The Mango Curry Bomb

On Saturday, Megan and I just so happen to be having a bad day; the WORST day. I can’t even begin to list off to you the things going wrong, I don’t even want to try. So anyway, at the end of the day when I figure things aren’t going to get any worse, we go for our evening run. We run to the sea and are doing a great job at blowing off steam and trying to just put the day behind us. When we get home, however, we run into that darn group of boys that is ALWAYS outside our gate loitering. They’re generally out there to yell at me when I throw Gabriel’s poopy diapers and other sorts of trash into our burn pile across from our gate. They yell in silly tones, “cholera!” and the other day they called me diaper girl, which I did not appreciate. And today they are taunting us and calling us names worse than usual. Totally not a good day for this, dudes!

I yell at them in English (you know, because that’s what I’m fluent in and all), “Haven’t you people ever heard of LOITERING!?! Its ILLEGAL!!” (although loitering totally doesn’t exist as a word in Creole) and head in the gate. Megan, who can actually understand what these guys are saying, instead walks up to one of them and starts going off on him in Creole. Don’t ask me what they were saying, but I watch as these two are going at it, slightly lost, and slightly amused at the whole ordeal. Then she turns around to come inside with me.

And then we begin scheming. I suggest that we throw a poopy diaper onto the concrete slab outside our gate so that way they won’t gather there anymore, because who wants to hang out around a poopy diaper anyway. Especially an infamous Gabriel poopy diaper, aka mango curry (because its orange and runny 99% of the time…)?? So she grabs a poopy diaper and hands it to me, then we run outside and out the gate and I slap that bad boy out onto the slab. Commence the poop hitting the fan! (So to speak.)

When the loiterers see it, they get super upset and decide to start dumping trash from our burn pile onto our front gate slab!! And this particularly “bright” individual who lives in the tent in our front yard decides to run up to the gate, open it, and start yelling, “Megans! Megans! What do we do? Ahhg!” which gives them the perfect opportunity to start dumping trash INSIDE our gate. So we’re like, “GET INSIDE AND SHUT THE GATE!” Which he finally does. And then the people inside our gate, the tent people in our front yard, start going crazy on us. They really start raising cane about us dumping our trash across the road and we’re really wondering what the heck we should do at this point. I’m feeling a bit panicky, expecting an angry mob to bust down our gate at any second and wring my neck.

We sit at the dinner table, eating our beans and rice by candle light, discussing the ridiculousness that has just ensued. Thank goodness Toshi is there with us, a good Haitian friend of ours from PAP. Megan asks her if we should go ahead and apologize to the people out front and although she thinks they’re really crazy, she also thinks apologizing is a good idea. She agrees to translate and we tuck our tails and go over to the front of the house to being the apology. The dialogue is long and in Creole, but Toshi translates for me as I say, “I’m sorry we put our trash across the road, we really don’t know where the heck else to put it.” Toshi cleans up the presentation a bit for me, thank goodness. Finally, like 30 minutes later, Toshi and Megan tell me that things are resolved enough and we go back to the dinner table to finish up our rice and beans. Megan decides that tomorrow we also have to apologize to the loiterers for yelling at them. I secretly think to myself that the loiterers deserved to be yelled at run off by poopy diapers and that Megan has a stinking heart of gold. But I also know that this was a bit ridiculous and feel bad about the diaper and... she’s ultimately right.

So the next morning Megan goes to apologize to them. She had a dream about one of them in particular and that just so happened to be the one she runs into in the morning. She tells him that we don’t appreciate their behavior, but we’re sorry etc. etc. And wonder of wonders, he cuts her off and begins apologizing to her for everything. He says that he could tell we were in a bad mood and that they should have left us alone. Woah. Thennnn, a little later she goes to find the ringleader of the little gang of loiterers and finds out that he has a wife and a 9 mo old baby at home! It all makes sense now as to why he is scared of cholera; a baby can die of cholera in like 16 hours. He just approached it in such a joking manner the entire time, we had no idea he was seriously afraid. So she apologizes to him and explains that if he or anyone else around happened to get cholera, she has enough medicine to treat 100 people and that he should come to her first. His demeanor instantly changes and he also apologizes for everything that the loiterers have been up to! If you knew this guy, you would know how big this is. Talk about God taking our stupid actions and making the best of a bad situation!

Now we feel better than ever about our neighbors because we know this little group is on the lookout for us. This has also opened up the door for us to give them job opportunities and get to know them better. Not to mention, it makes for a pretty hilarious story. I’ve cracked up through most of the last 20 minutes...winning.