Bugs!

One night while sitting on the uncomfortable, bamboo, old couch. There was an ant walking on the wall. Mo, without thinking hit the wall to kill the ant. Within seconds the whole wall was covered with ants escaping from the ceiling! The wall changed from a creamy yellow color to a black color! We both screamed and jumped up. We quickly moved the couch away from the area and Mo decided that hitting the waterlogged bellowing ceiling where the ants were emerging from would be a great idea. It wasn't  (Shocking, huh?) When he hit it a small section of what we originally thought to be ceiling fell to the floor. On closer investigation we realized that it was not in fact part of the ceiling but a huge collection of ant bodies that were not racing across the floor to safety. I think that night we emptied an entire can of bug spray on the wall and the surrounding floor.

A week or so later while sitting outside on the balcony (because there was no power and it was too hot to be inside) I drank a coke. When I was placing my cup on the ledge I used my phone as a light to guide where I should place the cup.  The white pearl looking ledge was black with white dots and moving! Of course I freaked out and yelled to turn on the generator! Once the lights were on we noticed that the black things were ants (of course) and the white dots were their eggs. The ants were moving nest spots from under the ledge to God only knows where. Another can or two of bug spray was emptied, gasoline was used to spray around the areas (in case any other ants wanted to join the party) and semi-relaxation began again. After all, we are in Africa, right?  About 20 minutes after that ordeal was over, Mo looked at the wall leading into the house! The white stucco was black and moving! Screaming and cursing and yelling and anything else you can think of was part of the process we had now become accustomed to when empting a can of big spray somewhere in our house due to the amount of the ant infestation. Mo managed to kill all of them and then swept up their bodies into the dustpan. There were so many dead ant bodies that it covered and made a layer in the dust pan!

Thank goodness we had a maid. Not only was Colossus keeping her busy by crawling under the covers of the freshly made bed, but the clothes were too.  Daily she would take the clothes out of our closets shake them out. There was thousands, if not millions of tiny tan balls. They were perfectly cut or laid. None of us could figure it out! One day after taking a few in a bag to my school so the locals could look at them it was determined that they were caused by, you guessed it, ants! The ants were digging into the wood of the closet and shelves producing these perfectly shaped tan looking balls. There was nothing we could do about it accept the fact that we live in Africa.  

We knew coming to Sierra Leone that mosquitoes are a huge problem since they carry the Malaria virus. Jackson came with a large pre-treated mosquito net and we decided that we could tough it out!  Nightly we would spray each room and close the door for 30-45 minutes waiting for all the mosquitoes in the rooms to die. Then we would open the doors and let it air out for about 15 minutes before subjecting ourselves to breathing in the remaining chemicals in the air. This was a nightly routine! I had a lingering guilt in my gut every night that I was causing so much internal harm to Jackson due to the chemical but there was no other choice that I had. I am very grateful for Jackson’s mosquito net due to a “visitor” we had over night.

Every morning I wake Jackson by singing a song. It is something I have done since he was 1 day old. It is a song that I made up (somehow since I am not creative) and it stuck. I walked into Jackson’s room and was midways through the song when something glistened and caught my eye. It was a huge spider! Light brown with eyes that sparkled when light caught them correctly! I screamed! (As you can tell I did that a lot while living in this house.) Mo ran in. By this time Jackson was wide awake and staring at the spider from under the safety of his mosquito net. He slowly pointed at the spider and told us to kill it. Of course!! Mo threw a shoe at the spider, it jumped and ran FAST! There were shoes flying, bug spray spraying, me helping by screaming and Jackson just watching patiently. Eventually the giant critter was dead. After all, this is Africa, right?

Here is a picture of the spider: