Vicious Insects and the F.S.D.

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I have been meaning to add these entries for a couple weeks now, but have not been afforded the opportunity until now, so now, without further adieu:

After 7:30 am mass and a 9:30 meeting yesterday, Nancy and I boarded into Sr. Amora’s car to make the 1 ½ hour trek to Linstead - barely-on-the-map - Jamaica. The house here is absolutely gorgeous: 2 stories with 5 bathrooms, 6 bedrooms, a big kitchen and dining room, a sitting room, a prayer room, an office, a giant porch downstairs and veranda upstairs, a laundry room, a garage, and a storage room in the basement, not to mention large front and back yards filled with banana, guava, coconut, orange, and june plum trees. While the living quarters are quite luxurious, the living is not. We are constantly plagued by little (and fast!) mosquitoes whose bites quickly grow to the size of nickels. And these guys are voracious! They feast on our flesh for breakfast, lunch, second lunch, dinner, midnight snack, and all the other snacks in between. In addition, the kitchen counter seems to be a cozy little vacation spot for thousands of vicious black ants who march in good form and try to carry away entire boxes of cereal. Also, there was both a worm and a beetle in the guava I cut for breakfast….not exactly my idea of appetizing. But the fun doesn’t stop there! Oh wait, yes it does. I don’t think they really planned for Nancy and I to do anything while we were here, so we spend a lot of the day just scratching bug bites, applying vinegar (which apparently stops itching??) and reading. We’ve also been the in-house curtain hemmers, trash-sorters, vegetable-cutters, room-cleaners, and computer-fixers, to name a few odd jobs we’ve taken on.

Now, as this month nears its end, so, too, did nearly my life today. An afternoon jaunt into the mountains just outside of Linstead turned into a death vice when Sr. Amora’s reckless rules of the road met their match: a fallen stone. And you’re thinking: “Oh, a tiny stone? How lame!” But let me assure you, this was not a tiny stone, but rather, a giant boulder fallen from the rocky mountainside with ostentatiously protruding sharp edges and knarling teeth (well, had the boulder had teeth, they would have been knarling). Needless to say, the balding car tire pleaded no competition to the F. S. D. (Falling Stone of Death) and a senseless swerve brought the two archenemies together. This, in turn, nearly caused all of us in the vehicle to meet our maker. Thankfully, we all survived. Sadly, the tire and its hideously bent rim did not. We expertly replaced the tire with the spare and, other than this small altercation with the F.S.D., it was quite a successful afternoon ride. We journeyed along “Devil’s Race Course Road” up through mountain towns to see some of the other parishes in the area and to bond with a vicious donkey before making the ride back to town. The aforementioned ride, by the way, consisted of Amora racing at 80 kph along curves and around pinpoint turns that loom over sheer cliffs while, mind you, there are numerous other vehicles traveling directly toward you, as the road is barely wide enough for 1 car, let alone 2.

Anyway, this is enough fun updating for now…more to follow soon….

Love, Meg

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