Yesterday I tried talking to our day guard sam. He is in his early twenties and doesn’t have much education so his English is not the best but he takes care of the compound as well as lets us in during the day. I feel guilty because we are technically paying him about a dollar a day, thus perpetuating extreme poverty…but he does have an apartment in the back so I’m hoping that it is okay. Anyway, yesterday morning I showed him another huge ant trail. The ants are merciless here. They maneuver and smash themselves inside your shoes and out of nowhere a searing pain (mostly because of the shock value)causes a mini freak out when they bite.

Last time we had an ant incident he took care of it quickly. He got gasoline and watered it down, then splashed the ants and killed them really effectively. So we had another broken conversation about killing the ants which included me promising to give him the equivalent of a quarter to buy a little bit of gasoline. I totally spaced it until we came back in the evening. I brought it up with him again and apologized for not giving him money. The conversation went something like this.

“sam, I’m sorry for not giving you money, can I now give you money?”

The respondant look of confusion caused me to make the universal money sign by rubbing my fingers together.

“you know, money for the gasoline? Petroleum? To kill the ants?”

Still confusion.

Melissa and I made little motions as if we were ants crawling

“Can I give you money for the insects?”

Sam responded

“Sex?”