18. The Horrors

With good things there are always some bad things, isn't that right? Just to help you remember how good the good things are. It's the same here in St. Vincent. With these wonderful surroundings and magical times, there is also a very real aspect that brings you back to the real world: physical discomfort (to put it mildly) caused by nature.

What my leg looked like after 4 days here.

For one thing, you have the normal things like sunburn and mosquitoes. But then you have all the other things that give you bites that itch, like sand flies, bush flies, ants, and also spiders! The mosquito bites are quite large, but they don't itch like crazy like the tiny sand fly bites do. The spider bites (or at least what I think are spider bites) are in between in size and the amount of itching they cause too. Sometimes I feel like almost all tiny living things here want a tiny part of my body. I would like to tell them that this is my body, and they can bite the cows instead, but I don't speak Bug (or any insect language, except for the one where my sweat is saying: 'Come here! This is delicious, healthy human!').

Those are all the mobile things that make you hurt and itch. But then in addition you have the plants with defence mechanisms that hurt, sting, stab, itch, and burn. You have nestles that sting worse than the European ones, and spikes on the palm trees that I bet can be used as weapons. The spikes are tough, hard, and have a sharp point, and they are up to three inches long (that is approximately 7.5 cm). They often lie on the ground in the pasture, and the other day I could feel something stabbing my toe. I checked and saw that one of them had gone straight through the sole of one of my crocs. Scary! Other than that, many of the plants we clear from the pasture have thorns and small spikes. But I have saved the worst for last: the Monkey beans.

The Monkey beans are beans that grow on creeper vines. They look like hairy dead brown beans (and they probably are), but if you touch them, the hairs will go into your skin and make it itch, sting, burn, and hurt like crazy. The only thing that helps is to rinse yourself in a lot of water. I had my first close encounter with them today. It was horrible. I didn't see the Monkey beans before I had touched them, and it hurt like crazy. I went in and rinsed my arm, but when I came out again and my other arm touched the side of my T-shirt, I realised the hairs were also in my T-shirt. After that, I gave up trying to clear that patch of land. The worst thing is that they also grow on the guava trees. So when you are picking guava to have a sweet snack, you could end up hurting a lot instead.

My method for coping with all this itching without scratching too much is a mindset I have worked on for a long time. Before I get bitten the first time, I am really afraid of being bitten. But when the inevitability really hits me, and I have a number of bites, I stop caring too much about new bites, and I focus on forgetting that it itches. I have practised this for many summers, and it works to a certain degree.  At least I am satisfied with how little damage I have done to my legs by scratching.

Now you know that not everything is heaven here, and every magical moment is accompanied by either bugs trying to eat me or the after effect of their bites trying to get my body's attention. But still, when I look at the wonderful sunset, orange and pink, and play the flute outside while watching the sky change colour, I realise that the discomfort is only a minor side effect of this beautiful place, and it has very small significance in my overall experience of this place.

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