It was a bright sunny Monday morning and my birthday had come early when a Peace Corps cruiser pulled up to my house bearing packages and friends. They were en route to another destination so it was a quick drop but made my day none the less. The cruiser pulled out and by this time several of "my children" had gathered round watching the "motokar" as it plowed down the tall grasses of my pathway under it's tires. The attention shifted to big brown boxes on my porch. I was having a great morning so I thought "why not?" Let's open them together. So we opened the first package, nothing interesting to the children except the bag of jelly beans which they quickly pegged as sweeties. The second package however held on the very top some fun puzzle books so we sat down togther finding various objects in the "I Spy" book. I heaved the heavy package inside and began to unpack the coveted contents consisting of all of my favorite things from home. That's when I heard "Ba Teeny, impashi." I poked my head out the door to see what "impashi" was.....to my horror my yard, insaka, and porch step were covered in hundreds of thousands of tiny ants. They flowed like a river and were making their way up the sides of the porch and house. At the time I had no idea what impashi were other than a bunch of ants but this many of them seemed to be cause for alarm especially because I'd received several painful ant bites a few days prior. I turned to Elvis, a kid of maybe 8 years old, and said in English; "What do we do?" Despite the fact that he probably had no idea what my actual words were he knew exactly what I said. The next words out of his mouth was "Mommy! Mommy!" Ba Priscilla (the hero of this story) made her way to my house to answer the call and in a not so concerned voice voice said " tsk tssk tsk impashi" while shaking her head. "Naisa," she replied (I'm coming in icibemba.) She disappeared and returned a few minutes later with an interesting array of items. Based on the bowl of powder, old bicycle tire, lit braiser, and bush knife I wasn't quite sure what was about to go down. She made her way across the sea of ants; barefoot and with a baby on her back of course. Stomping off the ants that were biting her feet and legs she sprinkled a line of the white powder. It was tute or cassava flour, the main ingredient in their staple food, n'shima. Apparently what is nutrition to them is poison to the ants. The line of flour created a barrier between them and my house which few were keen on crossing but this was only step one in the two-part plan.
Next came the tire. I watched in awe as if something magical were about to happen. She cut the tire into strips sticking them into the hot coals until they caught flame. Then the process was to drag the ozone polluting flaming pieces of rubber over the massive trails of ants. I wasn't sure at the time if the toxic smoke was killing them or just the flamage itself. Turns out it's the fire component. The burnt rubber smoke that invaded our lungs was merely a bonus of fighting impashi. By this time the ants were starting to scatter though still teaming in numbers; I remembered that mom had sent borax which can be used to kill ants. I ran in the house and dug out my chemical warfare to add to the battle. The ants didn't like it one bit, but the multi-use cleaning powder didn't go very far with so many ants-so back to the fire. By now we had several pieces of burning rubber and Elvis, Priscilla, and I were winning the battle as we continued to scorch anything moving while shaking the biters off our ankles. It had been a little over an hour combating the pesky foes but it seemed they had been sufficiently vanquished. I was running late to school by now so I threw on a dress and practically ran.
It wasn't until talking with the teachers at school that I learned that these tiny ants are carnivorous. The flesh eating impashi or driver ant of sub-saharan African. I was told that if these little devils make it into a chicken run of 100 chickens you'd be luky if 3 survived. Additionally I was told they eat snakes, mice, other bugs, and they'd eat you if you didn't swat them off. Mildly terrified I now understood why everyone had been concerned about the trails of ants wandering through my yard in the past weeks.Turns out these ants are nomadic to top the cake, and my covered yard was only the tip of iceberg in terms of their numbers.I also understood why the chickens had no interest in picking at these ants.
I wish I could say this was the end of the story.... After I returned home from school my yard now looked like a war zone. There was a line of white powder outlining my house, parts of the walls had scorch marks, and scraps of melted rubber lay in ruins on the ground. Weeds had been ripped from the ground and strewn about in a shamble. I got a chuckle out of the whole seen. "All because of some little ants," I thought. While I was inside the voice of a different child rang out again, "impashi." Here we go again! I went outside to assess the situation since I now knew the battle tactics. Luckily this was only one line of ants. The numbers of "a line" of ants still range in the thousands but it was better than the possible million that inhabitated my yard that morning. I followed the line to the end and decided to try the borax approach on this particular infantry marching their way around my house like the walls of Jericho. I attempted to mix some in a spray bottle for easy distribution but it wouldn't dissolve and I decided to go back to the tried and true fire approach. I grabbed the pieces of rubber that lay around the yard and went over to my host family's house to ask for fire. When I explained there were impashi I got not only the fire but a helping hand. Bamaayo pulled some thatching out of the insaka roof and lit it on fire strategically placing them to burn out the enemy. The borax had already done its part in dwindling the numbers and we were in the home stretch of fending off this invasion when another bamaayo walked by. She of course quickly jumped in to finish the job. I breathed the second sigh of releif for the day but all too soon. A second swarm of these things were making their way out of the bush and aimed directly for my house. Bamaayo grabbed a bowl of tute flour and sprinkled a semi-circle around the tall grass they were emerging from like some sort of juju getting ready to call the dead. When a few ants were finding their way around the barrier of flour she pulled out this black goop that looks like a combination of tar and used motor oil. It is used to treat wood to keep the termites off. In this case it was also meant to poision or at least detour the impashi. It worked.
Next thing I know Ba Grace, the third person to join us, is asking for a bowl and water. I had no idea what we were doing so I obliged. She diluted some of the goop and sprinkled it over any remaining ants around my house using my broom. Needless to say that broom has been retitled as the "outdoor broom" now that it's covered in the black sticky junk. My home now had a sufficient barrier of not only tute flour but black streaks of the anti-termite/ant paint. Ok for real this time. Chopwa (finish) please! It was so. In one short day I had fought the tiny beasts three times fending off their bites while bamaayos told me to go stand on the porch so I wouldn't get bitten. Three times I had breathed in the toxic fumes of flaming rubber, and three times I had reveled in the comradery of warfare.
It was humurous but I was exhausted. Luckily I had leftovers to reheat for dinner so I didn't have to go through the long process of cooking. That night when I went outside to use the bathroom there they were again. Several steady streams of the things like the armies of Xerxes never stopping. I noticed they weren't breaching the barriers still in place so I called truce on the fight. There was some poetic justice as I watched a group of army ants, the other carnivorous ant, picking off the small impashi ants one by one. I'm afraid it was a stalemate of epic proportions though; for what the impashi lacked in size they made up for in sheer numbers. And so as the crescent moon glowed, illuminating the spider's webs, as the ants went marching.
Next came the tire. I watched in awe as if something magical were about to happen. She cut the tire into strips sticking them into the hot coals until they caught flame. Then the process was to drag the ozone polluting flaming pieces of rubber over the massive trails of ants. I wasn't sure at the time if the toxic smoke was killing them or just the flamage itself. Turns out it's the fire component. The burnt rubber smoke that invaded our lungs was merely a bonus of fighting impashi. By this time the ants were starting to scatter though still teaming in numbers; I remembered that mom had sent borax which can be used to kill ants. I ran in the house and dug out my chemical warfare to add to the battle. The ants didn't like it one bit, but the multi-use cleaning powder didn't go very far with so many ants-so back to the fire. By now we had several pieces of burning rubber and Elvis, Priscilla, and I were winning the battle as we continued to scorch anything moving while shaking the biters off our ankles. It had been a little over an hour combating the pesky foes but it seemed they had been sufficiently vanquished. I was running late to school by now so I threw on a dress and practically ran.
It wasn't until talking with the teachers at school that I learned that these tiny ants are carnivorous. The flesh eating impashi or driver ant of sub-saharan African. I was told that if these little devils make it into a chicken run of 100 chickens you'd be luky if 3 survived. Additionally I was told they eat snakes, mice, other bugs, and they'd eat you if you didn't swat them off. Mildly terrified I now understood why everyone had been concerned about the trails of ants wandering through my yard in the past weeks.Turns out these ants are nomadic to top the cake, and my covered yard was only the tip of iceberg in terms of their numbers.I also understood why the chickens had no interest in picking at these ants.
I wish I could say this was the end of the story.... After I returned home from school my yard now looked like a war zone. There was a line of white powder outlining my house, parts of the walls had scorch marks, and scraps of melted rubber lay in ruins on the ground. Weeds had been ripped from the ground and strewn about in a shamble. I got a chuckle out of the whole seen. "All because of some little ants," I thought. While I was inside the voice of a different child rang out again, "impashi." Here we go again! I went outside to assess the situation since I now knew the battle tactics. Luckily this was only one line of ants. The numbers of "a line" of ants still range in the thousands but it was better than the possible million that inhabitated my yard that morning. I followed the line to the end and decided to try the borax approach on this particular infantry marching their way around my house like the walls of Jericho. I attempted to mix some in a spray bottle for easy distribution but it wouldn't dissolve and I decided to go back to the tried and true fire approach. I grabbed the pieces of rubber that lay around the yard and went over to my host family's house to ask for fire. When I explained there were impashi I got not only the fire but a helping hand. Bamaayo pulled some thatching out of the insaka roof and lit it on fire strategically placing them to burn out the enemy. The borax had already done its part in dwindling the numbers and we were in the home stretch of fending off this invasion when another bamaayo walked by. She of course quickly jumped in to finish the job. I breathed the second sigh of releif for the day but all too soon. A second swarm of these things were making their way out of the bush and aimed directly for my house. Bamaayo grabbed a bowl of tute flour and sprinkled a semi-circle around the tall grass they were emerging from like some sort of juju getting ready to call the dead. When a few ants were finding their way around the barrier of flour she pulled out this black goop that looks like a combination of tar and used motor oil. It is used to treat wood to keep the termites off. In this case it was also meant to poision or at least detour the impashi. It worked.
Next thing I know Ba Grace, the third person to join us, is asking for a bowl and water. I had no idea what we were doing so I obliged. She diluted some of the goop and sprinkled it over any remaining ants around my house using my broom. Needless to say that broom has been retitled as the "outdoor broom" now that it's covered in the black sticky junk. My home now had a sufficient barrier of not only tute flour but black streaks of the anti-termite/ant paint. Ok for real this time. Chopwa (finish) please! It was so. In one short day I had fought the tiny beasts three times fending off their bites while bamaayos told me to go stand on the porch so I wouldn't get bitten. Three times I had breathed in the toxic fumes of flaming rubber, and three times I had reveled in the comradery of warfare.
It was humurous but I was exhausted. Luckily I had leftovers to reheat for dinner so I didn't have to go through the long process of cooking. That night when I went outside to use the bathroom there they were again. Several steady streams of the things like the armies of Xerxes never stopping. I noticed they weren't breaching the barriers still in place so I called truce on the fight. There was some poetic justice as I watched a group of army ants, the other carnivorous ant, picking off the small impashi ants one by one. I'm afraid it was a stalemate of epic proportions though; for what the impashi lacked in size they made up for in sheer numbers. And so as the crescent moon glowed, illuminating the spider's webs, as the ants went marching.
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