Ant Attack

Yesterday I talked with Raquel online. I asked her my moth question, but in different words. She said, “What kind of liberated woman are you if you are trying to fulfill someone else’s idea of what a liberated woman is?” but in different words. And then she cursed me out, which was refreshing, because no one here in Monteverde uses curse words, and I’ve come to miss them. In Frisbee, when I miss a catch or make a bad throw and say, “Shoot!” I feel like some sort of morally corrupt person. Plus, Raquel curses like a sailor, and it’s wonderful. We had this agreement last year: I strung together the nastiest, most vulgar curse words I could find and put them on the fridge. If I started to stress out about work Raquel was to use those words on me. She only had to use the system once, and it was a wonderful wake up call. I love work, but not enough to stress continuously about it.

Another thing that happened yesterday: I did laundry. As I brought in my dry clothes I noticed a swarm of ants on the wall of the porch. I leaned closer to see what they were so excited about and I noticed that the swarm was slowly leaking across the railing of my porch and onto the floor next to my feet. This was new. I carefully sneaked a peak down the wall of the balcony. There were ants everywhere, swarming from the grass, up the landlady’s wall and towards me. I shut the door and went inside. As I readied to leave I peeked outside for an ant swarm update. They were all over the floor of my porch now. I shoved a towel in the crack of the door and left the house.

I asked later, at the yoga place (I was there to drop off a reading group book for Daniel, who works with us in the classroom on Wednesday) what was up. I think I said, “Should I be worried about the swarm of ants that were taking over my house when I left?” Daniel said they had been doing the same thing there. Both he and Rise agreed that having ants swarm your house was a great thing to happen since they will clean out all of the carcasses. Yes, they used the word “carcasses”. “Do they bite?” I asked. “They bite HARD”, Daniel replied. Cool. I remembered feet so swollen from ant bites in Nicaragua that my puffy skin pushed on the sides of my sandals. “It’s best to just let them be”, he added. “Yeah”, Rise agreed. “You’re lucky you won’t be home until later tonight.”

And then I left and on the way out I got bitten by one of these ants and it turned bright red, but did not swell.

This makes me think of two things:

1. Mutant Message Down Under. A woman is crossing the outback in Australia and some kind of insect swarms them. She, naturally, freaks out until her guides tell her to just relax and let the bugs do their work. She closes her eyes and tries to remain calm as they work their way into her ears and nose, cleaning and eating. And then they are gone and she feels like she has gone to a spa.

2. Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. An American family is living somewhere in Africa and ants swarm the village and leave nothing in their path – only skeletons. They have to run and submerge themselves in the river to save their lives.

When I got home last night there were no ants anywhere on the porch. I know because I turned on the outside light and checked. There was one tired and lost ant on my bedroom floor. I gave it two feet of space as I put on my PJs.

A few more pictures from Independence day:



This was towards the end of the parade. These kids had been marching and standing in the sun for a few hours and got tired, so they sat down. Maybe my favorite part of parade was the kids dressed up with green crosses who went around giving water to parade participants who looked hot and tired.



I already have a picture of this kid in yesterday’s post, but he was adorable. His sunglasses where so huge they stuck out from his face on both sides and he is wearing those super cool cut off gloves. He saw me trying to take his picture and turned and looked right at me. I think this is my favorite picture from the entire day.


A beautiful flower on the walk home, which was 5km uphill in the hot sun. This flower makes me think of skin. I think if I could choose any skin color, it would be this, but then I’m sure the bees and humming birds would be a real bother.



This cow had slipped out of the fence at my favorite spot on my walk home from work. My father has passed on to me an obsession with cows and I simply had to take some pictures. This picture does not do this munching lady justice. Her dark brown faded to light brown further down her back. She made a surprising amount of noise ripping up roots, grinding and swallowing. She was beautiful.



These are the flowers at the gate to my house, and my house. See that corner there? That is my kitchen. See my corrugated tin roof? That is why the rain sounds so lovely. No, the rain would sound lovely regardless. The roof is why the rain sounds especially lovely.


Something interesting about life in Monteverde: It has not rained here in at least a week, even though we are in the middle of the rainy season. This means there is no water in the streams and that sometimes there is not water at the school and if you have to use the restroom you have to use the out house with the spiders. I wonder whose job it is to get rid of the spiders in the out house but don’t want to ask because I fear the answer will be “yours.”

Apparently, during the dry season, sometimes there won’t be water for two days at a time and people can’t shower. This is on my List of Things I Wish They Had Mentioned in the Interview, right next to “There are spiders and scorpions everywhere”. I still would have taken the job - I don’t like to shower.