Creepy crawlies galore! And I’m a wimp! I was really excited about getting out to the mato (aka boonies) and seening cool birds, etc. Heck I’m a biologist and a nerd …. I live for this stuff. So… things have not been panning out how I expected. I’ve seen: (1) humungo cockroaches. It has really been an all out war zone. Me versus the cockroaches. I sleep with the cockroach spray next to my bed so that when they wake me up with their little prickly legs scratching up against plastic bags, my suitcase, the cardboard box… I attack. I’ll do anything to get rid of them. Sometimes I even leave the little chemically crippled bodies out for a little while, just so their little roach friends can see that this is no safe zone. (2) Mini dragon – thing. Big black and caught by the dogs. Iguana? I don’t know but if you get a chance to check out the photos please don’t tell me it’s some endangered critter… I’ll feel bad. (3) Big furry spider. A friend who was visiting went on to the porch. I hear some banging and went outside to check what he had killed. It was so big and so furry that I thought the pulverized mass was a mouse. But it’s okay because apparently they only come out after rain. Too bad it rains fairly often. (4) I’ve seen a couple of little scorpions on the window frames. I wasn’t really worried about them because they are like ¼ of an inch and clear. Kinda cute, as far a scorpions go. Then my mom talked about the little ones being the dangerous ones in San Cristobal, and the missionaries said that a friend of theirs was stung by one here and it hurt for a week. (5) termites and ants. I wonder if my house will morph into the last few pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude (ants take over the family and their house). The ants have already burrowed through parts of my house. You can’t really see it unless you look carefully. At junctures in the room you can see their little red tunnels moving up walls. Or sometimes mini mud towers erupt through cracks in the floor. A few nights this week there have been termite hatchings and the outside wall around the front door gets covered covered covered with them. In the morning they die or loose their wings, I’m not sure, and when the mounds of their bodies get swept out the ants take over and after a few hours there isn’t anything left.
At least the rodent problem isn’t like Namaacha (teeming would be an understatement, but they are cute compared to the woodrats, etc. of the PNW), I’ve only seen one in the latrina…. I hope he was a loner and sterile.
I like all the geckos, even though they poop everywhere, they eat lots of bugs. And I like the lizards. They are a bit fat. Again, I probably like them because they eat bugs.
It really could be a lot worse (horror stories of rats nesting in people’s mattresses), and as far as Peace Corps goes this is a cakewalk and I probably shouldn’t be whining.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Site Delivery
It has been a week since site delivery. I am officially at site. My town has two names: you may find it called one on some maps or in the name of the secondary school, but on other maps, or on the entry signs it is called something else (very different). I’ve yet to get a good explanation about why there is confusion, it has been vaguely explained as some linguistic disconnect between the Portuguese and the original inhabitants (by Dio) and the fact that it is a district capital. But the names come from two mountains (more like huge huge rocks…. don’t think mount hood) next to the town.
The house is in much better condition than I thought it would be. Two plus bedroom, bright paint colors. Nothing fancy, but comfortable. Hole in the ground latrine… guess I’ll be working on those thigh muscles.
When I got to site I was greeted by Dio (soon to be 17 yr old, who gets room and board for helping out around the house, he is a wonderful person and extremely honest/thoughtful… he called me his “new American mom” on day one. So guess that’s the first time I’ve been called “mom”…. I don’t know if I’m mature enough) and some girls from the neighborhood. They sang a greeting song and had hung little welcome notes around the house. Made my day… especially after a rather long day of travel to get to site (our chapa was unauthorized to leave our city of departure, so we had to wait for it to go get proper paperwork before we could actually get anywhere).
***
Today I had to pay the electric bill. Easy enough. Right? Imagine: 20+ people crammed into a small area, three of them are with suckling babes (there is no personal space difference when it comes to nursing… anytime, anywhere, even if you are pressed up against other people), no deodorant, 150 degrees F and really high humidity. Even though there was quite a lot of space to spread out—even form a line (astounding!)--everyone pushed up against each other at the window to pay, there was a women’s and a men’s line (more like mobs) and the office would alternate between the sexes, slowly printing out receipts. I guess lines are a cultural thing, I kind of miss them. While I was trying to assert myself and trying not to step on any kids, one women (nursing while working her way through, pressed up on everyone else) did the standard hiss/hand flick motion – Mozambiquan beckoning-- granted it still takes me a little while to register the gesture I couldn’t figure out how she wanted me to get any closer to her… I was right up in there with her baby, nipple, and everything. Well it turned out she wanted my money and bill, so she passed it up with hers when she got to the window. Again part of the way it is done. People kept coming up passing bills/money to their friends waiting in line. I am glad she helped me out, I would have probably drowned in the crowd. Receipt printed and I was outta there.
***
Tonight, we were getting low on water, but it rained. Luckily. We filled up buckets and watched the neighborhood fill with smoke. A cane house down the street caught on fire, maybe electrical maybe a cooking fire—though the owners said (through the grapevine) they had put everything out. It’s still smoking now but I think (hope) the rain will keep it from getting too far.
There is something precarious about filling up basins in a lightening storm. I know they say don’t stand in puddles go swimming—I just don’t know if it counts if you are holding a contained mini body of water. Either way, with the smoke in the air, fire on the mind, I kept getting paranoid and would stop filling up buckets when the lightening got especially bright or the thunder particularly loud.
(Written 12/21/09)
The house is in much better condition than I thought it would be. Two plus bedroom, bright paint colors. Nothing fancy, but comfortable. Hole in the ground latrine… guess I’ll be working on those thigh muscles.
When I got to site I was greeted by Dio (soon to be 17 yr old, who gets room and board for helping out around the house, he is a wonderful person and extremely honest/thoughtful… he called me his “new American mom” on day one. So guess that’s the first time I’ve been called “mom”…. I don’t know if I’m mature enough) and some girls from the neighborhood. They sang a greeting song and had hung little welcome notes around the house. Made my day… especially after a rather long day of travel to get to site (our chapa was unauthorized to leave our city of departure, so we had to wait for it to go get proper paperwork before we could actually get anywhere).
***
Today I had to pay the electric bill. Easy enough. Right? Imagine: 20+ people crammed into a small area, three of them are with suckling babes (there is no personal space difference when it comes to nursing… anytime, anywhere, even if you are pressed up against other people), no deodorant, 150 degrees F and really high humidity. Even though there was quite a lot of space to spread out—even form a line (astounding!)--everyone pushed up against each other at the window to pay, there was a women’s and a men’s line (more like mobs) and the office would alternate between the sexes, slowly printing out receipts. I guess lines are a cultural thing, I kind of miss them. While I was trying to assert myself and trying not to step on any kids, one women (nursing while working her way through, pressed up on everyone else) did the standard hiss/hand flick motion – Mozambiquan beckoning-- granted it still takes me a little while to register the gesture I couldn’t figure out how she wanted me to get any closer to her… I was right up in there with her baby, nipple, and everything. Well it turned out she wanted my money and bill, so she passed it up with hers when she got to the window. Again part of the way it is done. People kept coming up passing bills/money to their friends waiting in line. I am glad she helped me out, I would have probably drowned in the crowd. Receipt printed and I was outta there.
***
Tonight, we were getting low on water, but it rained. Luckily. We filled up buckets and watched the neighborhood fill with smoke. A cane house down the street caught on fire, maybe electrical maybe a cooking fire—though the owners said (through the grapevine) they had put everything out. It’s still smoking now but I think (hope) the rain will keep it from getting too far.
There is something precarious about filling up basins in a lightening storm. I know they say don’t stand in puddles go swimming—I just don’t know if it counts if you are holding a contained mini body of water. Either way, with the smoke in the air, fire on the mind, I kept getting paranoid and would stop filling up buckets when the lightening got especially bright or the thunder particularly loud.
(Written 12/21/09)
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