On mosquitoes, temper tantrums and life in the tropics
I stomped my feet as a small child might and repeated, “Stop, stop, stop!” over and over. “Arghhhh!,” I cried finally, hanging my head in defeat, sweat pouring from my face. “For chrissake, please just leave me alone!”
It was 5:30pm and swelteringly hot, with mosquitoes swarming up from the ground cover of the garden and sticking to my sweaty skin. As I had been for the past twenty minutes or so, I was unsuccessfully trying to attach the metal fastener required to hold the bare end of a garden hose onto the spigot. This process involves simultaneously squeezing two sides of a stiff metal band together, holding a tiny plate in place just so, threading a miniscule screw into that plate, and then screwing it all together without shifting any of the pieces or changing the pressure.
In my case, it also involved doing this in ninety-degree heat with about ninety-percent humidity while I had ninety mosquitoes brazenly attacking me.
Since my hands were occupied with the very special garden hose challenge, I was reduced to yelling at the insects dining on my arms and hands. I was alternately yelling at them to get away from me and yelling at them about why the hell can’t I just get a regular screw-in hose in this godforsaken country instead of this impossible fastener with all these little bits that keep falling out into the mosquito swamp?
And then I started stomping my feet.
In my own defense, there were special circumstances. The night before, a few mosquitoes somehow got into the net over my bed and attempted to murder me. By the time the sun rose, I was exhausted and my back and arms were covered in blood-speckled welts. The tone was set for what turned out to be a long, hot day of being harassed by whizzing, whining swarms of flying demons.
All was not well in paradise. These moments sometimes appear out of nowhere in tropical countries. When you feel that the natural world has too much power accompanied by a consciousness intent on using that power for the ends of destruction and oppression. The air is too heavy, the vegetation too lush, the insects too insistent. Beetles drop in waves onto the table where you’re trying to eat. Geckos scuttle by while you’re showering. A frog screams from the bushes, unable to escape the clutches of a snake. You have a sudden awareness that everything is growing too quickly.
Julian recently said that why there seem to be fewer diseases at home than here is for the obvious reason that there are fewer, and that’s due to the same reason that food doesn’t go off in the refrigerator. “The cooling effect lowers the metabolism of the whole life cycle,” he pointed out.
I thought about this in the evening after I’d finally thrown the hose to the ground and stomped out of my garden to take refuge at Mut Mee. As I lay in a hammock overlooking the riverbank, a cool breeze coming off the water scattered the dreaded mosquitoes, and I felt that I could breathe for the first time that day.
Despite my temper tantrum, I decided I really do like the idea of living in a place where the entire ecosystem has a higher metabolism. Where life is reproducing more quickly and generally idling at a much higher rate than the one my body is set to expect. The truth is: even though this aspect of the tropics can make me feel overwhelmed, it also gives a solid object to which I can attribute the terrible certainty I sometimes feel, no matter where I am, that there is something sinister and doomed happening just beyond the edges of my understanding.
Tags: About me, Nong Khai, Pre-departure, Thailand, Travel
sandra_101
ha ha ha i can picture this scene too perfectly. i hope next angry bratty blog is about you getting in a fight with a monkey over a hot dog.