is ´What is your favourite childhood memory? I was interviewing a senior researcher for P and G who develops soap to be marketed all over the continent. He told me his favourite memory was swimming in the Apura river (near the Colombian border) with his brothers. Apparently their parents banned them from swimming in the river but they used to sneak out and do it anyway.

The river was considered dangerous because it was infested with piranhas. Undeterred, my brave student, in his 10 year old incarnation, got a canoe with some friends and turned it upside down, trapping air inside and getting into the river with it, pretending it was a submarine (I suppose this might just work if you actually tried it). After messing about in the water for a bit, they get out and right the canoe, only to find piranhas flopping about inside. They never went back, particularly when the clothes of another missing child were discovered abandoned on the riverbank some time later.

Apparently piranhas can reduce a cow to bones in about fifteen minutes. Nasty.