It happens

Rust is ubiquitous in the tropics. Metal succumbs to the humidity and heat as soon as a car or appliance, shelf, fence post or tin roof offers up even the smallest bit of untreated or damaged breach.  Rust is accepted. What can you do? It happens.

Cars and trucks litter yards and roadsides, rusting until they eventually cave in and are no longer visible in the encroaching jungle. Many are scavenged for parts before the chassis is slowly consumed and absorbed back into the earth.  

The jungle, also a product of the humidity, is as untamable and thick as the rust. Mangroves line the edges of the lagoons and rivers, sending arching roots into the water for nourishment. Schools of fish dart about to find food in the underwater web amid the tide’s ebbs and flows.

A tangle of hibiscus, coconut palms, bougainvillea, and hundreds of other plants climb up the slopes and spill down to the surrounding ocean reefs of this 38 square mile island. World War II wrecks of twisted equipment left after the Marines abandoned the island years ago, have been made into memorials and are visited by tourists from America, Australia, Japan and China eager to know the history of this remote place. Constant attention is required to keep the jungle at bay and maintain the rusting heaps of downed planes, old patrol boats and artillery.  Rust and the jungle will always win in the battle against man’s need to tidy things up.

From the balcony of my apartment in the small, busy town of Colonia, I overlook the lagoon that separates the town from the southern end of the island where the airport is located. A small bird flits among the pink hibiscus flowers below, its red cap and shoulders contrasting with its black body. Two geckos, one baby and one adult, sprint across the walls of my apartment. An inch worm makes its way slowly, one scrunch at a time, across the bedroom floor.

A large beetle, nearly three inches long, skittles along the cinder block retaining wall near the front door searching for its next meal, a crack in the wall in which to hide or who-knows-what. Two of these hard-bodied, flying insects greeted me when I arrived home last night. They were finding an easy feast under the dish drainer and in a cupboard among leftover crumbs from the prior tenants. A squirt or two of bug spray as they attempted to escape, and they now reside in bug heaven. As I type, speck-size ants race around the keys of my computer. If you cannot abide bugs, do not move to the tropics. They are even more ubiquitous than rust and the jungle. We humans are doomed; the decay-makers will far outlast our final bones.