Critters

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

I have a new address…

Faleska, Kimberly
B.P. 28
Nyamata, Rwanda

Air Mail/Par Avion

Favorite things I’ve received in packages so far… unsalted walnut halves, unsalted cashews, unsalted pecans (see a pattern? I love the almonds too… but I currently have three large bags of them!) dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, apples), granola bars (any high in fiber), wheat thins (reduced fat or low sodium), sweet tart anything, gummy anything, starbursts… reese’s… packaging things in ziplocs of all kinds is brilliant, they are always needed… and thank you everyone for the peanut butter and baby wipes… they are absolutely wonderful, but I think it will be a long time before I run out now!

Yes, this is a blatant plug for care packages… but I hate to cook, and I have done extremely well living off the generous care packages of my dear family and friends and the fresh fruits and vegetables that I can find at the market! Oh, and I will soon be in need of lotion and shampoo… the cheap suave kind is great… and about 100 times cheaper and better than anything here!

Ok, it’s market day and I need to head out there and see what kind of vegetables I can find. There are always avocado, tomatoes, potatoes, bananas and pineapple… but I saw green beans there once and I am really hoping to find a few today… and carrots would be really nice, but I think I can only find them in the next town over!




Thursday, June 3, 2010

Ok, so it rained last night. First time it’s rained for any extended period of time since I’ve been to site. I actually cooked last night… pasta with tomato sauce… very proud of myself… and then it was raining so it had cooled off considerably, so I worked out to some workout stuff I have on my computer. I finished working out, was sitting on the floor in the room that I use as a bathroom/kitchen/everything storage… and a big rat pokes his head around the corner of the door to the room. Seriously. I jump, it runs the other way, which is across the hallway and into my bedroom. Great. I grab my broom, proceed to make a blockade across my hallway with water jugs, buckets, shoes, plastic bags… everything. So the rat is now trapped somewhere in my bedroom and the only way out is into the hallway and then out the backdoor. So I proceed to use to broom to chase it out from behind my luggage, to under my bed, and all over the place, before it climbs up my mosquito net that is covering my bed, realizes that it won’t get anywhere that way, and then falls back to the floor and promptly disappears. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’m pissed off by this point, I’ve been screaming some not very nice things at a rat, I’m sure my neighbors think I’m crazier than they originally thought. I stand around for awhile… and finally see a long rat tail coming out from my door jamb. The rat had wedged itself in between my door and the wall, and all you could see was its tail. So I took the broom, smashed the tail as hard as I could, rat comes running out, and after another 5 minutes or so of chasing the thing around, I finally herded it out the back door. I then blocked under my front and back door with cloth, paper bags, plastic bags… anything I could find.

After I shower (remember I use that term very loosely here…), and finally go to bed (surprisingly enough, I think I slept better last night than I have since I got to site, after working out and then freaking out about the rat… even with my family of bats that inhabit my house)… I wake up at about three in the morning to the sound of paper on concrete… which can only mean that something is trying to get in my front door, where I had paper bags stuffed under the door. So I got up, turned on the light, and found the biggest cockroach I’ve ever seen inching its way under the paper bags. I can only see about half of it, which I stepped on… then stuffed more bags under the door, and went back to bed. Needless to say, I am no longer a fan of the rain. Brings in way too many uninvited guests.

In retrospect, I’m hoping this is funny… I’m thinking if it wasn’t me, I would think that the image of me creating blockades, cursing and chasing a rat around my house would probably be fairly amusing. As for me, I’m not currently loving all of Rwanda’s residents these days!