surviving...

i am surviving my first month without electricity or running water...that was a lot hard at first than i had original imagined...living without those things takes getting used to...for the first couple of weeks i would get up and try to find something only to realize that i can't see a thing cause i left the lantern in the other room...when there's no electricity, you gotta remember to carry your lantern with you everywhere you go...you also get a sense of how dark night really is...its not like back home where because of all the lights, its not very dark...you cannot possibly imagine what darkness is really like...it is truly an amazing thing to experience...having no running water was also strange at first...i've taken what we call the "bucket bath" before but it was another things entirely to know this would be my everyday routine to wash myself (sometimes 3 times a day)...for those of you who have never had the pleasure of taking one, a bucket bath is where you fill a bucket with water, grab a cup, and proceed to wash yourself...it takes some getting used to...the first few times i took my nightly bucket bath my eyes would wonder around my cement shower and begin to comprehend the choice i have made to do peace corps again this time in africa...

the one thing i can say that my house wasn't lacking were cockroaches, spiders, scorpions, rats, lizards and mice...and they all happily lived with me in the space between my ceiling and the roof...the day that i arrived in my village i didn't even think about the fact that i had no electricity or running water or furniture...we had been driving since 6am and we arrived at 10pm that night...i just placed my mattress on the floor of my living room, rigged my mosquito net around the mattress by attaching it on one side to a chair, on the other to my bike...

i didn't even shower (well i didn't have any water to take a shower with)...i just crawled under my mosquito net and went to sleep...in actuality i couldn't sleep due in part to the roaches "flying" around my living room...they usually only frequent my latrine but at night they get adventurous...(a side note but relevant to my first night: roaches are loud walkers and flyers...no matter where they were i could always hear them...one night while i was sleeping a roach ran across my bed near my head...i woke up irritated and disgusted remembering where they live but the funny thing is what woke me up was the pounding of his feet as he made the mad dash across my bed)...so all night i kept hearing them (another side note: i utterly hate and am disgusted by roaches...the first few nights i could not use my latrine cause they had taken it over at night...hundreds of roaches would be climbing out of the hole and up the walls...OK maybe not hundreds but enough to freak me out...the first night my counterpart had to spray my latrine cause i couldn't even suck it and do it myself...HA!)...
what kept me up most nights was the "rat race" literally going on above my ceiling...of course they always chose to make the most noise while i was trying to sleep...along with the rat race in the ceiling, the rats had invaded another part of my house: the kitchen...it was bad enough that i had been living on the floor but to have giants rats (and i mean bigger than new york city rats - as big and long as you forearm big) making a mess of my kitchen...one night i woke up to dishes, pots and pans falling onto the floor...the noise was incredibly loud that i thought someone had broken into my kitchen (to enter my kitchen i have to exit my house into a small patio and enter my kitchen through another door)...my first instinct was to grab the heaviest thing i could, something that could do the most damage...i didn't have much so i grabbed my bike pump, walked quietly to my side door and waited...i listened very attentively to figure out where they were...they wouldn't be ale to get into my house unless they broke through my door which was highly unlikely...so there i was waiting...when i didn't hear anything for a long time i assumed the intruder had left so i opened the door ready for him anyway...no one was there and the kitchen door was closed too...interesting that is a very courteous intruder to rummage through my kitchen only to close the door and close the latch on his way out...when i reached for the kitchen door i heard a noise inside...now it was not possible that a person was inside and the kitchen door was locked from the outside...it has to be an animal...but what animal and how?...well only one way to find out...i opened the door and what did i find...a huge, huge rat the size of my arm that had knocked over all my things

(since i had no furniture and everything was close to the floor within reach)...when i shone the flashlight on him he squeaked, I screamed he ran, i ran...he ran across the patio and exited through my drainage hole, thereby showing me how he entered...from time to time the rats would come into my kitchen and chew up everything until i finally got smart and covered my drainage hole with a screen...now they don't come visit anymore...but there were still some other undesired visitors coming in the middle of the night...

one night around the first week in my new house i had opened the door to my kitchen and noticed something running out of the kitchen as i was walking in...at first i thought it was a small rat or mouse...i grabbed my little broom determined to kill whatever it was...when i saw it i began to hit it nonstop...after the first hit he turned around...but that didn't look like a mouse?...what in the hell is that?...i kept hitting it until i was sure it was dead...i got closer to examine it but it didn't look like an animal, more like a bug...i had my suspicions on what it was but i wanted confirmation before i uttered a word...i called over the girl next door...when she arrived she gasped..."what?" "its a scorpion"..."a scorpion?"..."yes"...oh jeez...i had never seen one before in my life...i've seen one on television but nothing compares to seeing it in person...they are truly the ugliest, scariest, and most threatening-looking things on the planet...she proceeds to tell me that if you get stung by one it hurts like hell and some people die...seriously now?!?!?!...now i was scared...i don't want to die at least not at the hands (or stinger) of that ugly thing...man after that i was really paranoid so i would scan everything before moving forward...another night i was in my bedroom about to walk through my doorway when i saw a scorpion walking above my door back up the wall and disappear under the ceiling(note: my ceiling is not well done. there are gaps between the the wall so things can crawl through like SCORPIONS)...he was gone but i was still very unhappy to have an unwanted guest in my house...i sprayed my ceiling with insecticide like everyone had told me and before i walked out of my door something had fallen from the ceiling...i point my flashlight in the direction of the noise but i didn't see anything so i moved in closer...there on the ground was a scorpion facing the wall with his stinger up...i panicked and tried to calm myself...i have to kill it...there is no one here to help so i grabbed what i now call my scorpion stompers and got ready...i moved some things out of the way and poked the scorpion to get him moving...he moved, i screamed but not enough for me to get a clear shot...i took a deep breath and convinced myself that i'm way bigger than this guy...what can he do to me...i poked him again and this time ran straight for me which gave me a clear shot and it was over...he was dead...after killing him i ran over to latifa's house and told her how i'm a bit scared to go to sleep...i couldn't believe how scared i was over something so small but as everyone keeps telling me they are dangerous...latifa and her fiance walked back with me to my house to help me inspect it...i was sure that the scorpion in my bedroom that got away was still there...shabi, her fiance, starts inspecting around while i go out to my patio for something...just then latifa screams, shabi grabs a shoe and i'm left wondering what is going on as i stared at both of them from the other side of the doorway...BAM...thump...another scorpion dead...so i'm not the only one afraid of these guys...so i ask them the same question i had been obsessed with: can a scorpion kill a person...shabi and latifa both answered yes but only if sorcery is attached...HUH!?!?!?... scorpions and sorcery...explain...well here in africa there are people who practice sorcery...there are two kinds: good and evil (of course)...good sorcery is a socially acceptable practice...many people take their sick to a sorcerer to cure them...however there is also sorcery that some practice to kill people...a person may try to kill you by placing "gris gris" on a scorpion and have that scorpion sting you...with sorcery attached, you will die...this is what latifa explains to me...excuse me but are you telling me that the only way i will die from a scorpion is if someone has put a spell on the scorpion?...yes, she said...do you believe in this, i asked..."oh yes it exists", she said...from that moment on i started to lose my fear in scorpions...

lizards are probably the only thing that didn't bother me much except when they ran around in my ceiling...like the rats in my ceiling they always seem to be having their own races...because of them i've started to wear earplugs...some times i have resorted to hitting the ceiling to get them to stop: some times that works; other times not really...one morning i woke up to something jumping around in my bedroom...i didn't have my glasses on so i couldn't tell what it was...plus the mosquito net made it even harder...i quickly put on my glasses and slowly crawled out from under my mosquito net...hanging upside down from a gap in my ceiling was a rather large lizard...he wasn't moving - i assumed he was dead so i decided to take care of the thing that was making all this noise first...as i walked closer to this thing, it jumped up from behind my suitcase, grabbing on to the wall before falling again...i finally caught a glimpse and saw that it too was a large lizard...i ran to my livingroom and grabbed my broom using that to guide (more like push) him out of my house...so i came back for the other guy...he was still hanging motionless upside...i poked him thinking he was dead...he fell onto the floor and started running around, jumping up trying to crawl back up the wall...it was comical to watch...for a minute or two i watched him try in vain to jump up onto the wall only to land flat on his face...when i realized that he wasn't going to run for it, i pushed him around with my broom until he reached freedom...

this is my new life...a very different life...welcome to africa!