pitter, patter of little feet

March 6, 2011


It’s been impossible to sleep. It is so hot and if it’s not one thing it’s another keeping me awake or keeping me from falling back to sleep once I get up to pee. Sunday I woke up at 3am. I kept hearing noise on the roof of my room and in my room. I turned on my light and kept looking around. What is making that noise. It sounds like something scurrying under my bed. It not as ridiculous or impossible as it sounds. I’m in Africa for god sake. It could be anything. But I keep hearing little things on the floor. And again the noise of something moving on the roof…the tin roof. So you can hear everything. I make sure my mosquito net is tucked in tight all around my bed, but I still can’t sleep. While I’m lying there awake my head lamp on a big 4 inch cockroach lands on top of my mosquito net so I am looking right at it. There’s been a couple of mornings (4) where I’ve woken up in the morning and found a dead one of these things on the floor in my room. I really wasn’t concerned about how they got in or that they were in my room in the first place, my concern was why were they dying. Is there something toxic in my room I should be aware about. When you think about the prehistoric cockroach and the fact that they survive everything WHY are they dying in my room. It took me a couple of days and some deep thought to come to the conclusion the same thing is killing them that is killing all of the little bugs on the top of my mosquito net. The mosquito nets are treated…with something deadly. The treatment lasts aboiut 2 years so I imagine it is strong enough and potent enough this early in the game to kill the cockroaches. So that makes me feel better about this big mother staring down at me through the net. At least I know he’ll be dead in a little while. About a half an hour later I hear more noise in the corner. Still wearing my headlamp I look over to see the cockroach doing circles on his back. I don’t feel bad.

So it’s 6:30 am and finally time for me to get up and light enough to look around and see there is absolutely nothing in my room…but the dead roach in the corner. But there is mud/stucco strewn about on the floor. So what happens, and I knew this when I was laying all night with my headlamp on because I kept hearing noise on the floor in my room, is that when there is pressure on the tin roof or the wind blows or apparently when it rains (as I learned the night before) it is just enough to send any lose mud dropping from the edges of the ceiling. What a dope I am. I was up all night because mud was falling in my room. Time to clean up the roach.

I find out later that day it rained a little bit during the night…around 3am to be exact. So there was never anything running on the roof, on the ceiling or on the floor. I really need to get over these little fears of mine. I’m gonna die out here.