And with the Rains Come…

Written Thursday, November 2nd

And with the rains come mud and lots and lots of insects. The mud is all over and so are the insects. In fact the number of insects has increased exponentially over the past couple of days. They’re kind of scary now. It’s like they’re all hatched and come alive now. You can’t go anywhere without encountering them. Grasshopper, ants, termites, June bugs, wasps, crickets, beetles, spiders and so many other things that I don’t know the names of. It’s hard to decide which is the worst. The grasshoppers are big, but pretty harmless. You just have to get over their size and the fact that they can jump some radical distances. The beetles are large and ugly. Definitely not fun to kill. I generally just pick them up and throw them across the room to be dealt with at a later time. The beetles also make this scary whirling noise when they fly. The June bugs kind of freak me out. I think my response is linked to old camp days when the cabins would be infested with them. The termites are also kind of freaky because when they first hatch they have wings. They will circle the lights in hoards. Then eventually their wings fall off and the run around trying to find a suitable home. Some of the people from the village eat them. For some reason knowing this has helped me to feel better about the termites.

In addition to all the dudu (Swahili for “bugs”), the rains also bring a lot of mud. I have never seen so much mud in my entire life. It’s thick and sticky and is almost as challenging as ice to walk on. My flipflops have been no match for them, so I’ve followed the lead of my Kenyan friends and bought a pair of canvas shoes from the nearby town. These are a bit more suitable. Still no tread whatsoever, but at least my feet are covered and are able to stay reasonably clean. One fortunate thing is that because of the sunny days the mud hardens by about lunch time, making it much easier to walk through. I don’t think that I will ever have an issue with any mud in Canada because it can’t compare to what I’m encountering here.