Things that go bump in the night…
My Mefloquine is giving me recurring nightmares that cockroaches and spiders are crawling in and out of my ears and nose and mouth. I wake up, sit straight up in my bed, press the indiglo button on my watch to illuminate the cave of a mosquito net that I sleep under, but when I search for the bugs, they're nowhere to be found. Dreaming is sort of a new phenomenon for me. I never dreamed before Africa (though I was told many times that everyone dreams, and I simply must be incapable of remembering my dreams). And even after the first month or so of taking the Mefloquine, I still wasn't dreaming much. But, as our PCMO Doren warned us, "If the dreams haven't started yet, don't worry, they will come." Now my nights are like something out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
These dreams wouldn't be so disturbing if there wasn't a possibility of this instance actually occurring. After two weeks of trying every trick in the book to de-roach our house, we have failed miserably. They're reproducing like rabbits, and it's become a battle that I don't think we're ever going to win. For a while, I was at the market everyday, comparing different insecticides. People would look at me funny as I walked home with cans of spray or roach traps. When I would ask the locals for home remedies, they would sort of hesitate, and then say something vague about leaving the door open at night. Finally last week, my counterpart at work suggested: "Just go to bed early." I looked at her a bit confused. "That's what I do. Just go home from work, make some tea, and go directly to bed. Then you never see the things that crawl around in the night." And all this time I was wondering why everyone was acting like I was a crazy person, everyone here has cockroaches, they just live with them! And here I am this strange American girl throwing money into a sinking ship.
My roommate and I have resorted to moving all things "kitchen" outdoors, and cooking over an open flame. Our living accommodations are sort of tricky because we are stuck somewhere between a completely primitive African lifestyle, and a more modern house in a developed nation. In other words, we're not living in a hut with our dinner grazing in the backyard, but we cannot count on running water or electricity either (in fact, I'm at the point now where I just assume that we don't have either of these amenities, because if, on the offchance, I come home one night to lights and a toilet that flushes, I'm overjoyed!). So after accepting defeat and surrendering our livingquarters to the locusts-- who, in their defense, were here first--we've decided to "do as the Namibians do": move all cooking outdoors, and convert our oven into a cupboard for plates and cups. It's not like I would be using the stove if it was working (I can tolerate dry cornflakes by the handful much longer than most people), but I'm hoping that my roommate's cooking will lure the cockroaches outdoors and out of my bed. Wishful thinking? Maybe so.
But life is good here. One of my closest friends, Luke, is in the north where they've been without water for two weeks and have had to resort to drinking boiled rain water (thank god we're in the rainyseason). Which proves my point that no matter how bad you think you have it, there's always someone worse off than you. We traded sob stories in the beginning, but I've stopped telling him about my bugs and lack of electricity because I think he's starting to envy me.
So, for those of you who asked, this is what a typical day in my life in Namibia looks like: awakened by children rushing to breakfast at5:45am, check the floor for scorpions, bucket bathe, examine the fruit for bugs and choose a piece for breakfast, speed walk (I'm usually late) the 3km to work, dodge the cars as I try to cross the bridge from my house to the other side of town, write letters/talk to donors/fight with our computers/meet with teachers/visit schools/prepare workshops/etc. from 8-5, walk home, stop every few minutes to talk with the children walking home from school or the man who sells wood carvings or the women doing their laundry in the river, go for a run/get chased by the school children for 45 minutes (set to music), have a cool drink and a good conversation with the neighbors as we braai outside, check-in with my friends through text msging (one of the few forms of communication here that we utilize to help keep us sane), watch the choir practice in the yard outside my bedroom, journal a little or read a book (currently, it's A Nation is Born: The Inside Story of Namibia's Independence), listen to some death cab for cutie, bug-check my bed and sheets, and by 11:00pm I'm dreaming of bathtubs filled with purple lizards that speak to me in Khoe Khoegowab.
These dreams wouldn't be so disturbing if there wasn't a possibility of this instance actually occurring. After two weeks of trying every trick in the book to de-roach our house, we have failed miserably. They're reproducing like rabbits, and it's become a battle that I don't think we're ever going to win. For a while, I was at the market everyday, comparing different insecticides. People would look at me funny as I walked home with cans of spray or roach traps. When I would ask the locals for home remedies, they would sort of hesitate, and then say something vague about leaving the door open at night. Finally last week, my counterpart at work suggested: "Just go to bed early." I looked at her a bit confused. "That's what I do. Just go home from work, make some tea, and go directly to bed. Then you never see the things that crawl around in the night." And all this time I was wondering why everyone was acting like I was a crazy person, everyone here has cockroaches, they just live with them! And here I am this strange American girl throwing money into a sinking ship.
My roommate and I have resorted to moving all things "kitchen" outdoors, and cooking over an open flame. Our living accommodations are sort of tricky because we are stuck somewhere between a completely primitive African lifestyle, and a more modern house in a developed nation. In other words, we're not living in a hut with our dinner grazing in the backyard, but we cannot count on running water or electricity either (in fact, I'm at the point now where I just assume that we don't have either of these amenities, because if, on the offchance, I come home one night to lights and a toilet that flushes, I'm overjoyed!). So after accepting defeat and surrendering our livingquarters to the locusts-- who, in their defense, were here first--we've decided to "do as the Namibians do": move all cooking outdoors, and convert our oven into a cupboard for plates and cups. It's not like I would be using the stove if it was working (I can tolerate dry cornflakes by the handful much longer than most people), but I'm hoping that my roommate's cooking will lure the cockroaches outdoors and out of my bed. Wishful thinking? Maybe so.
But life is good here. One of my closest friends, Luke, is in the north where they've been without water for two weeks and have had to resort to drinking boiled rain water (thank god we're in the rainyseason). Which proves my point that no matter how bad you think you have it, there's always someone worse off than you. We traded sob stories in the beginning, but I've stopped telling him about my bugs and lack of electricity because I think he's starting to envy me.
So, for those of you who asked, this is what a typical day in my life in Namibia looks like: awakened by children rushing to breakfast at5:45am, check the floor for scorpions, bucket bathe, examine the fruit for bugs and choose a piece for breakfast, speed walk (I'm usually late) the 3km to work, dodge the cars as I try to cross the bridge from my house to the other side of town, write letters/talk to donors/fight with our computers/meet with teachers/visit schools/prepare workshops/etc. from 8-5, walk home, stop every few minutes to talk with the children walking home from school or the man who sells wood carvings or the women doing their laundry in the river, go for a run/get chased by the school children for 45 minutes (set to music), have a cool drink and a good conversation with the neighbors as we braai outside, check-in with my friends through text msging (one of the few forms of communication here that we utilize to help keep us sane), watch the choir practice in the yard outside my bedroom, journal a little or read a book (currently, it's A Nation is Born: The Inside Story of Namibia's Independence), listen to some death cab for cutie, bug-check my bed and sheets, and by 11:00pm I'm dreaming of bathtubs filled with purple lizards that speak to me in Khoe Khoegowab.
posted by Caitlin at 6:28 PM
1 Comments:
The side effects of those drugs will go away soon enough! I remember taking them when I was over there... i could have swore those monkeys (with giant teeth) were actually in my tent! Alas, only dreams.
Hope all is well, I'll keep emailng little updates from here when they happen. Of course, it is La Crosse, so it's not too exciting!
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