Man Vs Mosquito

If I had only one wish, and it were not to wish more wishes, it would be for every mosquito, everywhere, to gather together, holding hands, and to die a terrible, miserable, suddenly horrible death. Explosion. Implosion. Mosquito herpes. Whatever is most unpleasant for them, I’d wish that, and I’d be a happy man.

I recently travelled to Haiti. It was an “experience” in the same sense that military training and medical residency are “experiences.” You can probably rationalize a way to self-betterment, and convince yourself that the whole thing was somehow “good,” but nevertheless you describe the whole experience in quotation marks and would prefer to never do it again.

But let’s not talk about that, let’s talk about mosquitos. In Haiti, there are mosquitos, and they tried to kill me.

My initial mosquito-experience in Haiti began relatively uneventful enough. There was a mosquito here, a mosquito there, but if you avoided making eye contact with them they generally let you be. I left Port au Prince thinking that, of all Haiti’s unsolvable problems, mosquitos were not one of them. Then I arrived into Les Cayes.

Les Cayes is a coastal town along the southern Peninsula of Haiti, and overall is in most ways nicer than Port au Prince. Unfortunately one of those ways is not mosquito populations. They were a bother in La Cayenne where we stayed our first few nights, and they were a menace at the Institut Brenda Strafford where I stayed my last few nights. It was in the latter part of my stay where the mosquitos and I waged war, and it was here that the mosquitos beat me.

The first day at the Canadian ENT hospital (Institut Brenda Stafford) was I thought uneventful enough, but I awoke the following morning with a number of bites over my shoulders and arms. Figuring this was as much my own fault as the fault of the bumbling misguided mosquitos I resolved to redouble my DEET repellant efforts, fortify my canopy netting at night, and maybe kill a few to make an example. The following morning, however, there were still more bites. More bites on my legs. More on my arms. More on parts of my body I didn’t even know the mosquitos had access to. It looked a bit like I had the pox, except without so much the high fevers and crippling fatigue. It was nevertheless then that I knew if I were to survive I’d have to go on the offensive. The mosquitos were clearly coming for me, it was time now I came for them.

Over the next two days I aggressively pursued a campaign of mosquito genocide. Took regular breaks from work to round them up. Paid local militias to do unspeakable things. Only God knows how many mosquitos I killed in those ugly days. Dozens? Hundreds? Millions? We can only hope. The violence reached a climax when the treacherous buggers hired a local roach to lie in wait in my duffel bag in order to assasinate me. He made it part way up my arm and almost to my jugular before I shook him off and promptly smashed him into roach paste. And then smashed him a few more times for good measure. Lacking originality and the capacity for complex thought the mosquitos tried it again the following day, but both the second roach and his conspirators were taken care of once more. And by that I mean their poor mosquito children could no longer recognize their poor mosquito daddies.

Despite these efforts the bites continued appearing. No longer on my back and shoulders so much, I’d successfully protected those with t-shirts, but continuously on my arms and legs, and most specifically on my left knee where I wore my knee brace. It seems a hot swollen knee is mosquito nirvana. They loved biting it so much they purposely flew up my pant leg, past plenty of prime calf biting territory, and up to the one spot in my brace where they could see skin. I’m still not entirely sure how they did it, or even why they did it – do mosquitos hate me? -- but it got progressively disfiguring and generally unpleasant to look at. Thankfully, ten days later, before the mosquitos had chewed my leg off, I gathered my remaining troops, pack my bags, erected a provisional puppet mosquito government, and flew home.

In the end one could probably say my battle with the mosquitos was a metaphor for Haiti’s battles with poverty and legacy of colonialism and corruption. One could probably also just say it was a pointless, needless waste of time, energy, and, in no small amount, blood and plasma which, in a sense, is a also metaphor for Haiti. Regardless, the end. Goodbye Haiti, enjoy your mosquitos. Goodbye mosquitos, may you forever burn in mosquito hell.

 

You know it's a problem when the bites become confluent.

 

Surviving the Colorado Curse

Steep atop Denver International’s darkest crag lies perched, peering, seeing, watching: the cursed stallion.

 

With beady red eyes, bulging blue veins, and a nasty bite he haunts the mile high city. All who fly into Colorado’s newest, great airport are cursed. Cursed with a terrible curse.

I myself was afflicted by the apocalyptic hell beast, and it began the day prior to my arrival – a tribute to its cursiness. An innocents night sledding was ended tragically by my left knee bending in half the way nature never intended. Contributing factors may have included sledding from the top of a three hundred plus yard sledding hill, a small craft advisory, and a near complete lack of prior sledding experience; nevertheless, I was without warning catapulted from my sled and onto my left leg which promptly collapsed like papermache. I additionally somehow got a road rash on my right forearm from the experience, the stallion!

A few days later transgressions continued when I learned my four-week clinical “elective” would actually be four weeks of 12 hour days, tedious dictations, and regular floggings. I had hoped to commute to the hospital via bus or carpool with a friend, but the partial ACL tear, mild MCL sprain, mild LCL sprain, patellar-tibial contusion, and gastrocnemius strain all limited the feasibility of the former while working till the darkest dark of night limited the feasibility of the latter. Eventually I was forced to rent a car for the mere sum of a whole hell of a lot more than advertised.

Paying about 3 times more than listed for taxes, fees, and any lick of insurance coverage was actually one of the few fortuitous decisions I made, however, as within 2 days of acquiring the new car – and 5 days from my original sledding accident – a young woman decided to drive into the side of it. Her initial reaction to pulling out into traffic and hitting my front bumper consisted of “why didn’t you stop?!” as if in the US -- or anywhere on any planet for that matter -- it’s perfectly acceptable to make left hand turns in front of rapidly oncoming automobiles whenever you want. Once her boyfriend pointed out this was insanity she then fell back to exclaiming, “it’s not my fault!” endlessly until the police finally came. My reward for this? A new car and a significantly more expensive new rental car contract. Curse you cursed stallion!

I had to lay low for the next few weeks while the jinx passed, and was thankfully sheltered by my friend Adam and Kate in their basement under an alias. They thankfully are exceedingly generous hosts, Kate’s cooking exceedingly delicious, and their children exceedingly prone to hop merrily in place at the slightest provocation. Aside from some additional difficulty finding dry cleaning – I eventually had to go to Denver’s Korea Town – and a general lack of improvement in range in motion of my knee, things began to blow over. Unfortunately a final blow came the final week when an unknown assailant struck down Dara their slouchier, whiter dog. Some say it was a veterinarian putting an old, good dog down to her final resting place. Others say it was that stallion. And still others say it was the stallion posing as a veterinarian. All that’s clear is that through Dar-Dar’s sacrifice the curse was lifted. Or it just went away on its own. Curses are weird like that. The boys were saddened by the loss of their beloved pet, but after determining she had gone down into the pits of the Earth to doggy heaven and that they’d likely be getting another, younger dog in the future they decided they were ok with their other remaining pets. They eventually returned to hopping, and after working far more than I ever cared to on an elective, I flew home away from the demon's stare.

This post is dedicated to Dar-Dar. The best old, white dog I have ever known. We'll miss you girl.

 En memorum.

This photo is an approximation. I do not actually have a photo of Dara, but she looked kind of like this. But older.