The bright side…..
I sit at my laptop at three in the morning and try to find this alleged “bright side” which to me seems to be on the dark side of the moon right now….
I’ve just returned from a weekend in Gumare, surrounded by internet and hot water and other luxuries I’ve been missing. I can actually remember sitting in the back of the ambulance that was late, but still miraculously taking me to the boat to get back home, and the sky was cloudy, it looked like rain, which was a nice change, I hoped it would, continuous sunny days often exhaust me…I seem to feel like my disposition needs to match the weather, and I was looking for a break in the action.So I was sitting in the back of the truck, feeling the cool breeze and experiencing gratitude for all the opportunities I have ahead of me in Seronga. It was the sort of clichéd bliss that should just warn you something is about the happen. But I was oblivious. I was trying to focus on some words of wisdom a former PCV who had served in Bots in the 90’s gave me, to pay less attention to my surroundings and more attention to the changes I was seeing in myself. Yes. I was ready and excited to realign my thinking as it were and focus more on myself and less on this histrionic ranting and ruminating about my surroundings, because they weren’t changing, so I am the one who is going to have to.
Until they did.
Simon happened to be near the boat launch and picked me up, once the boat arrived in Seronga and having noticed the water was out in town he offered me a hot shower, which I took him up on. Simon’s shower is outdoors, and though there was spiders the size of my fist all over the walls, I thought, “Nope this is not going to bother me; I am having a hot shower.” We had dinner and caught up on his trip and he brought me back home to my NEWLY WORKING FRIDGE!!!!!!
I heard the hum of the gas and reached my hand in and it was cold! Oh happy day! My life has just improved tenfold! But you must not focus on your surroundings, focus on you, I thought, trying desperately to retain the good or at least neutral feelings of focusing on myself.
I was probably humming to myself in happiness when I entered my bathroom, and noticed a tiny pile of shits under my loofah. Damn. Upon closer inspection I decided they weren’t lizard shits, as I have learned to identify by the slight whiteness that is on one edge, but the shits of mice.
When I became an expert on the droppings of various creatures I’ll never know, but somewhere along the way it happened.
I looked at the ceiling in vain, hoping it was just shits that had leaked through the duct tape border on the roof and had fallen down. No such luck, the seal was tight.
Further inspection revealed a big hole in the bread I had foolishly left on the counter and more mice droppings on the floor by the curtain.
Ok, this is fine. I thought. This will be fine. They’re probably gone by now, I desperately thought, I’ll just go to sleep. It will be fine.
I had no sooner turned off the light when I heard a scratching by the window. I turned on my headlamp, grabbed the broom, and swept all the boxes I had stacked over near the window with plans to burn or recycle out onto the patio. I called for My Choice, the compound dog to come, hoping he would scare the mouse out of the box and maybe kill it to teach any others lurking around a lesson (as with the lizards, it appears I’ve suddenly become a big proponent of deterrence methods and of leaving the victims of my capital punishment for unlawful entry outside my door as an example to others, despite my criminology degree foggily reminding me that DETERANCE DOESN’T WORK!!)
I crawled back into my bed when I heard more scratching from another corner of the room. Shit I didn’t get him! And he’s fast! The time was now after 10, an unreasonable hour to attempt to summon my hired assassins that live on the compound, they have school in the morning. I texted Simon, informing him of the recent events and asking him if there was poison to be found in the village. He text back “WE CAN BURN THE PLACE TOMORROW”. I didn’t know if this was some British euphemism slang for gassing the f-ers out, but I was slightly comforted. Until I heard the scratching across the carpet. Now it was time to call in the reinforcements. I texted my mom. Her suggestion was to call in the assassins, and then it was to bang on the oven- the most recent area from which I heard the still unseen scurrying- and open the front door and hope he went out on his own. No such luck.
I tried to console myself with memories of the hamsters and gerbils I had as pets growing up, and thought about how you couldn’t generally get them to come near you for anything. With, of course, the memorable exception of the time my sister was playing with one and it bit her on the finger. She flung it across the room. That memory immediately halted the theory of “they’re friendly, like lizards, they don’t want to bother you” I was trying to work through my head.
I continued this game of cat and mouse, (lame pun but I’m a little short on sleep) for the next few hours, occasionally falling into a schizophrenic sleep in which I would twitch awake certain something was crawling on me. I heard the bastards actually gnawing on the plastic corners of my bed at one point. I heard it, and then saw it by the light of my headlamp crawl up the curtains, which reminded me that my mosquito net was no match for these particular villains and longed for the days when it was just lizards I was rooming with (it seems they move slower and quieter and just less).
Finally at two in the morning the showdown came to a head. I heard it crawling near the bucket I use as a trash can and managed to turn my headlamp on in time to see a big brown mouse crawling along the edge of the rim and he fell in. I kept my light trained on him and grabbed the broom, hooked it through the handle of the bucket, and threw the entire mess outside, and sealed the bottom of the door with duct tape, for good measure. I was just sending my mom a victory text when I heard scratching in the bathroom and saw another mouse scurry across along the bathtub. I laid back down in bed to wait for the next move, keeping my headlamp on and saw this one jump out of the bathroom bucket garbage can. I decided I was no match for this one and immediately shut the door and duct taped the crack at the bottom. I can hear him scratching around doing god knows what in there and I think there might be one more in the room with me now, near the battery inverter. All I know for sure is that I’m extremely tired and have to pee.
So what is the bright side?
Here’s what I’ve got so far.
1.) Lizards sound like fun again.
2.) In the reality that lizards are not fun, the mice have shown the error in my ways in thinking I had figured out how to keep vermin out.
3.) Now that I know there is a straight up problem (No peace corps, I would not consider this an “opportunity for improvement”) I can go about stockpiling poison and traps and again sealing any holes that are apparently still here.
4.) I might just live through this night (you’ll know that I did if I managed to get to the internet again).
5.) The presence of mice indicates that there aren’t snakes near the house. (yet).
6.) This proves that I have been hallucinating less than I previously thought that things were crawling around my room at night.
7.) I’ll get plenty of practice holding my bladder-useful for long car rides, and also practice being up all night and functioning the next day-I’ve heard this is life after children.
8.) More hilarious fodder for my blog.
9.) I’ll be up there in the ranking of relatively bad ass Peace Corps stories at the reconnect.
10.) I’ll know what it’s really all about to live in Botswana- this last one is kind of weak but I’m tired… I think it’s time to attempt sleep again. Good luck.
What happened next?
I cried like a baby as the sun rose, a combination of exhaustion, irrational fear, and a full bladder. Unwilling to remove the duct tape seal from the bathroom door I used my front yard as a latrine (TMI, Jen, TMI) and went to my coworker’s house in tears, sans teeth brushing (there wasn’t water anyways). She couldn’t exactly understand why I was crying and I was too tired to explain much past the fact that I wanted to go to sleep at her house. The beautiful thing about the African culture is that this is a totally acceptable request and she didn’t blink twice before inviting me in and showing me to a bedroom. The explanation that I was crying because I was tired and there were mice in my house prompted a look of confusion, but whatever. Cultural EXCHANGE. Simon later set a mouse trap up for me (after having a hearty laugh about the situation on my behalf (whatever). Cultural EXCHANGE!!! And by that night I had a mouse cadaver on my front step. Life is again good (?) on the Isle of Seronga. AND I HAVE A WORKING FRIDGE!!!And I'm getting a kitten.
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