Janitors of the Jungle

Work

We are an experiment. An experiment in tenacity, stupidity, poverty, hope, society and sustainable living.
The hope allows the tenacity in the face of seemingly insurmountable problems, the stupidity plows us forward in the face of poverty.
Society teems all around us, of which we are a part, but then, not really. There are no invites to loud barbecues down the street, or dinner at the white neighbors, but the masses know us, calling me Mr. Charlie and Kim “Mum”, we being a confusing mix of the northern “haves’, yet living low to the ground in a building without walls, in mottled work clothes, and working … an oddity not seen in white people. To work then, does not endear us to the masses, as it would in North Dakota or Montana, but instead alienates us further. The white should not work. Their class is to be the aloof employers, the pressed slacks and shirt of the Colonial overlord. To labor and sweat is a slap in the face to them, the elite mimicking their enduring toil. Now, as greeted ever on the road, my besmirched and torn clothes staggered from the work site, I am called only Charlie, the deference gone.

Envy I, their simplistic toil. Each act an end in itself, carrying the poles, mixing a bag of cement on the ground, encasing the wood of a form. An almost Zen like quality to the full focus of the deed. There is no worry of speeding up or slowing down. Time is but a stream in which they wade effortlessly, with no deadlines, no panic before the plumber or electrician shows up.
Each moment, each day is much like the other, do as the boss says and nothing more. This frees their mind for endless chatter and levity. Often singing a few lines of some Mexican melody, frequently bursting into laughter over some sexual incompetence or conquest, the work is just there, like skin, not unwanted but not any matter of urgency either. The afternoon “lunch” lasts over an hour and a half, lounging in the dirt around a smoky fire made of something jerked from the jungle. Tortillas and plantains are languidly roasted, a dab of some paste applied, and each bite a long savoring suckulation of the moment. What would take a McDonalds patron 40 seconds to devour is stretched to 15 min. After the hour lunch is digestion time for the ¼ pound of beans and corn. At least a half hour of dozing in the shade, the foreman snoring in a swinging hammock, flies ignored. The evening is a singing shower under a hose, then a search for beer at the local “cool spot”. All thoughts of the days endeavors are forgotten and tomorrow is of no concern. Fifty dollars today, fifty tomorrow, and on and on into the endless horizon of time.

Contrast this to the stress saturated “whitey”. Even should the labor be of grueling manual nature, still a hundred other endeavors pollute their mind, churning it into a frenetic frenzy of future think. This cannot be dug until the measurements of that are determined which is based on the size of the garden and the flow rate of the well. Then over dig the well and pump it up to a cistern, which changes the support load, thereby increasing the column dimension and thus consequently the footing. But what of recycling the wash water and the collection of rain? Will not this determine which side the second storage tank is put on, declaring reinforcement on that side too. Of course this should be on the garden side, which s determined by the woman. What does the woman think? Put the garden in the sun .. stupid! Well, that much was obvious, but what are the dimensions, that relates to the volume of the tank, and the supports .. etc. etc.
Such a storm of calculation considerations drains blood from the circulatory system, causing the white man to slump in the shade in stasis. This is a serendipitous sestia, but with out the somulesenance, the rest of the refried workers next door. The brain is in turmoil, the eyes starting from the head, something must be dashed off to purchase, like a laser level, to quell analysis paralysis.

The urgency to be environmentally correct in a sustainable living paradigm is overwhelming. The water system must be filtered through carbon that is made sustainable of refuse from the place, but the only way to do that, is to bonfire a thousand cubic meters of endangered jungle for one cubic foot of charcoal. The wind power system needs to be erected and operational, but the moist jungle air has corroded the regulator so that the power varies between 2 and 200 volts. The inverter gets fried trying to adapt to this variance, so screw that, run the gas generator, and order parts through the internet shop that we drive to, waiting the 6 weeks for delivery by high altitude jet. The sustainable way to garden is by composting, recycles everything and is holistic for the earth. But after 6 weeks the stinking pile is no bigger than a suitcase and crawling with scorpions and 20 species of biting flies. The crap mixes in with about a square meter of acidified jungle soil, enough to grow one tomato plant producing three or four stupid green tomatoes. Why tomatoes? Why not beans? Because beans can be bought for pennies to the pound and to be sustainable it is necessary to have exotic North American salad food. Nothing is growing anyway in the acid soil, so the hell with that, lay on a ¼ inch lift of Montesano packaged fertilizer flown by plane to this place at 3 times the normal price. By the time all this is done, it’s cheaper to dine out in the local restaurants, screw the homemade insect dung heap. Sustainability for the white man means a pension fund kicking out 10 times the local wage rate.



Janitors of the Jungle

Evening comes to the tropical ghetto in long rays of red. The sky transforms from amber to orange to rusty rouge, putting abounding flowers aflame. Busses roar on the sea bound highway. Minions trudge in their 20 foot shadows. Bicycles dart between machines and man on the narrow dirt roads. Parrots return from their day in Guatemala in a chaotic cloud to roost in the Jungles of Belize.

Abruptly, the warm glow of twilight turns to black. The sun sets like a hammer on a light bulb. This is the dog hour. The dog hour lasts from 6 PM to midnight. Every passing pedestrian erupts the lathering chain bound beasts in barking. Straining in their chaining, eyes bugged out in madness, lips curled above their whiskers, they announce the destruction of every passerby. A destruction they cannot effect. Adding to their rage and madness.

Sitting as we do with the evening drink, trying to live a shred of civilization, we can barely hear each other over the din of dogs. Our own canine joins in explosively from under the table, alert to some particular note of animal exasperation. This results in much cursing and kicking from us, our attempted composure defiled. The inky air is all around us now. The dog paces from one side of the walless room to the other, blasting it’s canine verbage into the jungle foliage at some imagined threat. The pacing, the restlessness, the hour ….it is time for the “Crab Walk”. This is the last chance for the quadruped to piss and crap before being sealed into the tent for 12 black hours. The duration of the dark. This tent is the only mosquito free zone from the minions patrolling the night air in malarial intent.

Out into the street we go, the dog bounding, the hairy cat following in furtive dashes, a family promenade down the dirt village street. On one side are crumbling two room concrete bungalows, crammed with Creoles, 10 or twelve to a casa, cursing, crying, cackling. The other side of the street is an 80 foot wall of undeveloped tangled jungle. Within this green wall are rustlings, movements, micro sounds of unknown origin. The dog alert, attentive, intense to their presence. All thought of gastric relief is erased in the dog brain. There is only one thought … crabs. Land crabs.

The crabs are the size of tea plates, blue, wielding an asymmetrical claw of hedge clipper proportions. These creatures are nocturnal, scuttling about the darkened streets consuming refuse relish and dog shit. There is no dog crap here. These crustaceans consume every fragment of every pile… every evening. The dogs in the yards, the wild and loose dogs, the indigenous people who shit without shame beside the road, all is devoured in alien mouth parts before dawn. The dog launches into the thicket with a single 6 foot bound, thrashing through blinding brush, searching for the scuttlers. Tiny squeaking sounds peep from the pursued while dashing for a hole, their lairs. But a crab too slow, too tangled in the viney mat, fails to escape the olfactory juggernaught, leaving it’s grotesque appandage brandishing in the brush. The claw. In a shriek of pain the dog explosively emerges back onto the road, the mega clamp connected to the soft tissue of the nose, it’s 3 pound body dangling wildly, desperately, off the snozz. Crazed and yelping the canine flips the attachment as a flag in the wind, frantic for release. We rush the inter specie encounter, trying too terrorize the crab off it’s nasal grip. Finally with a flop, the blue appendage detaches, making a mad dash back into the safety of the botanical confusion. Momentarily stunned but otherwise oblivious to the nasal wrenching, the stupid dog instantly resumes it’s intensity to capture the crab. We hold the dog now, chain it to our leash, it’s pulling and persistence pissing us off. How stupid can this muscle bound tube of hair be? The dog undeficated, it is jerked home and locked in the tent.

But why molest these cleaners of the pestilent land? They do us a great service with their mindless consumption of excrement in this seething microbial world. Without their efforts, the infection of typhus, dysentery, cholera, and hepatitis would be rampant among us. Happily do they consume the offal of our anthropomorphic intrusion. What waves of slime would inundate us without their service? Freely we foul our environment, only to be exonerated by these lowly, ugly, scuttling saviors. For them we must cry hooray!. For them we must declare their indispensableness to us. We must morn the mashed one on the highway that the crows will not eat, must encourage their cultivation among us. Shit in the street? Yes! Feed our concentrated fuel to the appreciators of such protein. Create an NGO suffering from white guilt to protect their habitat, preserve their services. Apply the Environmental engineering of the erroneously educated First world to design sewage treatment plants, swarming with these dutiful, loyal, devourers of disease. The hell with the useless jaguar and howler monkey. Let us celebrate the real keepers of our world

The night proceeds with barks and foliage rustling. A clear moon now bathing the drama of the streets. The dog loudly lapping at it’s injured nose in our enclosure. Outside the recycling of digested debris ongoing, relentless, imperative. The unsung work of the Janitors of the Jungle.