Pests

WARNING:  This post may cause some unpleasant visual images, so if you have an uneasy stomach for pests, you may want to skip this one.

Before I came to Tanzania, I had a very unreasonable fear of cockroaches.  Now that I have lived in Tanzania for almost two years, my unreasonable fear has morphed into indifferent disgust mixed with the occasional extreme discomfort.  I don’t know about you, but I’d say that’s an improvement!

I did expect that cockroaches and other pests would be living amidst me here, but the certain experiences I encountered have definitely let some mark (though not as big of a mark as Goliath the Bat in Panama)…

Let’s take a look at the timeline:

September 2012

I first arrived at site and was still sharing the house with Eric.  He was at the nearby village while I was alone in the house (or so I thought).  There are a few gaps in the house – spaces between windows, doors, ceiling, boards, etc. – and it is impossible to keep everything sealed shut.  Using one of these gaps, a sneaky cockroach decided to crawl into the warm house and fly around a bit near where I was sitting, talking to Kaka Ben.  I started FREAKING OUT, yipped into the phone, and practically made Ben go deaf.  [Yes, I “yip” instead of scream; it sounds similar to a dog being kicked.]  I mean, not only was this a gross, disease-infested cockroach, IT WAS FLYING!!!  So I ran for my broom and as I was still on the phone, I talked through my plan to Ben, and finally worked up the courage to smack it.  And it kept crawling!  I then yipped again and smacked it again, but it still wasn’t dead!  (I kept Ben on the phone the whole time for moral support.)
After a few more yips and smacks, it finally laid lifeless against the cold concrete floor, and I could sit down and relax.

I apologized to Ben for bursting his eardrum, thanked him for putting up with my ridiculousness, and hung up.  Just as I put down my phone, Eric ran into the house asking what was wrong.  Apparently, he heard everything (my yipping) as he was walking up the hill to the house.  After I assured him it was just me freaking out about a cockroach, he calmed down and looked incredulously at me and said he thought it was something serious.  I know I seemed like a complete wuss in his eyes (and even my own) but I couldn’t help it.  Give me snakes or spiders, and I’ll be okay (maybe uncomfortable, but okay), but NOT COCKROACHES.

A few more of those icky flying cockroaches came into the house those next couple of months but I eventually stopped reacting frantically so much and just killed them before they flew on me.   Luckily, that only happened once…about a year later.

October 2013

Over a year had gone by and most of the time when I saw a cockroach, I would nonchalantly kill it.  I would definitely still be disgusted when I saw it and would usually comment on it being around, and then either I would kill it or I would try to feign ignorance but keep my belongings closed or sealed.  Insects and arachnids of all types and sizes would be found in various places: the choo [“bathroom”], closets, tables and chairs, cars, even buses.  I for the most part “got used” to them, though I would still sometimes become very uneasy if I new they were around and would still bother me – by “they” I specifically mean roaches.

One morning in October on a school day, I was sleeping peacefully when I felt something on my cheek.  I wasn’t exactly sure if I was dreaming it, but I absentmindedly brushed it off with my hand and rolled over as it made a soft sound of the floor.  Just then, I woke up with a start, realizing that it wasn’t a dream at all and something was actually on my face!  I cautiously looked over the edge of my bed and saw the culprit – a brown, hard-shelled cockroach!  I silently panicked, took my sandal, smacked it hard, and immediately got up out of be to wash my face vigorously.  UGHH!!

That whole day I felt sick to my stomach and had to refrain from gagging, but I did what I could to distract myself…I got over it after a little while, but I had to leave my house for a trip into town that weekend.  And that, my friends, is why you always sleep with a mosquito net even if you live in a house with no mosquitoes year-round!

I arrived in Njombe and the next day I got another unappetizing happenstance, literally.  That was a bad week for me…

I go and eat lunch with Steve at our favorite little mgahawa [“small food stand/restaurant”] which serves satisfying, balanced meals for only 500 Tsh. (about 30 cents).  We finish our meal with full bellies and order fresh juice from next door.  The juice was great!
…Until I take a sip and get a weird texture in my mouth, spit it out, and see I just had a small dead cockroach in that gulp!!  [I honestly don’t know why these things happen to me…]  Yes, I once again silently panicked, showed Steve, felt uneasy again, and washed my mouth out with orange soda and a piece of gum.  Bleh!  Of course for me, when it rains, it pours.  It felt pretty unsettling but I spat it out so quickly that it didn’t really linger in my mouth at all.  I was mainly shock by all this and the previous morning’s cheeky culprit more so than scared or petrified.  Fortunately, this was my last horrible experience for a while.

After the disgusting duo in October, the only bothersome pests were the usual spiders around my house (which I liked because they ate other tiny insects), small beetles and ants that Apollo loved watching and sometimes eating, and the noisy rats that live in my ceiling.  The rats were only annoying because they would eat through my ziploc bags and get to my sauce packets (sent from America) and they would always steal my soap!  Who knew they liked soap so much??  I would come home from a trip and my slightly used soap (still in a partially opened box) would be missing!

The last two experiences with pests that were noteworthy happened after my visit to America.

January 2014

Immediately after EST in Dar, we had to travel back to site and it was the first time I’d been on a bus or any type of public transportation for a long period of time since getting back to Tanzania.  I think I may have been exhausted from the night before with cleaning up Shika stuff at the training center and stressed because four of our travel mates were late and still hadn’t gotten to Ubungo bus stand.  Steve and I were saving their seats on the bus and stalling the driver from leaving the bus stand, and during all this, I saw what I thought were half a dozen small cockroaches crawling around me.  I started getting extremely uncomfortable and very claustrophobic.  I just sat there, half-delirious, half-crying in a little ball on my seat until Steve finally calmed me down.

I think that moment was when I realized the full extent of my culture shock of being back in a developing country after being in a developed country for a few weeks, in addition to missing my family.  It kind of hit me all at once and compounded my discomfort that was triggered by the roaches.  After taking a few deep breaths, I gathered myself, killed a couple roaches, and could relax again.  People don’t tell you how much culture shock can really get to you at times, whether it’s going from here to America or back to Tanzania again.  I was affected by both!  I was not too affected by it when I first arrived in country, but I think that was masked by the excitement of getting here initially.

Anyway, I got over the uneasiness after I let myself miss my American home for a bit and felt much better after the other PCVs arrived on the bus in the nick of time, literally as we were pulling out of the stand.  Phew!

February 2014

This encounter was actually with a snake instead of roaches, which I was incredibly thankful for, so I handled this one WAY better than the rest.  I was at Steve’s site taking care of him per doctor’s orders because he was incredibly ill, and they (PCMOs) wanted to make sure he wasn’t alone.  They were worried it was malaria because of his symptoms, but don’t worry, it was just a nasty stomach bug and he got exponentially better once he got the right medication.  Unfortunately, because neither of us had Cipro, we had to go into town to get them.

The morning before we left for town, we found an uninvited visitor in his courtyard.  It was a dark grey garden snake slithering by the door of his living room.  Steve’s site has more tall grass and fewer trees than my site, and this was actually Steve’s second snake sighting.  The first one he found in his house outside of his tent and he killed it with his grass slasher.  From his description over the phone and thanks to my Kindle, I told him it wasn’t poisonous.  Thank goodness it didn’t bother him while he was sleeping, because he sleeps in his tent in his house every night – both a protective barrier from snakes and a mosquito net.

That morning when we saw the snake, Steve was still weak from his stomach illness and really didn’t have the energy or will to kill this one, so I said I would.  Neither of us was sure yet whether it was poisonous, but I didn’t want to take that chance to get a closer look, and we wanted to make sure it didn’t slither its way into his house while Steve was gone.  No one likes to be surprised by a live snake in their house.

I took his slasher, positioned myself as best I could, and started slashing its body.  It was not happy (I wonder why), so it started to strike back a little, but I finally got a better hack and it was badly injured.  I hacked at it for a while until I was sure it was completely dead and until Steve told me I could stop.  >.<  I know that sounds inhumane, but I really did try to make its death be quick and merciful, but the blade on the slasher was not sharp enough and the snake was in a weird crevice that made it difficult to get a clean slash without getting super close.  It was a bit gruesome, but at least Steve would be able to sleep more easily after he returned home…  And we did confirm after it was killed that it was indeed a non-poisonous snake.

All in all, I do believe this country has made me a lot tougher than I was when I arrived here, and I have learned a lot about my own limits.

So the moral of these anecdotes is to always sleep with a mosquito net or tent to protect yourself from unwanted guests, either look before you swallow or just ignore it, sharpen your slasher, and kill snakes before asking questions, because it could be a black mamba.

::Sigh::  Third-world problems…