All Those Little Annoyances

When I got back from the capital the other day, ie: the place with doctors and solutions to medical problems, I noticed that I had 2 new "growths" on my thigh. I would describe them as a super itchy series of bug bites that are inflamed. I’m pretty sure that’s what they are, but you can really never be sure. It doesn’t feel so great to have just seen your doctor and then realize something might actually be wrong with you. (4 of my friends here have recently had staff infections.)

The next day I went out to some gardening… in flip flops. They were the perfect shoes for the activity in some ways, I was digging in a trench sort of situation in really wet mud (makes it easier to dig). They were not the right shoe choice to fight against bug bites. I think I got one or a couple of bug bites from something that I’m allergic too, either that or this bug that got me is just really mean, or was really pissed off. Anyways, it’s made my big toe much larger and sore, super itchy in a painful way, puffy and red.

Then I went out gardening today and stumbled upon a huge nest, perhaps the size of 4 deflated basketballs, of those biting ants. You’ll remember them from my experiences in community based training back in October, the guys that liked to camp out in my bed. They’re merciless. I avoided them narrowly a few times today, and then didn’t, and instead dropped my hose on their nest without realizing it until they were all over my right leg, the same leg with the big-big toe. I looked a bit ridiculous whacking at them and had a bit of a crowd watching me because a woman doing manual labor here is unheard of, and therefore a spectacle. Of the 3 men who walked past me before, all 3 offered to do the job for me, and then they, and some women in the area, stopped to watch. I don’t know how it looked, me, the only white person for kilometers and kilometers, doing man’s work, with my foreign work gloves and my Cubs hat, sweat dripping, digging into a very rock-filled earth for God only knows why, in the sun. I must have looked nuts.

So when the ants took over my leg, I gave the Dominicans what I think they really wanted: validation that it was stupid of me to try anything manual on my own. And I was so tempted to get a guy to come do it. Instead I just decided to let the ants win this round, ran inside to rip off my shoes, socks and pants to try to kill any stragglers. As I went to slip on other shoes, however, I found something on the ground which was quite pokey and in the fact that you now know that I knew it was pokey, you might realize that I punctured a bit of my foot on said item. It bled a bit and so it was at this point that I was really starting to have fun. I hobbled to the shower, did my best to get my various weird skin situations clean and then applied the about 5 band aids necessary to try to heal these various gross things going on.

Later in the day I went looking for cell phone signal on my new phone. My legs found, instead, prickly bushes and my flip flops (wouldn’t you think I’d have learned not to wear them?) found thorns that pricked through my shoes and into my toes and the soles of my feet a few times. But, again, there was an audience, this time of people wondering what the strange, gringa is doing climbing into the cow pasture on the hill. So, reactions to the pain were held in (as always) and dealt with later in the form of a large amount of chips and chocolate.