Some Days Are More Challenging

Some days are more challenging than others.  We have been without Internet for four days.  I miss the convenience of keeping in touch with family and friends and keeping up with what’s happening.  I’m learning that there are degrees of inconvenience. When I turned on the shower faucet and there was only a gurgling sound, now, that’s inconvenience!  It’s too late to call anybody, and then, who would I call?  So now I know how the people I interact with every day feel at the end of a hot day.  If they haven’t planned ahead and brought water to their homes, they cannot bathe.  Hot and sticky from insect repellent and sun screen, I use facial wipes and go to bed.  I am tormented during the night by mosquitos.  They bite my arms and buzz around my head.  I turn on the light.  “I’ll get that sucker!”  But no mosquitos were in sight.  Back in bed, wrap in a sheet to cover exposed skin, but now I’m too hot.  I go back to sleep.  It’s morning…still no water.  I see Guy and tell him in my broken Kreyol that I have no water in my bath.  He tells me, I think, that he’ll take care of it and turns a valve on the side of the building.  Still no water.  I ask Guy to bring me a bucket of water and he does.   All is well.  Now I’ll bathe.  I step out of the shower and am greeted by the biggest, blackest, ugliest, furriest spider I have ever seen.  It’s in the doorway between the bath and bedroom.  I’m trapped!  I stand there staring at the spider.  I think it’s staring at me.  I don’t know what to do, so I wait for it to go away but it doesn’t.  If I try to step past it, will it attack?  I wait longer.  It doesn’t move.  It’s looking more and more harmless, so I move slowly and try to step around it.  As I do, it scurries under the bed.  Oh great, now I have a big black ugly spider under my bed.  I sit down and catch my breath, while keeping an eye on the floor around the bed.  I know if I go out to the yard where the cooks are preparing the school lunch, they will know what to do.

So, I go and tell the cooks and Jabon that I have a big black spider under my bed.  They all laugh.  They think it’s funny!  Jabon takes a broom and heads up to my room.  He pulls out the bed from the wall and the spider runs up the back of the bed and wants to settle on the headboard.  Jabon sweeps it back to the floor and then whacks it with the broom, and it’s a dead spider.  I ask if it bites and learn that it indeed does bite, quite a venomous bite.  So, challenging…but in the end, all is well.