The Karma of Mosquito Killing (Day 3)

The day began with some quiet time and then the finishing up of the chapel restoration project.

Afterwards we were able to hold our own little private celebration of the Mass of Pentecost. I am beginning to feel like one of those gentry who had their own private chapel in their house, plus their priest-for-hire, dail mass intentions, etc. Father and I sang hymns and had a wonderful time. It wasn't a rowdy calling-down-of-the-Spirit, a mass of action, but a more subtle serene ceremony of being.

After a small breakfast, we attempted to make ice in the fridge by plugging it directly into the generator. After two hours of cooling down, we had little to show for it but wasted diesel and some really cold dishes of water. We at least had a few cold drinks and vegetables.

I had a debate with myself about killing bugs. I try to be mindful of not killing even the smallest creatures, having become occasionally paranoid about the Buddhist idea of karma and the possibility of killing one of my relatives reincarnated, though I really don't believe this. Mosquitos are constantly gnawing at our flesh, bugspray or not. I am not quite so diligent with the all-natural Burt's Bees concoction of lemongrass and rosemary, so it was my own fault when I received several huge welps in a matter of minutes. In retributive frustration I killed about five of them in three minutes. I then realized that, like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dam, I was working against an infinite system of replacement: for every one I kill there are 10,000 waiting to come in, so it seemed pointless to even try and stop them. The great wheel of mosquito keeps on churning.

The great closet reorganization came and went in about three or four hours of work. Being a guest house in Haiti, one can understand how one could have so many towels and twin bed sheet sets. However, being a charitable organization in a third world country, one does not always get rid of things; so many donations have come in and simply become piles. Whereas a house with at most 20 spaces for people may need approximately 50 pairs of fitted sheets, it certainly does not seem to require the several hundred pieces of fabric that we tried to get organized.
This strange need to collect and save while honoring the giver and the country's situation leads to all sorts of problems with food stockpiles that go bad before they can be used and other excesses of material goods. Father Alan rightly joked that we should set up a table outside the house and sell linens for $1 a piece to passersby like the Haitian street merchants, the "ti marchant" who hock all sorts of things from fruit to cell phones in make shift huts on street corners. This would be a more appropriate use of the stuff!

Reheating the hard beans and risotto-like rice became a continuation of the previous night's debacle. "How?" one could ask. In a fit of energetic behavior, I dumped a bit too much local, Haitian-made, hot sauce into the mix. Having spilled it on Father Alan's hand, I became even more excited and poured more in. So we sat through the meal with ample glasses of peach drink (beer for Father Alan), debating on wasting it or not. We ate. The more vulgar notion of retributive karma crossed my mind as the mosquitos feasted on my legs: hot sauce for five deaths.

But this does raise a serious point: surely there are people out there somewhere in Port-au-Prince who might literally kill at some point for a meal like this. I couldn't help but think that we should eat as much as we could and move on. Besides the sweat-engendering taste, the hard beans were even worse to me the second day. Father was all for saving the rest for tomorrow. Coupled with the stockpiling problem, where donations overextend their usefulness, I again reflect on the little Dutch boy: the dam of poverty seems to constantly be ready to burst and we have very inadeqaute ways of filling in the cracks of our understanding.

One could get seriously overwhelmed and cynical at this, but this seems to me to illuminate the need for understanding the suffering of the world in a balanced way, one where we can eat awful food and not be so guilty for tossing some of it aside, or finding the proper use of sheets and towels in a society of need. Sometimes we save when we should spend, and spend when we should save. This is life, and it is all the more beautiful for its paradoxes and misunderstandings--only in seeing this can we move forward and make a difference, not one sweeping reform, but one person at a time.

So. I can get used to this whole taking a shower in the gutter thing. A light rain is expected nightly, so this could become a ritual. I have realized how much already my experience here, like the beautiful spirituality of the Haitian people, is about being as opposed to doing. My daily routine is mostly work and new happenings. I know this will subdue a bit post-first-week-down, but it seemed especially poignant as I was standing under the downspout, cleansing myself with soap and thinking about how this was how many people in the world clean themselves. Of course, I must recognize, too, that I immediately walked back into my tiled kitchen where I had just eaten a large meal under my electric lights. But here is the presuppostion to both of these last two paragraphs, the one which I pointed out in the beginning of this post: sometimes being is more important than action. It is a give and take, but as the water pours out, whether it be from the bursting dam or the drainpipe, the spiritual lesson is to be ready in the place where one can be open to whatever comes.

Sometimes we hold on to things when we should simply let them go. Jesus told us this:
"The poor will be with you always." This is a lament, but it is a lament where transformation can be possible. We can find balance outside of the need to do by simply being.

Like a mosquito who does what it is suppose to do. Be.
And possibly give me dengue fever or the malaria.
As I eat a freshly cooked, steaming pile of spaghetti and homemade sauce.