Today was... inspiringly awful. It started when I was out tending my dry season garden, which as of now consists of a couple of upright rice bags with some tomato seedlings poking out the sides. I've been trying to coax some cilantro and garlic chives to push up, but no luck yet. I was in the process of redistributing the overcrowded seedlings to the base of the bags to use up any residual water. I stuck my hand down between the earth and one of the bags when I was met with the worst sort of pain. Like a jolt of white-hot electricity, the sting shot up my arm. I let out a predictable “Ouch!” and searched around for the culprit. For a moment I imagined a scorpion and the inconvenience that would bring. How ii would have to saddle up my trusty bike and hope that the eleven mile ride to the hospital wouldn't kill me. And once I got there I would have to explain, through lips that would no doubt be swollen and green by then, that a scorpion had stung me and that it wasn't one of those eight-inch ones that only sting and hurt real bad -but one of those little brown bastards who schedules you a date with St. Peter. And there would be the eye-rolling and guffaws at this silly obroni who characteristically makes a big deal out of the slightest, little, fatal arthropod attack. After at least ten to fifteen minutes someone might find the time, amidst all the frantic morning sweeping, to attend to the perspiring white guy dying under the mango tree. And once they admitted that I had a serious sting there would be the requisite eye-rolling and guffaws over the well known clumsiness of obronis, who frequently put themselves in such situations. Then there would be the phone call to Peace Corps -only then my complaint would be different. “It's only a scorpion,” I would say to them in my most macho voice “honestly I don't even care about that finger -I really don't want to trouble you... any mail?” And what if it was real bad and I had to get sent home. That would be embarrassing, showing up with nothing but a bug bite, just months shy of saving Africa from famine, desertification and the AIDS virus... if only I had a little more time. I would have to rewrite the set of pick up lines I've been preparing. “Yeah I was in the P. Corps,” I would say, stretching my shoulders and abbreviating unnecessarily “I gave all that up though, on account of a bad brush with the African wildlife.”
All of this made me very anxious, so I pushed up my glasses and made an earnest search. It didn't take long to find the nest of ants. This particular variety I have become all to familiar with. They have wide set mandibles that they carry perpendicular to their axis, vaguely reminiscent of hammerhead sharks, ever the ready to snap. Thus delivering the tiniest dose of venom that must be akin to the bite of the infamous bullet ants of Latin America. I remembered an incident in my first month at Kechiebi when I found myself at one of many impromptu fufu inhaling sessions. My host's children were looking awkward while hurling stones into the tree overhead (fufu goes best with adrenaline). Pitying them I thought I would help by climbing the tree and collecting the fruit they were after. Stupid. They let me hoist myself up there -maybe because they didn't have the English words for “look what you're about to do! Dipshit.” But I climbed to a height of some fifteen feet before I realized I was covered by a platoon of the very same ants. They say, for evolutionary reasons, it is difficult to remember painful events. No it is not. I have to give those bugs credit though, they made an art of seeking out the most inaccessible bits of flesh. Some even stowed away for a while, waiting until my guard was down.
Back to this morning, by thirty minutes time my finger had swollen to a respectable size and I knew my day was ruined. I will forever remember this as the day that I was bit by that insidious ant! Not the day when seven months of work at the fish farm literally swam out a hole in the cage. But the day I walked around with a slightly annoying, itchy sensation in my hand. Not the day when, caked in algae and fish waste from head to toe, I saw a year of planning and toiling brought to naught. But the day I had to momentarily relive a painful experience. Not the day when my fellow fish farmers and I painstakingly rescued the the reminants of our tilapia population and somewhat triumphantly restored hope in the form of a smaller breeding cage. But the day I heroically sojourned on after an unpleasant encounter with a six-legged beast.
