Stings and Things

It seems hard to believe that over three weeks have gone by since my last blog but time seems to just slip by. About three weeks ago (on a Friday) I received an ant bite on top of my left foot. No big deal, right? Wrong! Turns out I’m mildly allergic to this variety of ant and my foot began to swell and by Saturday the whole foot was puffy. Fortunately by Sunday the swelling was dissipating and by Monday morning I was pretty much back to normal. However, Monday afternoon I got another ant bite while playing with Mischief in the yard, this time on top of the little toe of my right foot. Again I had another 48 hours of swelling, this time on the right side of my right foot. But by Wednesday I was pretty much back to normal which was good because Friday I got another bite! This time on time on the top of the second toe of my left foot and endured two more days of swelling and itching. I’m not totally stupid, and after three bites I now don’t go into the grass without a little bug juice on my feet. Sorry no pictures of my feet - you just have to visualize them.

We now have gardener who comes once week to rake the yard and pick up the garbage that floats in on the tide and ends up on the beach. His name is Juji and he is a young man of about 25 years of age who lives three houses over from us. He is nearly totally deaf and we basically communicate with gestures but, we generally understand each other.  He can be seen walking up and down the road looking for work at different homes. He is a very nice young man but has very limited prospects here in the islands.

It’s time to talk about the roads again. I’ve already talked about the road. Besides there being cars on the road there are kids, adults, dogs, pigs, chickens, and the occasional coconut.  This time I want to talk about the different types of drivers. First, there is the slow driver. I mean 10MPH to 20MPH tops. The vehicles of the slow drivers tend to be in poor mechanical shape; it may well be that they are going as fast as they can. Then, there are the speed demons who are basically going as fast as they can sometimes hitting the tremendous speed of 50 MPH while weaving around slow drivers, pedestrians, animals, potholes, etc. The last group of drivers (to which I belong) is the moderates. We drive fairly fast but rarely get over 35MPH. This group slows down around other road users and tends to be very courteous.  It’s still kind of wild place to drive but I’m used to it now and it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it does Becky. There is fourth group of drivers, the dreaded Marshallese Taxi. The taxi driver will cruise slowly along until signaled by a pedestrian at which point he will dive over to the side of the road to pick up his fare. He may, or may not, get off the road and he will pull back into the road with a minimum of warning to other drivers. If his taxi is full he will continue on down the road to his destination. If his taxi is not full, he will pull over and pick up additional fares until it is (because there is really only one road everyone is going in the same direction). Most taxis hold four adult fares but I have seen four adults and four young children plus the taxi driver going down the road in a vehicle smaller than my old department issue Ford Taurus.

Well my house is clean, the laundry is done, my blog is written, it’s time to put my feet up and read a book for a few hours until it’s time to go pick up Becky. Life’s tough when you’re a Cabana Boy.