Local Pillow

My pillow got wet during my rainy adventure at Walung.  

Normally, people would be like "Oh,  I'll just pop it in the dryer and drink some juice while I wait 35 minutes."

Nope.  Because here on the equator, the air is probably more moist that my pillow.  Therefore my pillow will probably take 2-3 months to dry, if it doesn't end up just acting like a sponge and lowering the overall humidity of Kosrae by a few percentages.  After desperately searching all of my options, I had to resort to the one option I was dodging.

I must use the local pillow.

When I first arrived here in, the bed in my room was fitted with a stained brown sheet and a pillow with a matching case, both looking like they had been possibly advertised as cheap critter housing during the summer absence of missionaries.  I knew by pure human instinct that there HAD to be perhaps a gecko apartment, or maybe some land-crab condos deep inside that pillow.  

I got up the courage to touch it.  I felt a lump.

Definitely a cockroach family.  Probably.

I pressed on the pillow a couple times.  For some reason in my sketched-out mind, I half expected a squirrel or a bat or something to come running out in a panic, carrying its bags and dragging its children behind them.  Thinking it was the safest thing for my well being as a student missionary, I stuffed it underneath my dusty bed and fitted my own pillow nicely on my sheets.  And everything was happy until a couple days ago.  

I stare under my bed.  The local pillow is staring back at me with a smirk on its face, as if to say "I am the local pillow, and I own this bed."

I take one of its corners, and pull it out from under my bed.  It has accumulated a nice layer of dust and mold on the sides, and the lumps seem even more lumpier that before.  I started to wonder if there was even any stuffing in it, or if it was just dead squirrels and bats I was feeling.  After a few good punches to at least make sure the critters were dead, I brushed it off as good as I could and began the process of laying my head down onto it.

Notice the word "process".  

My downward motion paused involuntarily.  Finally I was able to use the power of the mind to convince myself of its safety, and I slowly released all of my neck muscles on the pillow.  I touched down right on a mountain range of lumps, and adjusted the dead squirrels inside so that I was at least in a comfortable valley.  Somehow, I instantly fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning, realizing that I just had the best night of sleep so far in Kosrae.  

I looked down at my local pillow.  "how could I have ever doubted you, Magic-Kosrae-Pillow?"

And ever since, I have yet to return to my other pillow that is actually still exiled to the porch until it stops deciding to be a sponge.

I have no idea why I am even writing this.

Peace from the tropics I guess!

-Riv