If there is one thing Africa does well it is bugs! They are bigger, scarier, and only in some cases more harmful. For those of you who don't know me; my BIGGEST fear is spiders, and Africa welcomed me challenging that fear on day 1! With a large tarantula in my bathroom on night one, some creepy large black wall spiders during our stay at the barn, and now some crazy looking spiders that like to share my hut at night. Apparently my current roommates live in the thatch in my roof so it's impossible to completely get rid of them. Night one in my home stay felt like an episode of fear factor challenging my sanity and questioning my resolve.
To better tell this story let me give you some background: while home in the states I would typically scream and jump across the room at the sight of the tiniest spider. I've woken people up at 2am to kill pin head size spiders. So being surrounded by 20+ spiders, many the size of the palm of my hand, that look freaky and move fast was quite the experience.
Story time:
It's Friday evening and the cruiser is yet again packed full of 10 eager and nervous volunteers. We have been given no language training because time ran out and are prepared during the ride with only the words for hello and thank you. Then we pull around the corner and my name comes up! "Teen this is you" the driver says. I'm dropped off with a strange family, in a strange land, with a water filter and two words......
Luckily breathing a sigh of relief my host mother seems to be pretty nice and even speaks a little English. Whew maybe this will work out well. I'm escorted inside the main house which is modest but nice. Concrete walls, a tin roof, and 3 rooms. In the center of the room is a coffee table surrounded by three well worn green couches covered in torn crocheted doileys. I'm ushered over to take a seat and introduced to the girls. At this point I'm thinking ok not bad. Then they grab the small mattress that had been lying against the wall and escort me to "my hut."
From the outside it appears to be stable but it clearly had seen better days. Its mud mortar between the red bricks crumbled a little and the plastic capping the dilapidated thatching blew in the breeze held down only by the sticks tied to its corners. As we entered it was dark. The little tiny brick sized windows didn't allow much light to spill in. My mother beckoned for the solar lamp Peace Corps provided.
I scrambled through the bag of bedding and supplies that was to sustain me in this little room and pulled out the brand new solar king lamp. It looked out of place in the rural setting. My mother quickly grabbed the lamp and went to work laying down a mat and then the mattress. I entered the 2nd tiny room of the hut where the mattress rest on the floor and screamed! The walls were adorned with spiders. Spiders 10x the size of where I come from and fierce looking with almost tiger like designs on their bodies. Many of them could span a man's hand. I froze as a mix of panic and terror overcame me.
After finally registering what was surrounding me I gained the courage to move and jumped into the first room again which now illuminated was also spider covered! I jumped out of the hut and let out a deep sigh.
Once I calmed down I could hear the sounds of laughter all around me. Silly umsungu is afraid of spiders. Then came my mother's voice "they don't bite, they are your friend." "Not mine," I reply.
She is kind enough to wipe them off the walls with a broom. After my inspection and a keen eye for spiders she kills a few more for me all the while encouraging me that they are ok and will be fine left alone. Despite the walls being spider free I just feel like they are there lurking.
Instead of a mosquito net I set up my tiny REI backpacking tent on top of the mattress and get settled in. I'm then quickly rushed in to "bathy." After several repetitions of the word I realize I'm being asked to bathe. My mother pours a large basin of warm wash water and walks it to the narrow thatch bathing this shelter. This one thankfully looks much more recently constructed and is mostly bug free. I undress and bathe. The warm wash water feels good as I splash it on my skin in the cool evening air. I finally begin to relax a little as I process the events of the day. I finish bathing, put on some clean clothes, and squeeze the over sized plastic tub through the impossibly narrow entrance.
I'm called to dinner and join my mother and two sisters at the small coffee table for dinner. My mother serves up a large plate of food as if I'm a starving orphan and ushers me to start eating. Meanwhile my sisters gaze on in awe at the umusungu (white person) in front of them. Not quite sure what to say and with very little English vocabulary they mutter something in another language and laugh. I have no idea what is going so I just keep eating through the awkwardness of it all. Finally we wrap up dinner and I head to my hut for a much needed night of rest. This is when the real fun began.
Because of the previous encounter in the hut my plan was to rush to the tent and zip it shut to prevent any creepy crawlies from entering. I did just that. As I sat in the tent with a headlamp and my solar light I scanned the walls taking note of each intruder. Although perhaps I was the intruder. After all these spiders have called this place home far longer than I. 1,2,3,4,5 and so on I counted the number and varieties of spiders that crept down from the roof to the warmth of the bricks. I assured myself I had a barrier in between us and forced myself to close my eyes, but every time I did the outline of spiders haunted me.
I sat back up and kept the light on observing one particularly large spider with metallic eyes slowly make his way across the wall moving one long leg at a time. I checked back in on the spider wedged in the crack in the wall at my head to make sure he had not emerged. I took count yet again of the increasing number of spiders that had joined me to spend the night. Every time I shut my eyes the spiders grew bigger, so I quit trying to sleep. Finally I turned off the lights and laid still in the dark knowing there were spiders moving all around me, my irrational fear surmounting. It felt unreal. I thought this must be some kind of bad nightmare but hours later when I dared turn back on the light I found that this is no nightmare, this is Africa.
The hours toiled on as I laid and fantasized about horrible scenarios, prayed for freedom from this silly fear, journaled, and ached for sleep. But none came. What did come was morning. It found me sleep deprived and horrified. As the little pieces of light filtered through the slits in the brick I contemplated my exit strategy.
Luckily by this time a few of my roommates had retreated back to the thatching above the plastic where I can't see them. With several spiders still lining the walls I took a few deep breaths, unzipped the tent, and b-lined it for the door.
I had made it. Welcome to Africa.
