“But Angeles Alfaro left as she had come, with her tender sex and her sinner’s cello, on an ocean liner that flew the flag of oblivion, and all that remained of her on the moon lit roofs was a fluttered farewell with a white handkerchief like a solitary sad dove on the horizon, as if she were a verse from the Poetic Festival.”- Love in the Time of Cholera
Oh, what a day.
After breakfast I went to go pee next to my latrine (it makes the shit compost better if keep the pee separate, and I can fertilize the plants) but instead I met an old board. The board had a nail sticking out of it. I was wearing shoes. The nail was very rusty. I don’t remember what we were arguing about but whatever it was, I lost the argument. The board decided to stick its nail right through the sole of my shoe* and into the sole of my foot, leaving the soul of my being stunned. I stood there for about a minute. I kept trying to use my leg muscles to pull my foot free but it wouldn’t come up. I thought I was in shock because I didn’t feel any pain, but I wasn’t. Just stuck. I finally bent down and used my hands to pull my foot at an angle off the nail. It didn’t bleed as profusely as I had feared but it was a good wound – a centimeter deep, eo ho eo (pronounced “yo yo”, meaning approximately).
When I came out from around the back of the house there was a guy there who I had briefly met the day before, and seeing me hurt he helped me bandage my foot. I cleaned it out as well as I could but don’t think I did as good a job as I should have. Then, because it was market day, I hobbled down the hill to do some shopping and he came with me and helped me carry my groceries. I was getting some funny looks in town but was pretty used to that by now. After we came back to my house, I got my first not-so-friendly visit from the gendarme (rural police). It turns out that my new friend was a known thief and they carted him off with them.
I spent the rest of the day reading.
* A good shoe, too. My brother Shawn, for Christmas before I left says, “You’re going to a hot climate so I thought shoes with holes would be good,” and he was right – they are my favorite footwear here. Thanks Shawn. Unfortunately, now they have one hole they weren’t supposed to have.
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