A sparrow-less Future or An Incidence of Poisoning in the Dominican Republic

The Global Foundation for Democracy and Development had invited us to an environmental film festival in the Dominican Republic to present Vanishing of the Bees. My boyfriend agreed to come with me and invited me to travel a week prior so we could work by the beach.

He rented a private condo in a little town called Don Julio, which he found on Airbnb. Rifle-toting guards protected us around the clock. We weren’t allowed to walk five minutes in the dark to the local restaurant down the road. But luckily we had the beach at our feet and a strong wireless connection.

I ate to many canned foods than I care to remember. But the papaya and avocado were splendid. I don’t know if they were conventional.

On our last day before being driven to Santo Domingo, i heard a horrible sound.

It was about 3pm. The clouds were collaborating for a big wet explosion and there was an unusual brisk wind hitting the shore. It sounded like a leaf-blower.

It was deafening against the lapping of the waves and my forever racing mind.

I ran out and looked at the grassy corridor between the next door condominium and ours and got the sight of a the back of a man. A pack on his back reminiscent of Ghost Busters outlined him.

He turned around and I inhaled a most terrible smell. I quickly put together that he was fumigating against what i am assuming were mosquitoes. Just the sunset the evening prior I had marveled at all the sparrows diving delicately but so swiftly.

Jan told me that mosquitos gathered more so than usual before a rainfall. Hence why the sparrows were feasting. The sparrows eat the poison-infested mosquitos. A sparrow-less future?

I refuse.   

I lost it. Along with the Spanish that i do know.

I ran after him and yelled at him to stop. I was spitting saliva from my mouth.

It took him a while to understand. He turned the machine off, and the poisons were just dripping out of the nuzzle, splashing on the asphalt. He was the only one wearing a mask.

He had no idea what he was doing. A white man must have trained him well, the head of the festival later told me when I shared my story.  But not well enough to know that he was also slowly poisoning his own self.