On Saturday, I took advantage of the chance to sleep in and didn’t even bother setting an alarm. When I finally got up, showered and dressed, I put my clothes in the washer and went to make some food. After dicing the tomato and pepper, I saw a spider. My shoes were all in my room, so I took a paper towel to kill it. When I hit it, a hundred tiny baby spiders swarmed out from the mother. I grabbed the insecticide and sprayed til they all stopped moving, but immediately was no longer hungry, and kind of terrified (even though K had warned me of the babies). I’m not scared of bugs, but I don’t want them or any other small animal in my living space/line of sight indoors. I’m okay with killing them, but don’t like spraying chemicals or seeing one spider turn into a hundred spiders. And, of course, all this feels worse because I can’t immediately debrief with someone in the next room.
I eventually packed a bag with my camera, book, journal and some snacks and set off on a walk behind the house. I just followed the path, through the fields where we saw the cows, until there was a sign that said I couldn’t continue. I took a few of the offshoot roads as well until they, too, ended. With my camera as my companion, occasional shade, and bucolic surroundings, I didn’t feel uncomfortable in my own skin anymore. Taking a photo was capturing something beautiful and analogous to pointing it out to a companion.
Moo. (alternate caption: Cow on Strike)
The walk was about three hours in total, and I sat to eat a banana and when I got back I stopped to read for a while on a wall along the field near the beginning of the path (by my house). It divides the field from a group of houses below, which I might eventually walk through to introduce myself, since they’re so close to me. I couldn’t make out what the people were saying when I eavesdropped, but I didn’t think it was Spanish. To confirm, I asked the clinic watchman if it was a Haitian community, and he confirmed that it was.
“Misery isn’t sweet”
On Sunday, Berkys showed me around a little and we spent a while talking. We ended the evening at the ice cream shop 🙂 Fun fact: the creamsicle flavor in the DR is “morir sonando”–the die dreaming.
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