Creepy crawly

In some of my pre-move research, I'd read that Rwanda was sometimes referred to as "Africa light" because it didn't get as hot or as buggy as some of the steamier parts of the continent.

So, I thought I'd be living alone in my house until Hannah's arrival. I was wrong. I have many roommates, with many legs.

Sure, there are mosquitos everywhere, and I'd been prewarned about the little ants that are omnipresent and impossible to get rid of - when I saw them coming out of a miniscule chink in the kitchen wall tile, I thought, How Industrious. They keep to their little area in there, and I keep to mine - a good arrangement. And, the small green lizards I've seen on the walls are old hat - they are all over SEAsia and I think kind of cool. So far so good.

It started going slightly downhill when I first noticed the caterpillars crawling on the floor, leaving a slimy trail. Not cool. Really not cool when I woke up one morning with one on the wall directly behind my bed. That was responsible for a night of constantly waking up feeling something crawling on me. That hasn't lasted thankfully.

One morning I woke up and was going to work, and in the living room saw a dead cricket. And there were my friends the ants, swarming the carcass in the hundreds.

All of this I was handling pretty well. But the worst part was the other day - I came home from work, went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and the biggest cockroach I have ever seen came scurrying down the side. I'd like to say I handled this well, but to be honest, I shrieked like a little girl and went running into the hallway. After a few seconds and a lot more screaming and the feeling that my entire nervous system had just lit up like the 4th of July (or 21st of July for you Belgians reading this), I realized that I had left the fridge door open and certainly didn't want that critter running in THERE! So I ran back into the kitchen, slammed the door, saw the roach again, screamed a bit more for good measure and at this point for old time's sake, stepped on the roach, and ran out!