Hurricane Season

I sit here in an archetypal Southern thunderstorm, a grouchy old beast who visits regularly in the mid afternoon when the heat index peaks and sooty clouds loom in from the northeast. The period before the rains fall is electric, a blessed blanket of shade from the momentarily-vanquished sun, when people run out to their cars to retrieve some item or savor a quick smoke before retreating inside for the rest of the work day.

The storm makes itself known with waves of wall-rattling thunder, and sheets of rain whipping through the live oaks onto the poorly-drained streets in the city’s Riverside neighborhood. Lightening may claim one or two trees or cast a couple blocks into darkness with a well-placed kiss. Water fills the street as the storm passes, drifting off around quitting time. Tomorrow it will repeat the process. The hotter it gets, the harder the storms. Woe to whomever gets caught in it.

NOAA predicts an active hurricane season this year. We are 21 days in and already there have been 3 named storms along the Pacific coast.

What concerns me most is the Gulf of Mexico, and the operations going on there. Though a storm would have no effect on the well head, it would certainly affect surface ships and the rigs digging the relief wells. Worse still would be its impact on the oil slick, which at this time, is up to interpretation. We really don’t know whether it would disperse the oil and push it away from shore, or push it over the booms with the storm surge and turn an already miserable nightmare into a far more miserable nightmare.

What happens if benzene and other toxins condense in significant amounts within storms? Could they shower the northeast with poison? What happens if oil is pushed into freshwater features?

The progress of drilling engineers and relief crews so far has been helped along by relatively good weather. However, we all know not to rely on it. Down here, hurricanes take on human qualities and become characters in local history. People speak of Andrew, Ivan, and Katrina as if they were sentient beings. They describe their temperaments, the wrath they inflicted or the mercies they showed, and speak of every new entity as a potential visitor. As with any important visitor, welcomed or otherwise, there are rituals to perform and protocol to follow. Everyone’s routine stops as they must meet the newcomer. To ignore it is to invite a poor reception.

The good thing is that the visitor is always just passing through. Within a few days, it is gone, and we rearrange our lives to whatever new conditions it bestowed upon us. That’s far more that can be said than with our tragedy in the Gulf.

They tell us the relief wells should be done by August. They don’t tell us about how enormously complex an operation it is to bisect a tiny patch of space 3 miles underground when the integrity of the surrounding structure and sea floor is still very much in question. August is simply another point in a plan that has yielded very little.

I have far more faith in weather patterns and in my old friends than I do in any concept of man. Of course I hope for the best, and applaud the people working on the relief rigs, who I view as heroes in an episode largely dominated by ugly and useless characters. I know that in addition to working against geology and weather, they struggle against the most dangerous factor: time.

A Teachable Moment

I can’t take it anymore. I have to start writing about the oil spill. Consider it to be the subject of this blog for the foreseeable future.

On May 1st, 2010, the day that Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar declared the Deepwater Horizon oil spill “potentially catastrophic” adding, “I think we have to prepare for the worst,” an article was published in Offshore Magazine, the online periodical on “World Trends and Technology for Offshore Oil and Gas Operations.”

Penned by drilling executive and lobbyist Burt Adams, the article, titled “A Teachable Moment” is a glowing description of the “new cause for hope” offered by the government’s offshore plan proposed in March which “provides an historic opportunity for America’s offshore energy sector.” Seemingly oblivious to the disaster unfolding daily, he praises the “Develop, Explore, and Protect” strategy and cheerfully asserts “These are three areas in which our industry excels.” As untold thousands of gallons of petrochemicals and semi-toxic dispersants fill the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Adams pays homage to the technology of offshore drilling, saying it “rivals that of the space industry” and that “despite claims to the contrary, energy production and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive.” He continues with a sparkling review of the industry’s environmental record, its impact on our economy, and a resounding call to “engage in the policy debate to help create the right frameworks that will allow this great industry to accomplish what we know we can.”

As absurd as it sounds in light of recent events, the article is the legitimate voice of a powerful force that profoundly affects our daily lives, and the justifications for so insidious a presence will be refined and reiterated at length in the coming months as the debate over this practice rises astronomically. We will be constantly reminded that 25% of our energy comes from offshore drilling, that it employs hundreds of thousands of people, and that it lessens our dependence on foreign oil. What they will not tell us is how other countries, like Germany, France, and even China, will soon be able to generate 25% of their electricity through renewable means, or how Brazil has passed everyone at 85%, or the 27% per year growth rate that alternative energy technology enjoys and the millions of people it will employ.

No, the oil industry and the many different voices they enlist will treat us as dependents, and speak to us as a drug dealer speaks to an addict, with platitudes and veiled threats. Mr. Adams is eerily correct when he writes “the general public and to a large extent decision makers in Congress and state legislatures remain uninformed of the tremendous contributions of our industry.” Their contributions ensure our ongoing addiction to oil, and as anyone in the social services knows, the first step to curbing an addiction is to admit it. What follows is a grueling process of introspection and willpower. One does not beat an addiction with a closer, friendlier, more reasonable dealer. As the oil spill worsens and seeps into the Gulf Stream, as the lawsuits multiply and the economies of the coastal states collapse, America will see the ugly side of its addiction. It’s kinda like watching a methhead scratch off his own skin.

Offshore drilling was banned before. This is not a radical, unprecedented notion. Curbing the practice would force America to confront its energy demons and develop sound renewable energy policy for the long term, much like our international competitors. Beyond its initial creepiness, the tone of Mr. Adam’s article is insulting to any American in its insinuation that we cannot do any better than fossil fuels. To borrow the author’s parting words: “This is a teachable moment. If we are successful, America’s energy future will be much brighter.” I encourage all who agree to share their ideas with anyone who will listen.

The Goat Story

Due to popular demand I will attempt to immortalize an incident that occurred sometime in October of 2007.

For the first 6 months of my service I lived at the top of a ridge north of Arkersall, the name of which was Long Hill… and Long Hill was long. The route to town, ironically called “New Road”, was a crumbling ribbon of muddy sadness that most drivers tended to avoid. My days began with a 2 mile descent to town and ended with a grueling trudge back up the hill. I lived in the home of an elderly lady who treated me well and let me plant a garden on a small strip of hillside land above the road. I spent many an hour working on that garden and used it as a demonstration area for the erosion-control techniques I was promoting with local farmers.

Home

One of those farmers lived up the road. A goat herder, he would lead his herd out in the morning on the way to his field and gather them at the end of the day. Keeping a goat is relatively low maintenance. You tie it to a tree, it eats all day, and you bring it back at evening time, lest someone steal it. Agricultural theft, or praedial larceny, is serious business in rural areas. It was not uncommon for thieves caught in the act to be disassembled on the spot by an angry, machete-wielding owner. I had previously witnessed a tense altercation between a group of screaming farmers and a taxi driver who had hit a goat that jumped into the road. You do not mess with another man’s goat.

It knows your secrets

Unfortunately, this Golden Rule of the Bush was not on my mind as I rounded the final bend in the road and looked up to see a large ram goat feasting on my lovingly-cultivated rosemary bush. Exhausted after another punishing day, my shirt striped with crusty salt-sweat rings from trudging through the bush with a guy who was convinced his yams cured tooth decay, I stood there in the road, watching this horrible thing devour a hard-to-find herb I had hauled half-way across the country to bring to that isolated corner of the universe because I was going through Italian food withdrawal and ached to cook something with a taste of home.

I voiced my displeasure, yelling with as much force as one could muster when dehydrated, commanding the ram goat, who I’ll call Travis, to GTFO immediately. Travis raised his head, gazing soullessly at me through those empty rectangular pupils, their placid facade hardly containing the unholy darkness fueling the beast. He then casually lifted his tail, and in an act of pure spite, pooped on my basil.

Devoured with rage at such blatant sacrilege, I grabbed a small stone and cast it in Travis’ direction. It landed wide of the mark, and the goat, confident on the high ground, returned to the herbal buffet. I made several more valiant attempts, but my exertions were in vain. Throwing rocks at animals was a local art that people practiced from their earliest days. All I could do was fling curses. Travis turned his backside to me in a show of supreme insolence. Something surged within, and I grabbed a large rock that fit perfectly in my hand and let it fly with all I had.

"New Road"

It may have been an adrenaline rush fueled by the culmination of a great many frustrations, or a divinely-ordained moment of fate, but I launched that rock like a Biblical warrior. I can still hear the hollow crack that echoed along the mountainside as the stone smacked the base of the goat’s skull below the horns. Travis froze, looking like he had been struck by lightening, making no noise, just stiffening, tilting slowly to the side, then tumbling over the edge of the cliff. The hillside was eroded and crazy steep, so Travis rolled down violently, a hairy sack of horns and legs striking rocks and trees and coming to a stop in a dusty cloud at my feet.

“Oh shi…”

I sheepishly nudged it with the clay-caked toe of my shoe.

“Goat… Hey… Wake up goat!… Goat?!”

The whole thing happened in less than 3 seconds. Sprawled in the road, limp, tongue hanging out, the scent of chewed rosemary and goat piss heavy in the air; Travis had clearly checked out, and his return was seriously in question. Now I found myself standing over the prize component of someone’s livelihood, prodding its filthy corpse frantically, my pulse racing as I searched vainly for any hint of his.

...around the bend

Just as I was weighing the pros and cons of attempting CPR, I heard the calls of other goats, many goats, rising in the distance. Looking down the road I watched in horror as the herd turned the bend, knowing Travis’ owner was coming up behind. With no time to think about what I was doing, I grabbed Travis by the horns and dragged him to the side of the road, tucking his legs under his body and propping his head on a rock, eyes facing down, forming a hideous vignette of a goat at rest. Within seconds the herd arrived and the farmer waved at me, clutching his 36” machete. Oh good, he wants to talk.

We chatted for a few moments. He was in his forties and displayed the typical bush farmer physique: a godlike body of bulging musculature from constant physical activity graced with a gnarled, weather-beaten face making him seem twice his actual age. He commented on my haggard appearance, expressed pride in my living the rural life, and even gave me advice for working my garden… leading me to shoot a glance over at Travis, whose head was slowly sliding off the rock, still showing no signs of life. The farmer picked up on it and asked if I liked “that goat.” I nodded, even floating the idea of buying it from him, but he cited a ridiculous price that left little room for negotiation. Eventually the conversation ran off and he turned to make his exit.

Suddenly he stopped, turned back around, and walked over to Travis, grabbing hold of the tattered rope around the animal’s neck and giving it a sharp jerk forward. The goat slumped over and melted over the road. The farmer’s eyes flashed to me.

I froze, my eyes on his machete. This is it.

Sucking his teeth and making the quintessentially Jamaican sound of mild irritation, the farmer cursed Travis’ lifeless form, jerked again, then delivered a swift kick to the animal’s ribs. My eyes bulged, I wanted to cry out and fling the dark burden from my soul, to admit guilt, to spare even my hated enemy’s dignity in death, but before I could make a sound, the goat sputtered, gasped, and slowly got up.

What infernal sorcery is this?!

Travis wobbled a bit but otherwise fell into place with the rest of the herd following the farmer up the road. I sat at the side of the road and eventually managed to produce my first full breath for 10 minutes. This series of events took some time to process. It now ranks among the top 5 most intense moments in my life. The goat never violated my garden territory again, although he was probably eaten soon after.

River crossing to Long Hill

Over the years, I encountered a great many more goats, even implementing a goat-rearing project and having one take up residence under my house, but none of them possess anywhere near the amount of mental real estate that Travis claimed. That’s why I had to honor him with a name.

Goal 3

This is not a Peace Corps blog. I rarely mention the name of the agency, and my writings deal more with stories and experiences than with vaunted ideals or hyped-up mission statements. Still, I figured it was time to give the Toughest Job it’s due, so lets look at the basics. Unlike Fight Club, the Peace Corps only has three rules:

1) Provide 2-3 years of free labor for a worthwhile organization or agency in a developing country that could use a little help.

2) Try not to make a royal ass of yourself or your country. You don’t have to love the flag, but you should try to respect it, and give others a reason to do the same.

3) Go home, take the lessons you learned abroad and try spreading them around. Talk about the world beyond the tour books. Open people’s eyes to the bigger picture.

The third goal is in effect forever. Jamaica will always be a chapter in my life, and though the story has already been written, there’s no limit to the number of ways I can tell it. I’ve been doing that a lot lately, speaking informally in various venues, finding truths I’d often overlooked before. We live in a world of unmitigated artificiality, and for those who yearn to see what much of the world is like, the opportunity is there, but you need to be ready for anything, have a clear mind unclouded with baseless ideology and possess a generous capacity for change.

I never thought of myself as a passionate proponent of anything. I’m hopelessly cynical, I lack direction, and I have a hard time seeing humanity as something more than a narcissistic anomaly occupying a speck of matter in the universe which delights in trivialities and increasingly viral behavior. I have a shadowy sense of humor and a hard time trusting others. My politics are cryptic and subject to interpretation. I’m not exactly the archetypal Peace Corps Volunteer.

But then again, there is no typical volunteer. That salient fact was evident as I got to know the other good souls who passed through Miami International with me on July 4th, 2007. Yeah, they shipped us out on Independence day. Though many of us didn’t make it the whole way, we all wanted to be there at the time, and we shared a basic idea that the opportunity to serve your own nation by helping another was a pretty good deal. Though we thought differently and fashioned our lives accordingly, we were united on the bigger picture and working together toward a worthy cause. That, in my opinion, is the essence of progress.

Peace Corps provided an excellent opening for my adult life. Anyone who knows me, and most everyone who reads this probably knows me, knows that the last 2 years were the most substantial time of my life, and I will forever relay my stories to any schmuck who will listen, in the hopes of sparking adventure and purpose in others.

Restless?

Is it strange to draw strength from futility and despair? Is it possible to find joy in suffering, and power in frustration? What about comfort in filth, satisfaction in being hungry, or sublime order in absolute chaos?

Last year around this time these dynamics were in full swing and keeping me moving. In Jamaica, I regularly hiked over mountains, forged swollen rivers, and took on daunting journeys as daily routine. The hotter the sun, the harder the rains, the slower the meetings– the happier I became. I remember regularly visiting peaks of exasperation, feeling my temper melt and my muscles burn, to the point where my mind detached to soak in my surroundings and situation, somehow converting my agony into energy, my weakness into strength, and my hate into love. It’s impossible to describe, but somehow I shoveled all the myriad nasties of bush life and found within them profound joy, and used them to carry on, like fuel to the furnace of my soul.

The road up to Goffe, flooded after Tropical Storm Gustav.

Back then I thought nothing of a predawn hike to a hillside farm, or a day spent digging irrigation lines under the screaming sun, or stuffing my bare hands into a humming beehive and laughing with the stings. Now, I’m lucky if I can pull myself out of bed before 10 AM. Before I could walk into a group of idle youths and convince them to attend a community meeting, or engage a hostile Rasta in epic sociopolitical debate ending in laughter and goodwill, or sell a long shot project to a skeptical donor organization. Now I have trouble making small talk and relating to people whose concerns just don’t click with me.

Something is missing.

My old kitchen, only slightly less sanitary than it looks

Back then I hardly noticed the dirt and leaf particles in my drinking water, the ants in my cereal, or the chicken parts in my soup. Now I bitch if they forget to sprinkle cinnamon on my chai latte. In those days I slept in swerving taxis choked with thundering sound, and walked peacefully through raucous street parties and volatile political protests. Now I get annoyed at the sound of a lawnmower and feel horribly transplanted in the place of my birth.

I feel a change coming. It’s a matter of time, and pressure. Both are approaching considerable levels. The last time I felt like this, I ended up in the Jamaican bush. One thing is for sure, normalcy is just not my thing right now, but I can’t quite yet make out the destination over the horizon.

Screaming Silence

Sitting here in this yuppy suburban moonscape staring at what few stars manage to shine through, my thoughts, as they often do, drift back to Jamaica, and the memories of the 600 plus nights I spent there. The silence here is deafening. No crickets, no people, no sounds of any kind reach my chilly ears. It’s vaguely unsettling.

I often remark that Jamaica has to be the loudest place on earth. Not a single waking moment, or a sleeping one for that matter, escaped the tropical din. Noise was life. Neighbors arguing across the street, taxis zooming by blaring the latest dubbed nonsense, snarling dogs tearing each other apart in the streets… this was the soundtrack of being. Let me take you on an audial journey through a typical day.

The enemy is among us

Your day starts just before sunrise with the ghastly cries of God’s most despicable creation: the rooster. If an animal could make a compelling case for its own extinction, it would be the rooster. Little more than a strutting sack of chicken sperm, this bird is the pinnacle of utter uselessness, irritation, and fail. The developed world holds a few stellar misconceptions about roosters. Firstly, they do not crow only in the morning. The rooster spits its venom randomly at all hours. One usually sets off others. You can hear the cries echoing through the valley, a chain reaction of hellish screams that makes sleep a sad memory. And it’s not a pleasant “Cock-a-doodle-doo,” it’s an ugly shriek from the depths of hell. When you watch them, it looks entirely involuntary and unpleasant, like the bird is vomiting up some toxic discharge. In my first house up on Longill, my host mother had 9 of them, and they were all sick, the result being a ghastly cacophony of croaks and gurgles. They infest every corner of the island, and you will never escape their input.

After the roosters come the pigs screeching for their morning feast. The trees explode with the chatter of tropical songbirds. You hear the first cars whiz around the bend. All along the street, doors open and the ladies of the town begin their sweeping, brushing the ravages of night from verandas and driveways and storefronts. You can hear Ms. Jackie frying bacon and the kids next door yelling at the breakfast table. People start leaving for work, the traffic increases as taxis take off on their rounds, cranking sound systems and revving battered engines. Your town awakens.

The migration of schoolchildren in their bicolored uniforms begins: yellow and blue for St. Mary’s, blue and white for Bohwah High, and the occasional gray and white for the Queen’s Academy in Town, while all the little primary school kids sport the ubiquitous khakis and blue checkered shirts. You shuffle onto your veranda sipping a cup of steaming instant coffee and the scene on the street looks like a Renaissance Fair. The kids are laughing and roughhousing, sucking on bagjuice and scarfing down spice buns, blithely dropping the plastic wrappers on the street and in your yard. Seeing you the giggling increases, fervent intrigues in hushed patwa, the boys looking tough or giving you the upwards nod, the girls laughing and covering their mouths, the boldest ones calling out your name and demanding to see your cat.

The parade goes on for a half hour or so as the taxi traffic increases. Massive dump trucks and work vehicles appear, either heading to the hills for lumber or to the river for sand. The cement block “factory” fires up its gas-powered pressing machine as shirtless men shovel sand and mix into the clamoring mechanical beast. You stand at the side of the road and flag a passing taxi– if you’re lucky you snag the front seat– and your commute begins.

I’ve burned plenty of words describing island public transit. If it’s not raining, the windows are always open. The rushing wind and the clatter of the rear exhaust are joined with whatever music the driver has going, either a CD or a radio. Most CD’s are home made and sold on the street. They are often compilations of popular music from America and indigenous tunes, mixed around by the deejay, almost always containing the arbitrary array of nonsensical sound effects dubbed over songs, and often, the deejay’s own poignant commentary. Island radio, like television, is dominated by three stations that play a similar lineup of reggae, dancehall, and American hip-hop. Some shows feature old rocksteady, ska, and mento tunes. On Sundays, you get the best in contemporary gospel. The radio also has healthy doses of news, contests, and inane banter. You spend the 25 minute ride grooving on tunes or engaged in conversation.

Hope you brought your ackee fi sell

The taxi drops you off in a slightly larger town than the one you started in, the din of construction and traffic growing in intensity. A short ride in another taxi brings you to a relatively urban landscape of narrow roads bordered with concrete block structures and choked with hundreds of people. A large country town such as Linstid or Yewrton is an organism in its own right. The latter is the home of the region’s largest mining complex while the former hosts a legendary market that spews into the surrounding streets as hundreds of vendors, higglers, and shoppers gather to do business. On a busy market day, the sidewalks are packed and you are presented with obstacles of all sorts on your make your way to your office on the outskirts of town. Music and chatter pours from every bar. Goats and dogs roam the gutters. Cars lurch forward and break as the crowd flows around them. The typical driver uses his horn far more than his turn signal.

The office is about the quietest place you’ve been. The radios are still on, but they are kept at a reasonable level. There are the regular sounds of tractors and vehicles operating out back, but for the most part, now is the time to recover from the commute, browse the paper, and chat with colleagues. However, the office environment does not appeal to you. Your work is in the bush. You hitch a ride with an extension officer and follow him or her into the unknown. Your day is spent in and out of farms, classrooms, and community meetings. Lunch is at a little roadside shack with the old timers where the tunes of Barrington Levy compete with the loud crack of slamming dominoes in the next room. If you’re lucky you can catch a ride with a coworker to Bahwah and hop a taxi before school lets out and you have to fight the crowds for an open seat.

The afternoon sees the same procession of schoolkids and townspeople amble home. The bars start hopping and the churches may fire up for certain denominations. As the sun sets the evening newscast pours forth from every television. In the square, Biggy starts showing movies outside his shop. Laughter and dominoes soon follow.

Typical advertisement for a street party

Fast forward a few hours, and you’re getting ready to sleep. You’re exhausted after a long day and feeling especially gnarly since the water isn’t running and you’re bedding down, again, for the fourth night in a row without a shower when you hear a vehicle come to a halt outside. More voices and the sounds of heavy things being moved. You unbolt the door and cautiously go out to investigate. Cooly and his crew are unloading a truckload of refrigerator-sized speakers into his yard. The local deejay is hooking up his soundboard. A crowd is slowly forming around the neighboring bar. Block party tonight, throbbing bass and hotta fire lyrics till dawn.

So much for that sleeping thing. Somewhere on the hillside, a rooster crows.

Lion

Lion is passed out in my yard again. His crinkled form lies sprawled across the concrete retaining wall, his eyes shielded by an ancient straw hat that seems to have taken on an organic quality, harboring life forms unknown to modern biology. Taking a seat on my porch I pretend to read a book, but my eyes frequently drift over to the old man, making sure the buzzards don’t pay the him a premature visit. It’s doubtful that John Crow would show much interest in old Lion anyway. Not even the mosquitoes pay him any mind.

The pride assembles

I take a moment and amble over to him, just to make sure he’s still breathing. His distinctive sweet-and-sour aroma of cannabis resin and sun-seared sweat is not quite repulsive, but not a smell one would typically associate with a healthy organism. I search for the telltale bottle and find it shoved into his right pocket. He keeps his rum close… in the way a cop would carefully position a trusted sidearm.

No one in town knows how old he is or where he came from. One is led to believe that he simply grew up from the fiery soil like the knarled mango trees guarding the main road. For most, he is just another permanent fixture of daily life. There’s the mountain… the gully… the river… the sun… and Lion. Much like the sun, folks measure time according to his movements.

“Lion go up a bush?”

“Lion pass yet?”

“Lion down a yard?”

Day after day, the cycle never varies. Lion rises, Lion sets, and somehow Lion rises the next day.

Occasionally our orbits cross. After the customary offering of a cigarette, Lion will sit and impart to me the wisdom of the heavens. His teaching will become increasingly disjointed, eventually degenerating into a rambling diatribe of miserable oaths and curses. Sometimes he’ll cry, lamenting this and that, then hit me with a radiant smile as he fires into a new topic and the chemicals swirling through the ether of his mind drive him to break into some forgotten song.

“Respect” is a frequent topic of these cathartic conversations. He mutters his grievances against the world between cutlass chops to an unlucky coconut. He’ll recall chilling moments from his early life that did wonders to warp his worldview. After cursing my people in every way imaginable, he’ll lavish praise on me for being “a good one” and flashes into a rage if I attempt to take the humble path. ‘Tek it when it come. You nah cyan steal respect, Bwai. You must grow an reap.’

Somewhere in the solar system Mars aligns with Europa in Gemini’s third phase and Lion suddenly awakes. I have a Matterhorn ready. He accepts my offering and we walk down the dusty road to his little house, speaking of bissey and pepper and war and God as the planets spin around us. The sun hangs over Mount Recovery and seems to pause, waiting until Lion has stumbled through his front door before it slips away. Hopefully, they’ll both be around tomorrow. It’s all about respect.

The Lion's Den

Adventure: Apiculture!

The first sting is undoubtedly the worst; a screaming fire spreading under your skin, multiplied immediately as the dying bee releases pheromones signaling her comrades to join in the instinctual suicide that has protected countless hives for millions of years. Two more infernos begin blazing across your bare hand and you are gripped by the natural urge to freak out and exercise the vilest vocabulary at your disposal. You want to run, to scratch, to pull the pulsating stingers from your flesh and curse yourself for being so brutally stupid as to voluntarily inflict this pain upon yourself simply because you wanted to learn about beekeeping.

But that’s not an option.

You realize you’re holding a beehive, and dropping it so close to a bustling high school is not the best way to build effective relationships. Besides, you’ve got to think of your colleague who is holding the other side of the humming white box, also with his bare hands, since gloves are known to spread diseases. Right now the bees are spreading histamines through your fingers, so you delicately set the box down and calmly push out the stingers as your hand takes on the warm color and puffs up to the size of a ripe Ayers mango.

Say Bees!

This was my introduction to apiculture, the rearing of bees and harvesting of honey. Getting stung is mandatory, since it builds up your resistance to the venom. Mr. P, my agency’s chief apiculturist for St. Catherine, hardly registers the stings anymore. He is focused on the terrible condition of the hive, neglected by the school’s administration for a range of reasons. Many boxes lay vacant and rotting while duck ants, hive beetles, snails and other destructive pests plague those few with functioning colonies. Mr. P balked at the neglect, showing me the honeycombs hanging haphazardly in a box without the necessary removable frames and taking pictures of what he called, “A perfect example of how a hive should not look.”

“What a waste,” he mutters, looking out from behind the meshed veil protecting his face and neck. We cleaned it best we could and moved on to search for more survivors. The task of resurrecting this place was too big for one day, and we had a couple thousand more clients to visit. One of them gave me a farewell kiss on the back of my neck after I had removed the veil. It had followed me to the parking lot.

“You’ll see some healthy hives soon.” Mr. P says as we drive through the citrus groves of Orangefield. “Bee dem lively! You’ll see the difference.” I could hardly wait.

Despite the throbbing pain in my left hand, I still held a very high opinion of apiculture as being one of the most lucrative agricultural enterprises available. Honey goes for $2500J a gallon, and with the bees doing most of the work, all the successful apiculturist needs is to keep the hives clean and reap the sweet rewards. My guys and the Ministry of Agriculture recognize the tremendous potential and make it a major part of their program for small farmers.

Paydirt

You just have to get stung.

Mr. P could care less about the stings as he opens the gleaming white box before him to reveal a vibrant, buzzing colony working amid rows of honeycombed wire frames. These frames come out like a filing cabinet. You then slip them into a hand-cranked centrifuge, which spins out the honey and leaves the empty comb that is reinserted and reused by the bees. It’s a surprisingly efficient process. The tricky part is keeping the bees calm as you disassemble their world.

We stand in an orange grove in front of a table stacked with hives, and the bees here are noticeably feistier than those at the high school. Scout units buzz and bump against my veil while others brush my fingers and spelunk through my pockets. I hold the bizarre smoke contraption that looks like something out of the Inquisition and shoot puffs of burning newspaper and orange peel between the frames, keeping the bees blissfully disoriented. Understandably, the trees around the hives are heavy with fruit, while most of the others are picked clean. Pinnuck called it “Natural Security.”

Poorly-kept hive. Note the wacky honeycomb formations on the lid.

It’s a fascinating experience to peer into a living colony and see the myriad tasks implemented with a programmed perfection that would make the Swiss jealous. Worker bees arrive laden with pollen, which is then removed by their fellows and packed into storage cells. Other workers are busy moving eggs about and tending to the larvae. The massive queen crawls slowly through the honeycomb hideout, attended by a retinue of workers and near-useless drones. Still more workers just sit and fan their wings, providing natural air-conditioning. I was envious of such organization.

By the fourth box I had worked up the courage to handle the frames myself, and was doing a good job until the bees decided they’d had enough and the painful burning flowed up through my previously untouched right hand. Still, I did not drop the frame, but bit my tongue and set it down gently before wandering away a little bit and suffering in silence. On the plus side, the next few stings hardly registered, because both hands were now swollen abominations of their former selves and it was as if I were wearing gloves.

“Pain is just the feeling of weakness leaving the body,” Jokes my colleague as we trudge back through the grove and settle under a tangerine tree. I nod in agreement and we wait for the attack bees that have followed us to lose interest and return home. It is true that apiculture is painful and slightly weird, but there’s money to be made here and an opportunity waiting for those who can step above their fears. We wait till the last fanatical bee gives up and then remove our gear and head back to the car.

He hands me a sticky bottle full of indisputably fresh honey at the end of the day. Apiculture is a tough sell, but it’s a fair one. Discipline and self-control bring sweet returns. Like life, you take the pain, and you come back for more.

You just can’t be afraid to get stung.

I wrote that a while ago, just wanted to publish it here. I’ll date it later.

Help or Haiti

A few weeks ago, the earth shook  and over 200,000 souls perished in the dust. That’s the most conservative number I can name at this time. It grows by 10,000 every couple days. The quake smashed an area the size of Long Island and affected over 3 million. It occurred in a failed state that could only exist due to a sizable UN presence which kept the anarchy level tolerable. To call the quake a “tragedy” is an understatement, as is calling Haiti a “developing” country. Doing so would infer that progress was being made there, if you can call massive environmental degradation, a criminal economy, and rampant overpopulation dependent entirely on humanitarian aid to be “progress.”

But words like progress, development, and hope are bandied about recklessly in humanitarian circles. I mean, they feel good, don’t they? Even if they are often little more than empty platitudes, used to reassure their wards that the “civilized” world has not forgotten its bastard children. Some feel shame for the sins of their fathers, for the insidious duo of colonialism and imperialism, sons of the ultimately logical progression of restless, expanding cultures whose numbers and technological prowess simply conquered the geographically unlucky in a tragic pattern as old as life. Others bemoan the ignorance of humanity, believing that if everyone thought like themselves, then they would abandon their savage ways and march forth into some theoretical utopia, its picture shifting with every other dreamer. Some feed on the suffering, playing the role of the hero, needing the misery of others to validate their own self-worth. Others, and I include myself in this category, since I am far from immune to my own criticism, work for some foggy personal reason. They are drawn to the chaos, needing to see the other side of the world, to experience the darkness and the light and every shade of gray in between, drawn to the truth, no matter how savage and twisted it can be.

The truth is blazing now in Haiti. Millions of people suffering in the inevitable catastrophe that results anywhere a given society outpaces its means of support. A century of unmanaged logging wiped away 99% of Haiti’s forests. Frequent tropical rainstorms on deforested mountainous terrain coupled with poor farming techniques and just too many farmers resulted in catastrophic erosion and the loss of fertile topsoil. The country could not support its population through local food production, and a series of dysfunctional governments controlled the food aid for much of the population, which continued to grow despite the ghastly infant mortality rate and an ever-decreasing average lifespan. Environmental degradation and overpopulation get little airtime, but from every way I can tell they are probably the most realistic threats to the survival of our species. Haiti is a microcosm of the planet, and anything that happens there could, given enough time, people, and pressure, occur anywhere.

The hot topic now is how to help Haiti. How to rebuild, or rather build, the country. I gave my hundred bucks to the Red Cross, but I wrestle with the question of whether it would help, at least in the way I think it needs helping. The beacons of greatness who rally the troops for heroic disaster response will fade into the shadows or drift to the next trendy catastrophe as the true scope of the nightmare emerges. Amid all the hoping and harping, I hear very little about long term viability and sustainable development. Our world leaders and the heads of major aid organizations know the true implications of what it would take to stabilize any failed state, and many probably acknowledge that no amount of money and free stuff has ever initiated true historical progress in a population without gifted leadership and an ironclad singularity of purpose.

Of course no one wants to talk about the ugly truths that anyone who has ever done meaningful work in field tacitly acknowledges. In its purest form, people will either solve their own problems, or they will melt into oblivion. History proves that leadership and solutions come from within societies. As badly as we want to help, as great as we think we are, we must remember that dependency is a lurking demon that cannot be bought off. In the field, all of us see it. We work like fiends, trying to teach men to fish, but we quickly find out that the reality is much more complicated than that golden old axiom makes it out to be. One could, and many have, made a strong case that many great mechanisms of benevolence originally designed to save the world have done unspeakable damage in the long run. People don’t see history in terms of centuries and millennia.

Scrolling through some of these photos from the LA Times strums on my nerves like I can’t believe and fills me with indescribable sadness. I see too many similarities to Jamaica, to the scenarios I would describe to my counterparts and community partners, accounts of people in similar environments going downhill fast and warning against such a thing crashing the troubled paradise that I had grown to love. As I write this, I am back in the states, encased in my artificial environment, feeling the pull again, the longing, the need to see the good and the bad so that maybe I can figure out a sustainable balance between the two. I want people to live in a way that ensures our long-term survival and successful progression as a species. I want to see it here and in Haiti and everywhere else. Unfortunately, for want of a better system, we’ll have to fall back on what we know, whether it be right, wrong, or somewhere in the middle.

These are my thoughts. What are yours? I’d welcome the feedback.

Hot and Cold

Lots of things take on a different dimension here; seemingly simple, mundane activities that morph to betray unquestioned truths, pulling reality inward for a few shocking moments of rabid clarity.

Take the shower, for instance.

The view from my shower

I stagger into my house at the end of a rousing day spent working in the bush. Time spent outdoors is directly proportional to the number of insect bites and the severity of the sunburn that I now sport. Sweat is constant. If I was wearing a dark-colored shirt, it’s now frosted with white rings of sodium around the hems. If the shirt was lighter-colored, it’s streaked with some combination of paint, blood, and mango-juice, along with every conceivable form of dirt and other assorted manifestations of filth. Peeling off my backpack and my soaking-wet ball cap, I stand in front of the fan for a minute or so as the cat welcomes me back.

Let’s assume that the water is working on this day. The need for cleansing is acute. I make my way to my tiny bathroom and prep for immersion.

My full collection of the day’s bugbites are visible at this point, and they come in several flavors of unpleasantness. Most numerous and least painful are the mosquito bites, which tend to frequent the joints. After them come typical ant bites, which often show up around the ankles. If I were playing with apiculture that day, the bee stings will most likely be on my hands or face. Bloodflies are evil little knat-like demons that punch a clean hole in the skin and feast on the droplets of blood that rise from the numbed area. Their magic can last for a week or more. Still, it’s the angry burn of the pity-me-likkle, a minuscule ant about the size of a flea, that makes me rage like no other. This guy hangs out on low-lying leaves, waiting to fall down your shirt. He squirts acid causing a spirited histamine reaction which when combined with a sunburn makes your day all the more awesome.

I turn the knob and take a deep breath, tensing my muscles and putting on my warface as I glare at the shower faucet. I stare at it like the guy at old freakshows who took cannonballs to the gut must have looked at the device as the fuse was lit. Steely resolve. Let’s go. The pipes rumble and freezing water spews out over my aching body. It comes straight from the spring. I’m hit with one of those wonderful shocks, the kind where you feel your heart scream and your muscles jerk. I can actually feel my pupils contract as the cold purges the smoldering pain and discomfort that was consuming me seconds before. Now the cold is true. I growl. I yell. I run in place. It’s little wonder my neighbors think I’m out of my mind. I try to numb my body to the sudden extreme, and the edge soon dulls. I wash, and I heal.

When I’m done, I’m happy. My senses are sharpened. I feel comfortable.. I pet the cat. I smile, and the next mosquito whines in my ear.