Lawn Mower

Remember when I went on that day trip to the DR to buy a lawn mower? One of the nursery guys took it out for a spin the following week. The compound is pretty big, so it took a while to mow. It was kind of nice, working by the window, listening to the drone of the mower, smelling the freshly cut grass. Took me back home to the suburbs in the summer.

                The Haitians, however, hated it. They couldn’t stand the noise and complained about it all morning. When the nursery guy finally turned it off, one of the agronomists who I share an office with muttered the Haitian equivalent of “Thank you, sweet baby Jesus.” (And yet, no one here seems to mind the noise from electrical generators or pressure washers (gotta keep those motorcycles gleaming). They both sound basically the same as a lawn mower and at least one of them if not both runs for hours every day. Zero complaints.)

                It’s been a couple of weeks now and the grass is starting to get a bit scraggly again. So far, it seems that looking at messy grass is preferable to listening to a lawn mower. We’ll see if they ever end up getting their money’s worth out of that machine.