Purpose Asia

Saturday morning dawned dripping and misty. I tumbled out of bed and stumbled to the kitchen. Today I had to bake a breakfast treat before a going-away party for a friend. I pulled out tubs of flour and sugar and set to work measuring and kneading. Soon I stood up and brushed stray hairs from my face after closing the oven on my soon-to-be masterpiece. It was a good morning. Then the phone rang. I fumbled on the shelf above the fridge to grab it and pulled it to my ear. “Hello?” Funny, there was a strange tickling feeling on my arm. The person on the other end of the line started talking but another tickling feeling on my neck and arm distracted me. I shook my head thinking I was just being paranoid. “Uh huh.” I agreed distractedly to the voice on the phone. There it was again. This time I couldn’t control my paranoia. I had to look. I pulled the phone away from my face and gaped at it in abject horror. Swarming out of the buttons, battery compartment and every orific...

a Bougainvillea bloom on one of the roads where I live I sit on my bed after a full day.   My wet hair dangles around my face and I contemplate the peeling nail polish on one hand while I scratch one of my more than twenty mosquito bites with the other.   I can hear the bat flapping out of the guava tree in my front yard and night sounds pile up outside my cantilever windows like cans down an alleyway. Sometimes I’m amazed when I think about where I live and the work I do. I feel so average most of the time and tonight I certainly look it. But then I get to thinking about it. I live on an island in the South Pacific. Every day I speak a language other than my heart language and I emerge from my house to hibiscus and banana trees in the heart of a valley nestled among jagged, jungle-covered mountains. I walk down a dirt road and walk into a clinic that routinely sees malaria, dengue, ameobaisis, tuberculosis and other tropical disease along with everything from...