…the bugs. I never thought I would say it, but I am kind of liking them. Not too much; not enough to be thrilled when, say, a praying mantis falls on me from the canopy of my bednet after a relaxing nap, or when a red and black poison spitting bug appears on our dining table, but they are very interesting creatures and the ones that are harmless can be quite intriguing. I often stop at night on my way to my banda to watch the nocturnal harvester termites that cover the lawn and form processions across the paths. The red ants that make enormous hills about a meter wide and clear paths through the grass to carry thorns to line the mound with are also fascinating. Once in a while, I find myself picking up ridiculously large insects and playing with them, and ask myself how this happened. I’m not sure. I guess it’s exposure- I am literally bombarded by insects nightly- in fact, at this very moment there is a moth on my keyboard and I just got hit in the head by a large flying beetle. An unidentified smallish black and orange beetle just crawled across the table next to me, and looking down I now notice five or six small round bugs crawling around next to my laptop. On the way here, I dodged a scorpion on the path. I originally spent each night dreading my nightly bathroom run to brush my teeth, because the enormous spiders congregate there and loud thuds can be heard overhead as large flying insects hit the dim overhead light, but now I barely notice them, knowing that the two-inch diameter spiders stay on their wall, and the overhead thuds are usually made by harmless beetles. The other day, a huge millipede was found crawling on the floor of my room. Each night, at least one person gets a bug stuck down their shirt or in their hair, and much of the conversation as we study in the main chumba revolves around *the beetle just hit my head again* the various bugs and their whereabouts. As we go to bed, we turn on our headlamps, only to be dive-bombed in the face by moths that are attracted by the light on our foreheads.
Speaking of moths... this guy's one of my favorite buddies.
We take pictures together.
The point of all of this is not to complain. I just figured it was an important part of daily/nightly life here that you all should know about. And it does explain why the one-inch spiders that used to scare me are now not quite so intimidating, and the enormous beetles that I know are not poisonous are less frightening since I am now so used to being hit in the face with different varieties of insects that I am just glad these larger ones is too big and clunky to fly. These gentle insect giants are my other variety of “new friends.” A safe alternative to the usual abrasive-liquid-shooting, forehead-hitting, pincer-wielding menaces that are so unfortunately common here! Those still scare me, but I guess that's healthy.
My beetle buddy.
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