coffee.mill

Crumbs

.  Disclaimer: Views presented in this blog are those of Roger German.  They do not represent the views or opinions of the U.S. Peace Corps or the Government of the United States.

                All right.

                I gotta come clean about the cream cheese frosting.

                Tracy makes a mean carrot cake with melt-in-your-mouth cream cheese frosting.  According to her, it’s very easy to make, but it is a real treat here.

                We had some Peace Corps friends coming over, thought a little dessert would be nice, and she had all the ingredients mixed up, and was picking some darker crumbs out of the mix, popping them into her mouth, mixing away when she suddenly said, “Oh no.”  I looked up.  “Ants, I’ve been eating ants.”

                I know…you’re tired of ant stories, but I do ask your indulgence.  We both doubled over laughing.  Ants.  I asked how they tasted and she relayed as to how it tasted pretty much like cream cheese frosting  with crumbs in it.  Different from the crunchy ants she ate in her peanut butter down in San Miguel.  You’d think we eat them all the time.

                But then, there was that bowl of frosting.  Speckled, as it were.

                And no sign of how the ants arrived in their sweet crypt.  No trail of ants.  None in the cream cheese wrapper, none in the powdered sugar, none in the butter, none in the vanilla.  A mystery.

                I started picking them out, rather absent-mindedly.  Just picking them out with the point of a knife, wiping it on a damp paper towel, chatting..10…20…25.  As a technical note, for those of you with a scientific turn of mind, cream cheese frosting is not transparent.  More translucent I would say.  So as I stirred, I would see one or two rise up out of the depths, and I would tip them out.  Stir, pick…35…40.

                Talking with Tracy…60…70..picking out ants..it became something of an obsession I suppose.  80…90…then it became harder to find ants.  The pace slowed.  I was becoming disturbed…stirring, stirring…100…110…minutes would go by, no ants.  I have to confess a lapse in the scientific method here.  I did NOT write down the final number.  I remember 117.  Tracy remembers 126.  For sake of erring on the low side, let’s say 117 ants committed sugar suicide in our frosting.   A terrible loss to the Benque Viejo ant community, with little sympathy expressed by the lumbering bipod who extracted their pitiful bodies from the site of their demise. 

                OK.  Here’s where all I can say in our defense is that we “went Peace Corps.”  I mean, all that stuff is expensive, right?  And despite much stirring, I found no more little carcasses.   We looked at each other.  Tracy and I, that is.  Well…?  The frosting really tasted just fine…good, in fact. 

                And we had little money, and less time before our guests arrived.  And WE hadn’t keeled over, had we?  Even from our prior experience of ants with peanuts (a delicacy, I might add). 

                We frosted the cake.

                Had a lovely dinner.

                I remember the tension built by Edgar Allen Poe in “The Telltale Heart,” page after page where the perpetrator of the murder talked with the police detectives while sitting in a chair on boards directly above the body, as he slowly went mad, finally ripping up the floor and showing them the body.

                We were much cooler.  Calm in fact.  Not even breaking into a sweat, even when I thought I saw a speck, one small, tiny, hardly noticeable dark spot.  I casually mentioned to Tracy that  THAT piece would be exactly right for me.

                She looked at me with knowing eyes, and with nerves of steel calmly served me the offending piece, and I, stalwart defender of our dark secret, I ate it.

                Now I know what you are thinking.  Yes we will be returning to the U.S.  And we do hope to have many of you over to dinner.  But we promise, really…we really do promise...

 

Lost phone lesson

.  Disclaimer: Views presented in this blog are those of Roger German.  They do not represent the views or opinions of the U.S. Peace Corps or the Government of the United States.

            Most of you know I’m a mediator, know I look for peaceful solutions to intractable problems, know that, at heart, I believe in the good in people.  But I do tire.  This is a story about that.

            I left my phone on the bus. 

            Had sort of nodded off, came on the stop of a sudden and had to pull my bag together and get off before they took off again.  In my haste, the phone stayed on the bus, on its way to Belize City.  It’s an old beater held together with duct tape, but it works, and it has all those phone numbers I haven’t taken the time to list on a hard copy somewhere…

            Half way through the meeting I was attending, I realized my phone was gone, and I knew exactly what had happened.  Really did figure that was the end of it.  But after the meeting, fellow PCV Heather called my old phone.  It was answered, and then clicked off.

            A little later, I thought what the heck, and tried again.  A young female voice answered.  I said that I was glad she found my phone, and how could we arrange to get it back to me.  She was somewhat hesitant, but said she was in Belize City, and I said I could have someone meet her there.  There was some assertion that that would be alright.

            Heather headed east toward Belmopan, and I caught a bus west to Benque with Emily…a few minutes into the ride Emily received a text from Heather.  The girl wanted $100 to return the phone.

            It had been a long day by that time.  I was tired of the bus ride, tired of the day, tired of being extorted.  The phone wasn’t worth 100 bucks.  But it would cost most of that to get it replaced, and then without the numbers.  I had Emily text back to my old phone that I’d give her $50 for it, that’s all it was worth.  The girl said no way.  So I started thinking about what I would have to do to lock up the number, get a new phone, recreate my directory…

            About a half hour later, the girl texted back and said she’d take the $50, and we could meet in Cayo on our way to Benque.  That was strange, because I thought she was in Belize City, two and a half hours east of there.  Emily and I got off the bus and waited where we were supposed to meet, which meant we got off the bus that would have taken us to Benque.

            She never showed.  Emily texted, and the girl said she meant the next day.

            We hailed a taxi.  Expensive here on a Peace Corps stipend, but as I said, it had been a long day.

            I met Tracy at La Casa de Terésa in Benque for a beer, maybe some soup.  Told her the story.  She was livid.  As livid as a peaceable gal like Tracy can get.  She went outside and called my phone.  Got the girl on the line, told a little bit of our Peace Corps story here in Belize.  Said she “was an old lady who lost her husband 20 years ago and had fallen in love with the man who lost the phone.”  Tracy asked her to do the right thing. 

            The girl texted back, “I don’t mind dropping the ($50)…if we talk it out and for your love cuz in society its hard to find love…call back.”  Tracy called back.

            Turned out the girl, 15 years old, was going to the funeral of her cousin when she found the phone.  Her cousin was 24, shot dead, being in the wrong place at the wrong time in Belize City.  Part of her story.  Tracy said she was so sorry, asked the girl if she was ok.  The girl started crying, as did Tracy.

            They arranged a meeting the next day, and the girl showed up with her best friend, both wearing their High School uniforms.  They gave Tracy the phone, no mention of $50.  Tracy got some contact information, and after they left, she called the phone company and put $10 worth of credit on the girl’s phone.  The girl’s mother called Tracy and thanked her.

            I was just gonna pay the 50 bucks. 

            Instead I received a lesson in how to remove a brick of cynicism from the walls I build.