Karma

My host agency office is located an hour walk away from my home, and if I want to avoid this trek I have to catch a truck at 5:30 in the morning. I make the journey three times a week, and usually carry my desayuno tipico with me to prepare at the office. As the trip is a rough one where I am stuffed into the back of a semi-trailer with between 50 and 100 finca workers, I am always worried about breaking my eggs during the journey. The solution I have employed to safeguard against this possible morning tragedy is to carry the eggs in my pocket (I figure if my pants are a good enough place to guarder one set of huevos, why not two?). I was proud to report that until the events of this tale transpired, I had a perfect safety record that spanned almost 8 months. Three eggs a day, three times a week, for 24 weeks means that over 200 eggs had been successfully transported in this manner and arrived safely in my belly.

On the morning in question, I arose at my customary hour, grabbed my back pack, put my huevos in order, and set off for work. As I was locking up my front gate, still groggy with sleep, I noticed a rather large spider crawling on my leg. I moved quickly to exterminate the stowaway, which proved to be the beginning of my undoing. I slapped my pant leg, killed the spider, and also crushed one of the eggs in my pocket. I had to reenter my house, change pants and deal with the mess on my leg. By the time I had completed the clean up and made it to the place where I normally catch the truck into the finca where my office is located, I found I had not arrived in time and needed to employ alternate transportation, my feet. This set back compounded my tardiness, and by the time I arrived at the finca offices, I was already an hour and a half late for work.

Being the Christmas season, I was looking to purchase some gifts, and as my office is located inside a coffee finca, fresh coffee seemed to me to be a natural choice for regalitos. I entered the office of the finca administrator and requested the goods. He was able to see that I was pressed for time, and hastened to fill my order. I reached into my pocket to pull out some billetes, and out fell another egg, right onto his office floor. Two down. After apologizing profusely, and being rather begrudgingly forgiven, I began the final assent to my office. Upon entering the building, I passed the kitchen and left my final hope at breakfast, my last egg, sitting on the counter. I went to my desk and set about catching up on the work that I was now two hours late at beginning.

When breakfast time finally rolled around, I went back to the kitchen to find that my counterpart's wife had come to my rescue by bringing tamales to share. Being very relieved that I was not going to have to rely on a single egg for all of my morning nutrients, I began eating. When we had finished and exchanged the usual pleasantries (muchas gracias, buen provecho), I moved to begin cleaning up. I washed the dishes we had used, wiped down the counters and table, and put away the extra food. The only thing left in site was my lonely huevo.

As I was talking with my counterpart and his wife, I absentmindedly grabbed a plastic bag to store my egg in for another day. I picked up the egg and dropped it into the bag. The egg passed right through the hole in the bottom of this bag, and smashed on the floor, bringing my defeat to completion.

How could this happen you ask? After 200 eggs having completed their journeys in complete safety, how could three perish in such an untimely manner on the same fateful day? I will tell you. I have another habit that I include in my morning routine that I neglected to report. The first thing I do after stopping my alarm clock is walk out my front door in the morning darkness and pee into the bushes. The preceding morning I had awoken, and followed my itinerary as usual, but no sooner had I loosed the stream into my favorite bush than I heard a flutter of wings and a very startled clucking. As it turned out, my neighbor's chicken had chosen my bush as its nightly roost, and my peeing on it had scared the piss out of each of us. Pee on a chicken and you've got to expect some broken eggs.