An ode to insects

Today is an ode to insects, often times the bane of my existence here. We'll start from the top...

First up is the mosquito. Apart from being a total pain in the ass after night-fall, you have to worry about getting diseases from it. We were given vaccinations for Yellow Fever and are given malaria prophylaxis to take, but there is no vaccine for Dengue Fever, which has recently broken out here. At least in the village the numbers of mosquitos go down during the dry season (which has started now), but go to a big town, and you're up a creek without a paddle.

Next up is the fly. The common fly. All too common here, if you ask me. Again, they become more of a pain during the rainy season. They multiply, and swarm you. The worst is while riding my bike on a bush path (which, except for during the rainy season when the water packs it down, is like biking in a gigantic sand box) into the wind. It's a colossal struggle to get any momentum, and it is INFURIATING to have a fly coming to drink up every little bead of sweat that forms on my head and face. However, I am fortunate enough to have screen doors in my hut so that I don't get bothered by the flies while I'm inside it.

Thats not to say that my hut doesn't have insects within it. I present to you the earwig, the cricket, and the termite. While the two former specimens are nothing more than a nuisance due to their propensity to crawl everywhere and into everything, the latter has been the bane of my village existence. Since I moved into my hut, I have waged a constant war against termites. There have been casualties, and it seems like the sort of war that can never be won. A shaky equilibrium can be reached, but neither of the parties will achieve the total domination that they both seek. The afore-mentioned screen doors that I have at my hut have been repeatedly targeted by the termites, but I have employed the defense system of scraping them off and out of the door with my pocket knife. They have also attacked my hut's roof, enveloping the neem branch rafters in their termite sand and working their way through the straw covering. Not only do they mess with my hut, but they also devour people's crops and have been going at the papaya tree I transplanted in my backyard. But I have a few cards up my sleeve. I'm gonna get those little bastards if it's the last thing I do...

There are other representatives from the insects, from the locusts (which destroyed my moringa oleifera tree nursery) to the scorpions (which we find here and then and terminate with extreme prejudice). There are even beneficial insects like ants, wasps, and spiders. Indeed, ants serve as an unofficial clean-up crew in my hut and backyard. Anything that dies (or that I kill) and throw in my backyard, the ants will clean up for me. And the spiders eat a few flies here and there, and I figure the wasps serve some sort of function. They haven't stung me yet, so I say live and let live.

Anyways, back to happenings here. We are in the swing of the cool dry season. I had a bit of a flu last week, but I'm feeling a bit better. I think it's the fact that it has become really cold at night-time (remember that i've been conditioned by the African heat for the past year and a half so "cold" is a relative thing). Next weekend is Eid al-Adha, which can be explained by the following story. God says to Abraham, after having blessed the elderly Abraham with a son, that he must sacrifice him. So Abraham goes and after tying his son (Ishmael according to the Muslims, Isaac according to the Jews), is about to give the killing cut. Then God says, "Sorry, just kidding. Here's a ram instead. I was just testing your faith in Me." And so Abraham slaughtered the ram. Consequently, every family in Senegal who can afford it, will slaughter a ram and eat it over the course of a few days. It is over the course of a few days because a ram is an awful lot of meat for a family to eat and it takes a few days to eat it. And when I say eat it, I mean everything in the ram except for its skin and bones gets eaten. Now this is all fine and dandy to me for the first day, but I have a convenient excuse to get out of the village on the second day because I have to write a radio show script (probably about tuberculosis, but I'm not sure yet). I say it's convenient to have an excuse because you don't want to be eating meat that's two days old when you live in a place without a fridge, cold season not-withstanding. We only recently got electricity, though we've not gotten around to putting a loudspeaker on the mosque yet. Amen to that!

Happy Thanksgiving, and I bid you peace of mind, especially when you're elbowing your way through the lines on Black Friday.