Palmetto Bugs Invade my Home

Well, I’m sitting on the bus again and finally on my way back to Kakamega. Writing in my notebook is proving to be difficult this time around. The road from Mombasa to Nairobi was freshly paved, whereas the road from Nairobi to Kakamega has some of the worst stretches in Kenya. My handwriting is barely legible as it is, and the potholes, off-road detours, and two hundred of miles of crumbled, eroded asphalt make writing a real challenge.

There was also an unfortunate meal called “The Mix” that I ate in Mombasa last week. Only available late at night from the downtown meat market, it is a mix of boiled meat, french fries, chilies, and a cream-based “special sauce”. It has been five days now and my stomach still hasn’t recovered......

.......That was the extent of my bus trip journalism. I’m back in the village and now on stable, level ground and my stomach is finally purged of The Mix. It’s good to be home and I feel much better. I think I ended my last blog entry discussing the roaches that invaded my house as a result of the open sugar bag and half eaten candy bar my uninvited guests were considerate enough to leave behind while I was away for Christmas. In mid-January a vicious battle was waged against the Great Cockroach Invasion of 2007, and I’m proud to say I emerged victorious. Lillian, one of the FSD volunteers, used the cutsie euphemism “Palmetto Bugs” to describe my unwanted houseguests, but they were actually enormous, disgusting cockroaches. After throwing away half of my food that the palmetto bugs had managed to eat through, packaging and all, I sealed what remained in Tupperware and Ziploc bags.

With the food issue resolved I was then able to focus my attention on the demise of all cockroaches living in my kitchen. Thanks to a brutally effective insecticide called Doom (Motto: “Kills Dudus Dead”. Dudu is the Swahili word for insect) and an amazing product called Death Chalk, I’d estimate that at least 200 roaches met a grizzly fate one muggy January evening.
Insects in this country are persistent and a nuisance. If a single breadcrumb falls to the ground or leftovers cool on the kitchen counter, it is just a matter of minutes before an otherwise sterile kitchen is overrun.

Fortunately, my house is equipped with a hard working team of geckos. Except when food is carelessly left out, the most I see of my insect friends are usually scattered legs and antennae, which apparently the geckos leave behind as a reminder they are doing their job. Thankfully, after one large can of doom and a stick of death chalk, the proper cockroach-to-gecko ratio was restored.

Beyond my epic battle with the cockroaches, there was plenty going on in January. I sat through several never-ending network meetings both in the office and in the field, in what I hope will contribute towards a very productive year for my primary project. I was also with visitors throughout nearly the entire month. During my first week back in Kakamega I had a homeless FSD volunteer staying with me. She was in the middle of a very frustrating change of houses and needed a place to stay. We got along well enough but realized by the week’s end that between my disorganization and her perfectionism we were not very compatible roommates. I also went monkey tracking with Kristy, my primate research friend living in the rainforest. Kristy has been in the woods for over six months now, knows hundreds of blue monkeys by name, and taught me all kinds of disturbing money trivia. For instance, did you know that there is only one male for each group of 20-50 monkeys? And when that male is overthrown, the new male will kill off all the babies from the previous male, so as to increase the likelihood that only somebody from his own gene pool will take his place? Nature is beautiful.

Another high point of January was a lunch that was scheduled with the American Ambassador to Kenya. Around 20 volunteers living in Western Kenya were invited to attend. However, when we arrived at the restaurant we were informed that the Ambassador had been called away at the last minute due to “an issue” in Somalia, but his aides and assistant were still there, as were several employees from the American Embassy. Even without the Ambassador’s presence we had a great time. The food and conversation were good, and the open bar we were treated to after lunch left many volunteers out of commission for the long distance travel back to their sites, which resulted in a party at my house with around ten volunteers.

The next day we left for Kisumu, and between the unbearably hot and humid Kisumu weather, dehydration, too much to drink the night before, and rarely having a minute to just unwind since I had returned from the states, I was starting to feel pretty terrible. Regardless, I had to keep going full throttle through the next week. I installed a computer system that was donated to the network along with some ridiculous motorized bikes that I’ll talk about later, gave a training session on needs assessment to an incoming group of FSD volunteers, and facilitated language lessons for the new volunteers with Panina, my favorite language trainer from Kitui. When I saw that a teaching job was needed for Swahili training I immediately thought of her and gave her a call. She gratefully accepted and it was great to catch up with her again.

Panina is a rare breed in Kenya, and is much like my friend Rhoda from the Sweet Potato training days. She doesn’t put up with any nonsense and tells men exactly how she feels about them. I have a lot of respect for empowered, independent women in this culture. She was also a language trainer for the American Embassy and was teaching in the building when it was destroyed in an Al Queda terrorist attack in 1998. She told me that a guard refused to let the vehicle filled with explosives into the basement level parking garage, even at gunpoint. As a result the driver of the vehicle panicked and detonated the explosives outside of the building. Although hundreds of people (mostly Kenyans) were killed, this was because so many people rushed to the windows to see what the commotion was about. If they had stayed in the interior of the building, as Panina did, they would have emerged from the incident unharmed. How tragic.

Finally I made it through the week. I had so much work piled on partly because I wanted to make time to travel with a visitor, my friend Jana who is a travel agent from Germany. Jana has wanted to see East Africa for some time and planned to visit me in late January of this year. When she made arrangements to come a year ago I had no idea how much would be going on at this time. Things got even crazier when she arrived, but I still managed to show her around and we had a good time. I’m almost up to date, but there are still tons of things I want to write about so I will save my two week adventure with Jana for next time.