a few little things

There is a spider that lives on the room side of my door. She is a relatively large spider, maybe the size of a silver dollar or a little bigger, and very flat. Not quite the size of my nemesis in Liberia last summer. When I accidentally slam the door behind me, I see her tense, rising up on all her legs as if she’s getting ready to leap away in terror. When I reach my hand toward the door to open it, she lies as flat and still as she can, trying to hide. I am almost as afraid of her as she is of me, but I’m getting over it. I don’t think she’s a biting spider. She eats bugs, so I live with her presence, as with the other spiders on the wall behind my bed, as with the geckos, as with the stripey lizards, as with the frogs that hop about in all the corners. (Actually, though, since I like the geckos and the stripey lizards, that’s not so much a matter of “living with” as the others, except when one of them scares me and there is that split second in which I think it’s a snake.)

Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to go off and, I don’t know, work, or something, I set my water bottle on the hood of the Land Cruiser so that I would remember to fill it up all the way up after I visited the evil latrine. When I came out and washed my hands and went back to fill up the water bottle, I found the driver dumping the water from it into the radiator. “Hey!” I said, “That’s my water bottle!” He very studiously did not look in my direction. I stopped and stood next to him and said, “That’s my water bottle!” and he still wouldn’t look at me. Okay, he doesn’t speak any English, but even when someone standing right next to me speaks to me, even in a language I don’t understand, I at least look at them. I was pretty annoyed, because right now we are cut off by road from the rest of the world (flooding) and no new water bottles are coming into town. I thought about fighting for my water bottle, but he had his hands in the engine and wrapped around the opening of the bottle. I decided that one was toast. I went and washed out my mango Vita bottle from the day before and filled it with water. It smells very strongly of mango, but the water tastes normal, which is a disappointment after smelling the mango as I lift the bottle toward my mouth.

It is, by the way, raining yet again. I know that weather is approximately the most boring thing anyone can write about but it’s sort of all consuming when every drop of water contributes to the masses of gray clay that stick to my boots whenever I take a step. Also, when it’s raining, we can’t go anywhere, so there’s nothing to talk about except hey! It’s raining! Again!

You want to know what was really, truly the most exciting moment of the day for me today? (This will tell you how little I get out right now.) I was digging through my suitcase looking for a shirt, and I found a fresh, clean pair of socks. Clean as in last washed in good-smelling detergent in the US and fully rinsed (so they aren’t crunchy) and line-dried in the sun (so they don’t smell musty). I was thrilled, and I dried my feet and put the clean socks on immediately. I actually thought about saving them for a time when I really needed something clean and fresh-smelling, but then I decided I needed them now. It’s the little things.

Oh! There was another exciting thing! I lost my toenail. The one I smashed under an armchair in March and had to pierce with a red-hot needle so all the blood trapped under the nail could drain out for weeks and stain all my socks? That one. The nail finally fell off today. Okay, I wiggled and twisted it until it fell off. I never said I was one of those patient people. Now I have a strange proto-nail on my big toe. I’m very enamored with it. The one that fell off, I mean. I took photos.

It is five fifteen p.m. and a confused rooster is crowing as if he is the only herald of an oncoming morning.