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Akhim Alexis<\/p>\n
\\ Ranidaphobia\\ noun: morbid fear of frogs[1]<\/a><\/p>\n There is the worldwide belief that we must all face our fears in order to relieve ourselves from bondage. I\u2019m sure this method has been a successful cure for many people, however, my fear of frogs transcends the ritual of bravery associated with confrontation; for every time I face a frog, my discomfort grows. The earliest memory of myself has always involved a fear of frogs. Maybe it stemmed from my mother who also shares my disdain, or maybe I cooked up this ranidaphobia on my own, but who really knows.<\/p>\n In 2008, after some random run-ins with toads near my house, I was given some English homework with instructions to write a letter to the Minister of Health about any serious concern of my choice. Merely a pre-teen then, I funneled my fear into the letter and asked the Minister to work arduously towards \u2018eradicating frogs.\u2019 In my na\u00efvet\u00e9, I was deliriously happy to be afforded this soapbox, especially considering the fact that our letters were actually being sent to the Minister. The contents of the letter are vague to me now, but it was intense. I condemned the leathery skin of the treacherous toads, questioned the need for such a sinister and ugly amphibian then tried to make the case for a better society which involved a frog-less ecosystem. I basically described them as the animalistic return of the black plague. Needless to say, my letter went unanswered and the frogs went on about their business. My form teacher at the time\u2014a no nonsense woman with short red hair\u2014told me that if I transferred this passion against frogs towards my Mathematics assignments I may actually have a chance at a passing grade in the subject.<\/p>\n My family and I moved to an area called Valencia right before I entered high school. At that time I had started reading more young adult novels and participating in athletics as an extra-curricular activity. The sporting activities were definitely against my will, but gave me good reason to be outdoors, something I usually avoided since I was a budding introvert. I had very few friends and to an extent that was intentional, I felt mentally and emotionally fatigued trying to maintain social interaction in large groups and remained in the classroom during recess and lunch. When I attended sporting events, I hardly mingled with athletes my age, I simply performed my task and retreated to the stands prepared to go home. Before high school, I attended a Hindu school where students of African descent were scarce and I was reminded of that every day by students and staff in not so subtle ways. So I kept to a small circle of two or three friends and listened to a lot of my mother\u2019s music, Sting and the Police, Enya and Eric Clapton, music far beyond my age. My mother\u2019s music helped keep me stable, I knew that whatever was happening around me could always be punctuated and eased by a well written song with perfect percussion.<\/p>\n Fast-forward and I\u2019m a graduate student studying Literatures in English, leaving class with some colleagues at night, walking towards a dimly lit concrete pathway adorned with pools of water which gathered after heavy rains. I am the only male student in a small Postcolonial Literature class, and from a distance I spot a sea of palm sized frogs loitering around the pathway. A sea of frogs sounds like hyperbole, the rhetoric of a fearful anti-frogger, but I couldn\u2019t count how many there were, they just gathered around wet puddles and moist dirt, their doomful singing a reckoning on my ear. My colleagues knew about my disdain for the leaping amphibian and they immediately noticed my widening eyes and buckling knees. \u201cJust look straight ahead, don\u2019t look down and don\u2019t step off the concrete,\u201d my friend said. Luckily, none of the frogs sat on the concrete, so I walked as quickly as possible with my friend holding my elbow, laughing, but nevertheless ensuring that my panic did not consume me. All the other girls walked by with ease. In fact, looking back now the entire scenario was quite funny. We went from a rather serious, and quite tedious discussion about morality in the play Toussaint Louverture<\/em>, to hollering over frogs at night. It was a rollercoaster of emotions, but my fear was as intense as the girls\u2019 laughter that night.<\/p>\n Over time I learnt how to avoid coming into contact with frogs, at least the basics. Avoid wet or moist areas, especially when rain falls. Most importantly, frogs bloom at night, so pick your pathways carefully. On the other hand, I\u2019ve come to terms with the notion that the idea that the world will be better without them is hogwash, and that\u2019s coming from someone who would rather bathe with a hog than touch a toad. In a world plagued by uncertainty and discontent, there remains a permanent ambitious purpose for the frog. As tadpoles, they commit to the moralizing act of feeding on algae, which works towards filtering and maintaining our clean water supply. Furthermore, one cannot understate how much thanks we should give to the frog family for easing our lasting burden by feeding on the most annoying insect known to man, the mosquito. In what I like to call trickle down protection, the frog feeds on the mosquito and as a result keeps the insufferable insect from spreading diseases such as Zika and Dengue. The frog has its own investment in the state of the world, it beats to its own drum, and in any band all drums have purpose no matter how unrecognizable and minuscule the sound may be while the orchestra plays. I\u2019d like to believe that just like the frog I also march to my own drum, some days more intentionally that others.<\/p>\n Purpose simplifies us to commit to a common chore, being alive together despite our fears and differences, whether it be the zebra to the lion or the human to the frog[2]<\/a>, the purpose of our fellow earth keepers should always place any innate fears on a back burner. So for now, I have promised myself to appreciate the frog from afar, but we need not touch; consider my acknowledgement of their usefulness a baby step in the right direction.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cRanidaphobia\u201d The Free Dictionary.com<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Every day a Zebra is eaten by a Lion somewhere in the world. Frog legs are a delicacy in various parts of the world, the taste is often described as chicken-like.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Akhim Alexis<\/strong> is a writer born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. He holds an MA in Literatures in \u00a0 \u00a0English from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Between Frog and Foe Akhim Alexis \\ Ranidaphobia\\ noun: morbid fear of frogs[1] There is the worldwide belief that we must all face our fears in order to relieve Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4562,"featured_media":0,"parent":1310,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1526"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4562"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2609,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1526\/revisions\/2609"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe very architecture of the city of Valencia was an invitation to wildlife. Our immediate surroundings were framed by rivers, bushes, forests and farms. So it would come to no surprise that frogs gathered in our yard when rain fell and bats flew through the house via the open space under the roof. I found this environment eerie and unsettling, and on many occasions, a household panic would ensue when a small frog was found hopping in the living room or the bathroom. I have three younger sisters and I am the oldest as well as the only boy. I\u2019m short, fairly built (a side effect of athletic training over the years) and I was also the only other male in the house aside from our father. As a result of this gender dynamic, combined with the toxic and ridiculous expectation that I (the boy) should be devoid of emotion, it was expected that I not be afraid of a frog, something so small and unimposing. When my mother and sisters yelled for my father\u2014who was sometimes outside\u2014to remove a frog from inside the house, he would sometimes say \u201cso why can\u2019t Akhim just move it?\u201d knowing that I\u2019m also afraid of it. These perverse and deliberate attacks on my fear which was an unconscious attack on my fragility were expected, because what is the purpose of a brother if not to save the day by removing frogs and fixing cars? On one occasion, when a frog parked itself in the corner of our shower, my father called my little sister to help him move it, an obvious gesture to credit her for bravery and discredit me for a lack of it. He boasted afterwards \u201cyou see how simple that was, look how easy she did that. Y\u2019all behaving like clowns.\u201d The courage to cover the frog with newspaper, trapping it in the darkness of printed news, then wrapping it up and throwing into the street was something I lacked. What I didn\u2019t lack was thick skin, so my fear didn\u2019t budge, and neither did my open-minded perspective on what a man should or should not be afraid of. So I ignored any side comments in relation to my reluctance to tamper with toads and steered clear of any if I spotted them. As the years progressed, it was clear that my sister never actually helped remove the frog that day, as she still lunges towards the nearest chair when she spots one.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1188\/2021\/06\/thumbnail_Akhim-Alexis-Author-Photo-150x150.jpg\")
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