This was just not my day.
"I'm tired of arguing with you. Just go, already."
All I wanted was to finish setting up the new volunteers' room. Was that asking so much? I didn't think so. And yet, every step of the way, something stood in my way.
"I'm doing my best, here. Help a sister out."
The room was mostly furnished already; the previous occupant had left the week before. I knew that George and Ruthie were an older couple, so I got the construction team to switch out the single mattress for the double bed from Pippi's room. Then I realized that the existing mosquito net was too small, so Robin scrounged up a different one for me, a round princess net with shiny pink ribbons. To tie the net to the rafters, I had to get one of the men to stand on a chair on top of the bed, wobbling around like a circus elephant.
"This is stupid. I can't believe I'm even having this conversation with you."
I'd planned to put the shelter's one large bedspread on the bed, but one of the women had wandered off with it. I asked Robin to put the word out; in the meantime, I struggled to make do with a too-small duvet patterned with enormous, clinically-rendered mushrooms. I'd had the foresight to stash an extra pillow in the cupboard, but I realized that I needed to go grab a clean pillowcase from my own room.
"Oh, come on, what do you want from me?"
I attempted to leave the house the same way I'd come in, the door where I'd left my sandals. However, while I'd been messing around with the mosquito net, someone had made the curious decision to padlock that door from the outside. I had no choice but to go out the other door, which meant abandoning my shoes.
Hmm.
CHOICE A: Turn left, cross this bridge
and this one
and collect my shoes at the other door.
CHOICE B: Take the long way, barefoot, past the pig sheds with their heaps of excrement and mud
and the chickens
and through the piles of organic debris where cobras love to sleep
and across the rickety bamboo bridge that cracks audibly every time an especially large mosquito lands on it
and over the potholed patch of ground where I sprained my ankle
and up the uneven brick path to my house
and then down the spider path (remember the spider path?)
and behind the women's residence, leaping over and tip-toeing around the mud puddles
and across the random stretch of pointy stones
and then back down the path to collect my shoes.
Naturally, I initially went with CHOICE A, but I lost my nerve at the first bridge. Normally I prance across with surprisingly little fear, ignoring the very real possibility that I could lose my balance and topple into the filthy, snake-infested water. This time, though, I could feel every creak and tilt of the board under my bare feet, and I skittered back onto solid land before I'd gone three steps.
I made it as far as the pig pens, and that's when I ran into my final obstacle, something standing literally and inflexibly in my way. Not the smell, which on a good day has a nearly physical impact. Not the inevitable pig shit, which squished unpleasantly into the arch of my foot. Not the chickens, who scattered in front of me like so many cockroaches. Not a snake or a brick wall or the Mongol army, but...
...a pig.
Perhaps you were expecting something a little grander. "A pig?" you say. "Is that all? It's a freaking pig. Are you telling me you can't outsmart a walking side of bacon?"
Your incredulity tells me that you have never shared a narrow path with an excitable pig on the lam. You have never taken a tentative step forward, hoping to scoot around the pig and continue on your way, only for the high-strung animal to squeal like Ned Beatty and dash down the path away from you. You have never stepped forward and then back, shifted uncertainly from side to side - like a chess piece, or a cha-cha dancer - trying alternately to mollify or outmaneuver an animal that will happily eat its own poop.
You have never stood barefoot in the cobra grass, warm dung clinging to your heel, and attempted, in all earnestness, to negotiate.
"Okay, pig. Here are my terms."
So what the hell do you know?
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