Buggies Buggies Everywhere

I know you’ve all been waiting for this post.  What kinds of creepy crawlies do I have at my new site?!?  Well, please sit down.  Where to begin…

Spiders and Roaches

When I moved into my house, the spiders and roaches that I’d seen during site visit were, of course, still there.  I was exhausted my first night and since I was sleeping outside anyway I was willing to let them all live another day.  But as I was getting ready for bed I noticed a roach ON my backpack….SOOO not ok!  So I went on a rampage.  A killing rampage, assisted by Alima, once she heard me from outside.  We killed so many roaches and spiders that night!  And the next day I went on a Rambo spree, the Malian equivalent of Raid.  Needless to say, I have not had a problem since.

A spider on my window, shortly before I exterminated it.

Roaches in my ɲεgεn are another story.  They were particularly bad until I got a cover for my ɲεgεn; after that they became manageable.  But I still would just rather not deal with them at all, so finally last week I sprayed the underside of the cover and the inside of the top of the hole with Rambo.  Again, haven’t had a problem since.  Rambo is a miracle worker.  In fact, weeks after I sprayed my house, I would occasionally find a dead roach on the floor that had dared to venture out of my ceiling and entered into my lingering war zone of Rambo.  Hah!

For the first month or so, I took great pleasure in killing all sorts of bugs: spiders, ants, etc.  I rarely killed bugs back home – especially spiders, I’d catch them and let them go outside – but for those first few weeks I had absolutely no control over my own life, so it was nice to have control over somebody’s life.  I know that seems a little weird, but walk a mile in my flip flops and you’d do the same thing!

Ants

God, how I hate ants!  I LOATHE ants.  I discussed this back in my Homestay entries.  Ants are everywhere.  They’re in my house.  They’re outside in my courtyard.  And they take over the San Peace Corps house.  One time in my village I made a sort of coleslaw for dinner.  I had leftover vinegar-mayo dressing so I tossed it on the ground in the courtyard.  In the morning there was a perfect patch of hundreds of ants exactly where the dressing had landed.  I swept as many as I could into a bucket and removed them from the premises; the rest I Rambo-ed.  Later the lizards feasted.

The perfect patch of ants.

All of my food is kept on the lower shelf of my big table.  One day I picked up my jar of strawberry jam and felt something brush my hand.  I looked down and a teeny ant was running on my hand…and there was another, and another!  Somehow they had infested my jar of jelly, those little devils.  I tossed the jar in the courtyard and let the kids take care of it later.  This was the beginning of my teeny-ants-on-my-table problem.  They just kept coming back!  They would scurry all over my table, and I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from or why they were there; I kept my food as tightly contained as possible and they never seemed to be near the food anyway.  It was a battle for a long time, and eventually they just disappeared. 

BUT.  Before they disappeared…one day I was helping out with baby-weighing at the CSCOM.  It was still hot season, so I was pouring sweat and drinking a lot of water from my water bottle.  By lunch time I’d drank about half the bottle.  After eating, I reached for my bottle and noticed a small movement…one of the teeny ants was IN my water bottle, running around the top!  I was horrified.  And then I saw another…and another…and another.  There were about 7 running around the top of the bottle.  I opened the lid to dump out the water and noticed in the water a funny looking clump…a clump of teeny ants, all struggling to stay on top of each other and not drown.  Probably about 10 of them.  In my water bottle, where I’d already drank half the water.  That was not a good experience…but at the same time…it was just another day in Mali!

These days I still have ants in my house, bigger, black-and-tan ones.  Ew.  But now I can kill them with my bare hands if necessary, even the big, juicy ones.  Oh, what a long way I’ve come…

Flies

The flies here are awful.  And they’ve only increased in number and obnoxiousness now that it’s rainy season.  When I sit in my chair, sleep in my bed, make Bambara flash cards, or hang my laundry anywhere under my tree (which is pretty much my whole compound) my things – and me – get covered in little brown splotches, which I’m pretty sure is fly poop from all the flies in the tree.  I can’t nap outside during the day anymore at my house unless I hang my mosquito net and sleep under that.  Even just hanging out and reading is hard because of the flies. 

Malians tend to be way more tolerant of the flies (stemming from a lifetime of being surrounded by them), which makes me really sad, to see a child covered in flies.  That sort of image automatically makes you think the child is dirty and diseased, but that’s not it at all – the flies are just everywhere.  And since – unlike most rural Malians – animals don’t live in my concession, I don’t have enough food sitting out to feed a family of 10, I cover my ɲεgεn, and in general I have the education to follow better hygiene practices, I have way less flies than mostly everyone else. 

Aside from being so obnoxious, flies are also dangerous – they land on open excrement, or uncovered ɲεgεns, and then they land on people and food, thereby carrying pieces of feces on their feet to their next landing target.  This is one of the reasons for rampant diarrhea, which can be dangerous, even fatal, especially to children under the age of 5.  With all of my health knowledge and accessibility to better hygiene, even I have had near-constant diarrhea for the last 2 weeks – sometimes there’s just nothing you can do to prevent it.  It’s kind of scary.  There’s been a cholera outbreak north of me for over a month now. (Cholera is a bacterial disease caused by fecal-oral transmission, and therefore very preventable if you have proper health and sanitation knowledge, as well as access to clean water.  It’s an extremely quick killer if left untreated but also easily treatable – if you have the knowledge and resources).  The last stats I saw were from a week ago and read, “Tuesday, August 23, there were 882 confirmed cases of cholera in Mali since July and 36 deaths.”  In his email, the PC staff member continued on to say, “The silver lining to the story is that the epidemic appears to be in regression, with just 80 new cases reported each week, as compared to 150 new cases reported each week at the outset.”  Scary stuff.

 

The Mama scorpion with babies on her back.

Scorpions

I’m a lucky girl.  My scorpions are small.  And yes, I know that the smaller they are, the more dangerous, but come on, I’d much rather have to kill a 2-inch scorpion than an 8-inch scorpion…wouldn’t you?  Most of my scorpions are ant-sized and found in my ɲεgεn, and appear really not all that often.  I’ve had a few 1 and 2-inchers in my house; luckily I’ve always seen them before I stepped on them or brushed up against them.  After I returned from my month away in Bamako, I decided to completely clean my house.  I was reorganizing my bedroom and moved a trunk to a different wall, then returned to where it had been with a broom and my headlamp (my bedroom is usually pretty dark).  Then I noticed that where my trunk had been was a scorpion.  It had a funny color and texture so I assumed it was dead, and I saw little movements so I thought ants had come to eat it.  But then I saw its tail raised in scorpion attack mode, and then it moved!  I ran to get one pair of shoes to wear and another as a weapon and leaned in closer to take a look: it turns out it was a Mama scorpion with all of her babies on her back.  So then I went and got my camera and took a picture before I smushed them all into oblivion.  I kind of felt bad killing a family like that, but there was no way I was about to let a brood of scorpions live next to my bed!

Just as a side note, my friend Andrew lives north of me and once told me he killed a scorpion the size of his hand in his house.  I count my blessings.

In My Bed

This is not as bad as it sounds.  I sleep outside every night, so it’s not surprising that a few little buggies make their way into my bed.  I sleep under a mosquito net tucked under my mattress so it’s pretty bug-proof, but a few little guys sneak under before I close it off; always tiny ones who fly at my face while I’m reading before bed.  They annoy the crap out of me, so I have to spend some time killing bugs before I can really get into my book.  Somehow bigger bugs – ants usually – occasionally find their way in.  But because my net is insecticide-treated, they have a short life span once they’re in.  Usually I find them dead on my mattress in the morning.  Once I found a dead ant squished against my arm.  I’m not sure if it died before or after I rolled on it.  It’s a testament to my new-found acceptance of ants (and by acceptance I mean willingness to kill them instead of run away) that it didn’t even freak me out.  Along those lines, I’ve developed the ability to kill a bug that is crawling on my body and flick it away without freaking out or often even checking to see which type of bug it is.  Of course sometimes it’s just sweat trickling down my body.

Now we’re getting to the good stuff…

Tubaniso

Like I’ve mentioned, I spent 2 weeks in Bamako at our training center, Tubaniso, for in-service training (IST) in June.  This was at the start of the rainy season, and Bamako is more southern and more tropical than San, so lots of weird bugs came out during those two weeks.

Winged termites in my cup.

It rained nearly every day during IST, and we quickly discovered that the day after a rain the winged termites come out.  We were eating in the refectoire when all of a sudden there were tons of bugs flying around the ceiling.  And suddenly, they were everywhere.  On the tables.  On the floor.  On us.  In our food.  Four landed in my water before I had the chance to drink it.  My hut was a 5-minute walk from the refectoire, and I was attacked by these bugs the whole way; I had to pick them off of my body.  Part of their life cycle is losing their wings before they die, so there were piles of wings everywhere.  We’d have to dart quickly into our huts and slam the door, then kill all the bugs that had come in with us.  And during the night they would come in through the space between the door and the floor.

Piles of wings outside ɲεgεn   

Piles of wings inside ɲεgεn 

Then it got worse.  
After another rain, the other winged bugs came out (I have no idea what these were).  During the day you could see them emerging from holes in the ground, little dots struggling out of the hole, and as soon as their wings made it into the open air they’d pop open like an umbrella and the bug would fly away.  You could see them come out one right after another.  They’d disappear until night, and then they’d hit.  These were awful!  For some reason they were particularly heinous around my hut-cluster’s ɲεgεns.  Piles and piles of wings were on the ɲεgεn floor and immediately outside the door.  You’d go in to use the ɲεgεn and have to pick bugs off of your body while doing your business. Some ɲεgεns didn’t have any bugs at all, but ours was like a horror movie. It was terrible.  I was starting to think I’d never make it through rainy season alive. (Luckily I’ve never seen these in San).

One night we had a bonfire and Chrissy and I walked back to our huts together, which were next door to each other.  First we stopped at a safe ɲεgεn, and on our way back to the huts we noticed black bugs on the ground, maybe ¾ of an inch long, and we decided they were courting each other because one would trail behind the other in perfect follow-the-leader form.  They were fascinating and we watched for awhile.  We even tried to coax two loner bugs together, until a third interrupted our efforts and suddenly we had a love triangle on our hands.  But then we noticed the collection of bugs right outside of Chrissy’s hut.  I joked, “Geez, I wonder how many are in your hut?!”  But it turned out to be not so funny.  She came running to get me; her hut was totally infested!  One of her roommates was sleeping, but I went in anyway with a broom and swept out probably at least 50, the whole time fighting more as they marched their way back into the hut.  It was crazy, the way they were drawn to the hut.  Finally I came back outside and told Chrissy, “I have bad news and I have good news.  The bad news is I think I broke up a bunch of bug relationships, but the good news is I got most of them out of your hut.  The bad news is there are still some under KJ’s bed that I couldn’t reach, but the good news is I got all the ones from under your bed!”  And then I had to go take care of my own hut, which luckily wasn’t nearly as bad.  Later we learned the bugs were the second breed of flying bugs that I mentioned, the ones that crawl out of the ground.  *Shudder*

Manantali

I spent a few days in the western side of Mali for the 4^th of July, in a town called Manantali.  ‘Tali is right on the Niger River, and really beautiful.  Way cooler wildlife that in boring San (San, as much as I love it, is definitely in the ugliest part of Mali).  After a rainstorm I discovered I needed to keep a special eye out on the path in front of me at night, because giant squishy millipedes were on the path.  Ew.

Sourountouna Rainy Season Bugs

These are pretty cool.  My friends call them “Red Fuzzy Bugs.”  My sister saw a picture of one and said she’d “red fuzzy squish it,” so now when I see them I always think “Red Squishy Bugs.”  Their actual Bambara name is something along the lines of “Ala ka ci den” which loosely translates as “Children of Heaven.”  One of the CSCOM workers explained to me that they’re good because you see them when there is rain, and since you want rain during rainy season, you want to see them.  They’re about the size of a ladybug, and are such a fluorescent red color they always catch me by surprise, like that color shouldn’t exist in nature.

Another less exciting red bug is the red centipede.  They are everywhere in my village after a rainstorm!  Until recently they weren’t at my house and I was cool with them.  Now they’re starting to come in my courtyard and ɲεgεn, which is not so cool.  Except that because my ɲεgεn floor is smooth cement, the centipedes slide fantastically when I kick them, like playing shuffleboard, and I can play a game with myself, aiming for the drainage hole.  They don’t seem to mind my game; when I miss they just get up and take off running again.  Their legs move in groups of 4, so they kind of look they’re rolling along like a…tank…or something.

We have a few winged bugs that show up every now and then.  The kids eat them.  They pull the wings off and then roast the bugs on my lantern, and then they eat them.  Mostly they watch me so they can laugh at the horrified expression on my face.  I’ve promised to try them sometime, “next year.”  Apparently they’re a lot better when you cook them in oil and salt.  One of the boys brought over a cooked, flavored handful once and the kids went nuts as he doled them out.  Blegh.

In My Flour

Chrissy and I bought flour at market one day.  I can’t use it for very many things, so it sat in its plastic bag for awhile before I ever opened it.  One night I was getting something off of my food shelf, and I happened to notice a little black bug in the flour bag.  I killed it from the outside, then opened the bag to remove it and found 2 more bugs, so I killed those, too.  Later I texted Chrissy: “I found 3 bugs in my flour.  Should I still use it or throw out the whole bag?”  Chrissy responded, “Mine had bugs, too.  I’m still using it; flour is expensive here.”  I wrote back, “That’s exactly why I asked another PCV and not my mom.”

A few weeks later I wanted to use my flour and I noticed lots more bugs.  I resigned myself to the fact that there must be bug eggs in the flour, but since I was cooking my food (and therefore killing anything with the hot temperature), I just picked the adult bugs out and made dinner anyway.  Later I spent over 2 hours working my way through the flour with a fork and spoon.  I probably picked out 60 bugs, and once I noticed the little worm larvae of varying sizes, I started picking those out too, also a good number.  But I realized there was no way I got all the worms out, so next time I went to market I bought a teme, a sifter.  Again, I sifted through all the flour.  I only found 7 new adult bugs but I sifted out hundreds of little worms.  I still have to sift everytime before I use the flour, but I find less and less each time.  Victory!  And soon I’ll have used all my flour and I’ll have to buy more…and maybe that batch won’t have bugs.  :)

Miscellaneous

Once I was in my ɲεgεn and I saw something weird on the wall, so I bent over waaaaay up close to check it out…and then the moth flew in my face on its escape route.  Whoops.

Recently I was covered in little red dots all over my stomach and sides that looked kind of like the chicken pox.  I’m not really sure what they were, but my friend confirmed that it wasn’t shingles, which made me feel much better about it.