Carnival day 2, when the foreigners really start freaking out the locals

So, we went out with our first (of two, the other was last night, Saturday the 25th of February) bloco on Friday night, and it was awesome, much better than anyone could have even described. It was officially the second night of Carnival but the first big one. My brother Anthony and I met some other English-speaking folks that I know and we went downstairs to where (quite by chance) the float / truck for our bloco, called Eu & Você (Me and You) was parked. There’s a band that plays with each bloco – ours was Timbalada, which to the people who know what they’re talking about is the best one of the Salvador Carnival bands. The most popular, by far, is Chiclete com Banana (Banana-Flavored Gum), but their crowd is a little more obnoxious and less concerned with good music and more with drinking and having a good time (and hey, no arguments with that here).

So to briefly describe the way things work (full details are at http://bahia-online.net/Carnival.htm), the most secure and participatory way to enjoy carnival in Salvador is to buy a t-shirt for a particular bloco (ours cost around $65 and $75 for Friday and Saturday night, respectively) which lets you stand, dance, drink, make out, and otherwise party within the bounds of what we in the States would call something like a float. There are usually two huge trucks, the first with a big sound system and the band, and the second with bathrooms, concessions, and emergency facilities, which people gather around and walk the Carnival route with. There are two routes, Avenida / Campo Grande and Barra / Ondina, of which we were a part of the second. The Barra / Ondina route runs right past my apartment. The people with the t-shirts (there were probably around 2000 in Eu & Você) walk with the floats inside the boundary of some ropes which are held by security personnel outside the trucks. Along the way people watch the parade from either the street or things called camarotes, which are like balcony seating that is temporarily installed along the street for Carnival. You have to pay to stay in the camarotes, which have things like dance floors, drinks, air conditioning, and seating. These are for the people who prefer to take the less participatory (*cough*, lame) route of enjoying Carnival. In the Campo Grande route I also saw some bleacher seats that were set up there, and I’m certain you had to pay for those as well, although I’m also sure that they weren’t nearly as comfortable as the camarotes.

I’ll try to just point out the highlights because there were so many great things and I’m sure I’m forgetting most. Also you just have to be there. My favorite, I think, were a couple of goofballs who decided to try doing capoeira without putting their beer cans down first. Then there were the equally drunk guys who decided to have one guy pull along a kids Barbie-themed suitcase (with a pull-out handle) and drag it while some other huge guy rode it. Nearly all of the 10 or so really drunk guys who later tried to ride it ended up falling flat on their ass. Things got a little crazier in the last half of the route, when people were feeling the effects of the beer ("I am definitely drunk now", said one of our companions). Certain songs had cues which we we foreigners were unaware of, at which point people would run at full speed towards the front of the float, and then towards the back. A big gap would open up between both ends, and people would be laughing and yelling, and rightfully scared, until the cue came along, the music turned up, and everyone raced to wherever it was they were supposed to go. You would see a crowd of a thousand or so people stampeding towards you, which meant you had essentially no choice other than to run with them, stumbling and pushing people in front of you. To some this may sound horrifying, but it was really, really fun.

But before all this, while we were assembling at the meeting point for the bloco, there were people who were (for a fee, nothing here is free) painting people’s arms, legs and faces with white war-looking paint designs, something that the drum players for Timbalada do when they play and which people in the Timbalada blocos are known to do as well. Then around sunset, which you could see directly to our right over the ocean, the drum players all showed up above us on the float, decked out in the aforementioned white paint designs and looking totally, totally cool. After a few sound tests the guys started drumming and one of Timbalada’s three (one woman and two men) singers came out, dressed in green tights and a pimp-style coat, and sporting a huge, fake afro (it looked better than it sounds), and the crowd (it was now a crowd, strangely) in and around the float roared and started dancing and jumping up and down, and we started walking up the hill, very slowly, towards Farol da Barra.

The bloco wasn’t nearly as packed or violent or disorganized as I had expected, although I think things may have been different with other blocos like Ana Banana. Most of the time you could just walk along casually (in step to the beat of course) without being hemmed in by a lot of people. Later on, however, things were definitely much more chaotic, and we got packed in like sardines for maybe 30 minutes at a time at least twice. This wouldn’t have been so bad if there hadn’t been so many people (read: men) with their shirts of who you could feel sliding past you, lubricated by their (and your) sweat. Needless to say my brother and I showered quite thoroughly as soon as we got back, around 5 hours after we started :).

One other cool thing that they do from the camarotes is that they throw little party-favor kinds of things into the blocos, which everyone tries to catch while pushing, shoving, and clawing everyone else out of the way. The party favors were either bandanas with the camarote sponsors’ insignia on them, and in some cases there were cheap plastic soccer-like balls. My brother Anthony caught two. I’m glad he was able to come to Carnival in Salvador to find out what certainly would have been an otherwise undiscovered and therefore wasted talent. He caught the second one when there was this *gorgeous* woman who I could swear was Margareth Menezes throwing Skol (beer) bandandas down at people in our bloco, aimed right at me. I *swear* that I saw the guy next to her look and point at me, and tell her to throw me one. She did about five times, each of which I missed because I’m too short and because my brother pushed me out of the way at least once. He said I could have it but I told him I wanted one that I earned. A few minutes later I recanted and tied it around my head. He said I looked like a cancer patient.

People who act crazy in the blocos are called pipocas (popcorns) because they jump up and down. I had heard this many months before and determined that I wanted to be a pipoca, so I spent a lot of time jumping up and down during the parade and as a result my feet killed when I got back. While most of the Brazilians sang along to the songs while dancing, I spent most of the time jumping up and down with my hands raised and yelling "WOOOHOOO!", which, if you don’t know the words to the songs because they’re in Portuguese, is a good fallback plan. People don’t know for sure if you don’t know the words – maybe you’re just really happy, or drunk, or both.

carnival has arrived

... and I wasn't referring specifically to the freaks that showed up (i.e., me) a few months ago. This is the Brazilian carnival you hear about going on most often in Rio. But Brazilians and others in the know (such as astute travelers like myself) that the best carnival is in Salvador. And it really is, like the biggest party in the world. More on that later.

Last night was the first night and my neighborhood, which happens to be the center of everything, was packed. People had camped out earlier in the day to get a spot to sell things like food and beer, and when my brother and I arrived from the beach last night around 8 there were crowds of people, mostly younger folks, swarming towards Farol da Barra, which is the lighthouse that's across the street from where I live and is one of the centers of carnival activity.

U2 was also here, I should mention. When I went to pick up my brother at the airport (he's staying for the week) on Wednesday, there were about 20 teenagers waiting to welcome Bono & Co. here (20 people? that's the best you people can do?) along with a bunch of TV cameras. I don't have time to explain now, unfortunately, but the whole superfan / TV promotion combo, complete with the guy who was apparently appointed to rev up the crowd, was humilitating.

One of the few intelligent things I did before carnival started was to buy a plastic stool which my brother and I were sharing to stand up on and look out the tiny ventilation window of my bathroom which faces the street where all of the carnival floats go by. This was pretty cool, because we were able to see what was making the *incredibly* loud music coming from the street and take some mildly lame pictures of people dancing in the streets around the floats.

We were exhausted from the inanely long bus ride to and from the beach (which was almost worth the trip) so we actually went to bed kind of early, despite all the really loud music. I had previously been a little concerned that I wouldn't be able to sleep through it, but you can always count on laziness to pull through - I slept like a baby. And this morning, surprisingly, everything was dead quiet - only the occasional rustling of people sleeping on cardboard on the sidewalk changing position. My brother and I will be participating in one of the blocos tonight, which promises to be *awesome*. There is much, much more to write about, but with him here and all of the other stuff to do, it's hard to keep up with the writing. Much more later.

entomology 101

On Monday I went to work and was feeling fine until about 10am when I was suddenly just real tired, and had the beginnings of what ended up as a splitting headache.  In addition, I’ve had an on and off cold for the past 3 weeks which is very very minor but doesn’t want to seem to go away.  By the time 2pm rolled around my brain was throbbing and I just wanted to go to sleep, so I left and grabbed a cab (this is rare) so I could get home as fast as possible and do a face plant into my bed.

My apartment is on the 9th floor, and the wind at this altitude (height? I don’t know)  is usually pretty strong.  This is good, because it means my apartment stays cool if I leave the window open.  I’ve never really used the ceiling fan, which is pretty amazing given how hot it’s been here.  One of the great lessons of my time here is that you can live without air conditioning in a tropical climate.  Amazing.

So I got home, threw everything into the corner, stripped down to my boxers (I apologize if that gives you the kind of visual you could have lived without today) and slumped into my bed.  I was maybe 20 seconds from heavy, dreamless sleep when a freaking bug landed on my face.  I did what anybody would do which was to say something like “Ffffmmff” and frantically brushed him off my face.  It turned out to be one of these antlike bugs that show up wherever there’s food, but are about as harmless as can be.  I flicked him off my covers and tried to go to sleep again.

Within 2 minutes I felt another tickling on my arm, and of course it was another one of those bugs.  I swore, and swatted him away too.  Before I could get to sleep another one landed on my face.  At this point it seemed like a pattern.  I looked at the ceiling and yeah, there were a few of them crawling around there, but what were the chances they were all losing their grip and landing on my face?  Not likely, I thought.  And I didn’t really want to get into a deep analysis of the whole situation because my head was throbbing, I was so tired I could barely stand, and so I said f it and tried to go back to sleep and ignore the problem.  But nope, it happened again – another one landed on my face.  And this one had wings.

At this point I realized that they must be flying in the window.  Right outside are a bunch of palm trees and tropical shrubs, which I’m sure make a perfect home for these guys.  The wind must have been blowing them in.  I saw also that the ones with wings would land and immediately drop their wings, which looked to me like some sort of post-adult stage.  Fascinating.  Now get the f out of my apartment and let me sleep.  Save it for the Discovery Channel audition.

What really sucks is that if I closed the window I would lose my wind and the apartment would get hot, making falling and staying asleep more difficult.  At this point the whole situation got to my head and I sort of lost it.  I got my broom, got on my bed and killed all the bugs on the ceiling.  Then I went and found all the ones on the floor and stamped them out too.  “No more flicking, guys!  It’s a showdown now!  You brought this on yourselves!”  Luckily my neighbors don’t understand English.  I wasn’t too far from running in circles in my apartment (in boxers, mind you) swatting at my head and yelling like some sort of lunatic.  All I wanted to do was sleep.  But of course what day and time would the quasi-ants decide to plan their invasion but when the target was most vulnerable.

Eventually I got rid of them all and calmed down a little bit.  They didn’t seem to be coming in the window any more, or at least with less frequency, so I left the window open.  I then repeated the aforementioned face plant, and fell asleep probably within 10 seconds.  I’m sure I had more bugs landing on my face while I was sleeping, but I was so down for the count that it didn’t matter.  Fine with me.

sometimes reality likes to give you a nice boot in the ass

Well I did something really stupid. Which was to accept the invitation of my coworker Viny to go play soccer with him and his buddies at their soccer club in the neighborhood of Jardim somethingorother (I think Jardim Brasil), within sight of shopping Iguatemi. Granted, he’d been bugging me about it for weeks, and despite my misgivings assured me that there were enough old men and uncoordinated people (apparently one of the normal goalkeepers has some sort of physical deformity) that I wouldn’t have any problem keeping up with them. But what I was most assured by was the unlikelihood that someone like Viny, who is a very easygoing, unperturbable, taking-naps-in-the-waiting-room-in-the-middle-of-the-day-at-work kind of guy, would turn into a screaming, cursing maniac running up and down the field driven by a seemingly endless supply of energy and a passion which he shared only for bad European heavy metal.

As I waited for the bus to Pernambues (Viny’s neighborhood) I think I heard a voice way in the back of my head saying something like “OK lets recap here. You are on your way to play soccer with a bunch of Brazilians. Brazilians.” but I was somehow able to shut him up. This was in part because I was so nervous to get the right bus and find Viny’s house, which it turns out is pathetically easy but I screwed it up last time and didn’t want to have to call him again and tell him what an idiot I was, again, for not being able to find a specific place in the city, even given excellent instructions. On the bright side another volunteer who wanted to come left around the same time and never made it (hee-hee) because he caught the bus to what amounts to a dirt road at the other end of town. And still another voice in my head (I have many) said “Oh come on. What are you afraid of? It’ll be a hoot.” And I smiled and thought to myself, yeah, what am I afraid of? I had forgotten that this was the voice that, when I listened to it without question, quite often got me into situations that went horribly, horribly wrong.

I felt a pang of anxiety when the bus passed what looked like a club field, that was under lights, with guys in quick-change colored jerseys playing each other. I hope that’s not where we’re playing, I thought to myself, somewhat jokingly and laughing to myself (because, come on, that would be crazy). Viny had made the whole thing out to be very informal – I pictured a bunch of guys in shirts and skins playing on an unmarked abandoned field, or something like that. Not anything organized.

I got to Viny’s place where he lives with his aunt (Edilza) and cousin (don’t remember her name even though I’ve asked and heard it at least 10 times – I think it’s Mara). We got ice cream and hung out for a while before going to wait for Viny’s uncle (different side of the family) to come pick us up in Pernambues “Center”, which is one of those centers that’s only a center of anything because somebody put a sign there that says Center. The uncle was late but eventually picked us up, along with about 10 people (his entire family including what looked like his mom) in the back seat of a Volkswagen Rabbit or something similar. I got to sit in the front despite protesting, and Viny sat in the back after physically picking up another one of his cousins who had been sitting there, who looked about his age (18), and simply placing her on his lap.

The minute Viny’s uncle pulled away from the curb the words I had the feeling that I was riding in what could best be described as the Brazilian Millenium Falcon. In the sense that you know there’s no way we’re ever going to lightspeed and it’s loud as hell. And if Archie Bunker was driving it, because that’s who Viny’s uncle most reminded me of. He never smiled until he dropped me off at home at the end of the night (we were both happy for that), and even though I know he was wearing a tank top team jersey and bermuda shorts he still sticks in my mind as having worn a wifebeater and boxers with black socks, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth even though I never saw him smoke. His expression was exactly like Tom Cruise’s in Minority Report when he injects his face with a chemical that makes all the muscles go dead. And luckily, I didn’t feel comfortable enough with my Portuguese to say “Should I get out and push?” My guess is that they would have failed to see the humor.

So we drive up to the field under lights that I passed in the bus on the way there and my heart jumps to my throat … but then we pass it. Only to pull into a different field under lights. Son of a bitch, I say to myself. Actually, I’m a little better with Portuguese now. Filho da puta.

I get thrown a red jersey which lands in my face since the game’s already started and we jump on the field. And immediately I don’t have any idea of what the fuck I’m doing.

Ever have that dream where the pilot of your 747 flight dies from a heart attack and you’re thrown into the pilot’s seat and have to land the plane? Come to think of it, me neither. But about 15 minutes into the game 2 thoughts came to my mind: 1) how fucking long is this game, and 2) I think (I’m not sure, but I think) I am way out of my league here, so to speak.

Let me tell you why I … suck. I’ve noticed, after having been beaten over the head with practical advice on participating in sports and still somehow been able to absorb almost none of it, that a lot of people say, when they’re complimenting an outstanding player, that “S/he really knows how to move without the ball.” Isn’t that nice. Unfortunately for me, I’m one of those people who has no idea how to a) move without the ball, or b) what it means to move without the ball. If is supposed to be running in one direction, I'm at a full sprint in the other direction. If the best thing to do at a certain moment is to cut around in front of the goal, you can be sure that I'm standing with hands on hips right behind the guy with the ball. Needless to say, this kind of behavior doesn't go over well with a bunch of Brazilians who are out for blood, club league or no.

And of course there wasn’t any time to explain that I have a bit of a handicap when it comes to understanding colloquial, adrenaline-fueled, swear-ridden Portuguese. There is one very bad word that is most commonly used as an exclamation, that can best be described as an equivalent to fuck in terms of potency, but the latter seems to be a little more versatile as different parts of speech. I heard this word yelled once every 30 seconds, and more than once it was in reference to something I had done or had failed to do. And it wasn’t like “, that guy (me) scored another goal!”, it was more like “, you’re on the blue team, you stupid idiot!”

So, after an excruciatingly long hour and a half, the buzzer went off and the lights went out, and since I have been on this continent I have never breathed a more deep sigh of relief than I did then. Everybody headed back to the clubhouse to get drinks, and that’s where Viny said, “You played good.” My initial response was, “I’m sorry, were we at the same game?” And he was like, “No, for the first time, you played well.” And I’m thinking to myself, So other people have come here, done worse, and they decided to come back? Not likely.

I know he’s going to ask me to play again next weekend, because that’s just the type of hospitality I’ve been offered here very consistently from day one. And although I’m inclined to give some unbelievably lame excuse for not being able to make it, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say. Maybe the whole team will get in a big truck accident and will resort to having to play in wheelchairs, in which case I might have a chance of playing at their level.

cultural exchange well underway

Cultural exchange is, of course, a clear theme of my volunteering project at the organization I’m at right now, and it was in that spirit yesterday that Ivanildo and I agreed that I should teach him how to curse at his employees in English.  The thinking here is that he would be free to fully express himself without having to worry too much about anybody’s feelings.  And let’s face it, we’d all love to go around not having to worry about people’s feelings – lots of people already do and they’re doing just fine.

The most difficult part of this process, for me at least, was deciding which curse, swearword/phrase or whatever would be most expressive and at the same time most useful in a variety of situations.  So I started going over a number of my personal favorites.  I don’t know if it’s the crowd I’m running with now, or (bad) luck, or what, but most of the mechanical things I’ve encountered in Salvador, from light switches to PCs, are broken in one way or another.  And usually there’s some level of surprise there when something that has every reason to be working just fine craps out (or it’s clear that it crapped out long ago) when you hit the power switch.  This level of disappointment, in my humble opinion, can really be expressed in one way, and that is by saying, in an obnoxiously loud and sometimes overly nasal voice: “What the f*?”

I must admit that not all of my motivation here was truly altruistic.  I know this is hard to believe based on the clear selflessness I’ve thus far exhibited in this particular instnace.  Providing myself with a little entertainment at the expense of my hosts seemed like a relatively victimless crime.  OK, maybe there are a few victims, maybe even potentially as many as 15 (the number of employees) but wouldn’t you rather not know what your boss is saying when it’s clear that he’s pissed at you?  I figure I’m doing these poor bastards a favor, that happens to also be extremely funny (to me) when properly executed.

It took us a good 15 minutes to get Ivanildo to properly pronounce the chosen phrase and with the correct emphasis.  Then he asked what it means, and I kind of had to be honest, which was to say “Nothing, really.  It means ‘What is this?’, when you’re angry, and the last word is a really bad swearword, but its literal meaning doesn’t really apply here.  It’s like saying ‘What is this?’ in a way that lets you know I’m pretty angry.”  A the same time I had to qualify that explanation by saying that people use the phrase all the time, with varying levels of seriousness, so the meaning depended almost entirely on context and could be either really funny or really bad, or both.  

So immediately after I gave my explanation and we practiced the chosen phrase a few times, Adriana walked into the office, probably just because she was bored, and Ivanildo belted out with a barely recognizable “Whut tha foc?!”  His pronounciation and emphasis were all wrong, but I told him he was on the right track and with practice he’d get better.  Adriana, of course, barely flinched, since I get the feeling she’s seen it all, especially from this guy (they worked together at a previous job).  After pausing momentarily in the doorway as Ivanildo struggled to half blurt, half spit what to her was gibberish, she walked to the corner where the coffee serving area is and proceeded to make herself a cup.  Apparently she’s used to him yelling gibberish, unprovoked, late in the afternoon.  After all, that office is pretty hot.

The fruits of my labor were reaped, however, when a few hours later Ivanildo and Adriana were in a half-joking, half-serious argument about something I couldn’t discern, and it escalated to the point where they were both talking at the same time and not listening to the other person.  When it was clear that nobody cared what the other said, Ivanildo threw up his hands and yelled “Whot thafoc!”  I laughed for a good ten minutes.

And on the drive home, just as he was dropping me off (Adriana and Edilza were crammed in the back with a bunch of groceries we’d picked up at the Bahian equivalent of Costco) some jackass decided to do a 10-point turn in the middle of the very busy Avenida Sete de Setembro where I live.  While we didn’t have to wait, since Ivanildo, being the “don’t have respect for human life” type of driver that most Bahians are, swung into the oncoming traffic lane around the guy while he was shifting to reverse.  It was still annoying, however, and so I put in my two cents, which was to throw up my hands and yell “Filho da puta! (son of a bitch)”  And apparently my timing and emphasis were correct, or at least partly, because Ivanildo didn’t stop laughing until I’d stepped out of the car a few blocks up.

not everything can be funny, unfortunately

Every few weeks, a different woman comes into the front office where I work, which is also the waiting area, and asks to speak to the boss.  The only thing these women have in common is that they look tired and are very quiet and shy.  They come to ask for help, and Ivanildo tends to be a little standoffish with them, I think because he has to be prepared to say no, and also because they very often cry and that’s difficult for any man to take, especially when the crying is for a really good reason.  Sometimes he’s able to say yes and sometimes he has to say no, because in order to receive assistance (usually in the form of food and/or school supplies) the family being given assistance has to have both parents unemployed, with children.

Today a woman came into the office and was let in by Alessandra, who comes in in the morning and leaves in the afternoon to work another job.  She’s very thin, with long brown hair, about 25-30, and wears the kind of clothing that an American teenage girl would, which is pretty common for women her age here in Salvador.  She also does the bulk of the administrative work in Castelo Branco and maybe one or two other schools.  The woman who came in was dressed like any mother you’d see on the street coming home from the supermarket, but from what little I could gather I guessed that she had come to ask for food.  I think she had applied already and was following up, because Alessandra then sat down with her and went over some form that had already been partially filled out.  The waiting area is across from my desk (which is “mine” in the sense that I sat down there one day without asking anybody and have remained parked there ever since) and so they were sitting probably 3 feet away from me.  I could hear what they were saying but couldn’t really understand what it was – no surprise there.  I’m at the point where I can now almost always figure out where a word starts and where it ends, but as far as what they mean I’m still for the large part quite lost.  After they’d gone over the forms the woman showed Alessandra something she had hand-knitted in white, which held together a few 2” steel rings.  It was very pretty but still not finished – it looked like it might be a placemat for a dinner centerpiece or something like that.  

Soon afterwards, however, the woman started to cry, very quietly.  For a moment I couldn’t tell for sure if she was really crying, and I sort of held on to the hope that she was trying to sneeze, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case.  It was the kind of crying that she was clearly embarrassed about and was trying unsuccessfully to hide, and because of that sounded much more sincere than anyone who is simply looking for sympathy.  Alessandra got up to get her a glass of water, and for a moment she was sitting across from me crying while I was typing at my computer.   I felt pretty useless, and cold, because I didn’t look up.  I didn’t want her to think I was staring at her and I didn’t know what to do.  I also didn’t want her to think I didn’t care but I think I probably came off that way.  Europeans and Americans have a reputation here for being cold, and I’m sure that’s exactly what she was thinking.  It’s mildly comforting knowing that she was likely to have blamed it on my culture rather than the fact that I’m just an unfeeling bastard.

While Alessandra was out getting the water another woman knocked on the door.  Her I recognized – she works for another non-profit organization along the same lines as ours, and this was the third time she’d been here, I think to ask Ivanildo for financial assistance.  The past two times he told her he couldn’t help her (he struggles just to pay their own bills) but apparently she’s very persistent.  She sat down next to the crying woman and said some things to try to comfort her.  She spoke as if she knew the woman from before – maybe she did, and was here to help her get assistance.  The second woman had a constantly agitated, can’t-stop-moving and won’t quit insisting on getting money sort of disposition, which made me a little annoyed at her presence.  It sounded like (again, I couldn’t understand all) she was saying something like “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine” to try to get the woman to stop crying, but to no avail.  The woman stopped crying once Alessandra arrived with the water, but after another half hour or so she resumed.  She stayed only for another 10 minutes after that, and then both women left.

I try to make things sound funny here because I want the (few) people that look at this blog to come back, but obviously it’s not always right to be looking on, say, the bright side of people’s suffering.  The truth is that there is a tremendous amount of suffering, much of it needless, that goes on where I am now and in the world.  Bahia is the poorest state in Brazil, with an estimated 80% of its residents classified as poor.  Minimum wage is something like $300 a month, and there’s many people who would do just about anything to get their hands on that kind of money.  I know that when I get back to the States there will be many things that I no longer complain about, and probably more things that I will be angry about – i.e., other people complaining about stuff that’s just silly when you compare it to what millions of people have to do here just to scrape by a living.

this post not for the squeamish (vermin details)

I was just now typing on my computer, sitting on my couch, and out of the corner of my eye what did I see but *the* biggest cockroach come slowly walking out from under where the bathroom door attaches to the doorframe.  Not crawling, mind you – this was much more dignified.  Like, Hello, I’m a big fucking cockroach, and I’m going to walk anywhere I damn well please at a leisurely pace.

After the obligatory “Oh … my … god” I looked down at the floor next to me and the plan of action was clear.  Two heavy flip-flops right there.  An arrogantly slow vermin.  In less than a second, after a loud crunch, he was happily (for me) pancaked under the sole of my flip-flop, which I’d used to swat him by hand.  But the horror was still there.  I spent about a minute waving my arms in the air and running in a tight circle uttering a blood-curdling “aaaaaAAAAHHHH!!” because of what I’d just seen and done.  

Squishing an inch-long roach you see on the sidewalk under the sole of your foot is one thing.  But when you have to kill a big one, with a lot of force, using a flip-flop that’s in your hand, it almost feels like you’re killing a mammal (maybe a small mouse).  It’s gross not just because it’s a scary-looking bug but because it’s like, a big animal.

pictures of volunteer workplace

Recent pictures me and the people I work with at the organization I'm volunteering for are here.