The Life I Live...

I absolutely love being back. But it’s hard not having Nunu here. I’m back in the room from my first visit and so we’ve had to buy a full sized bed. But my old twin is still in here and some office furniture. Our bug tent doesn’t quite fit over our mattress and I’ve got some ideas of how to fix it but it’s one of those things where if I were in the states, I know what I would do. I know Nunu trusts my judgment but I wish he was here to help make some of the decisions… and of course to protect me from the mice!

Last Friday, my first night here, I closed all my windows before going to bed. Mice like to come in through the windows, so I’m happy the weather is so nice. I inspected the Tom and Jerry mouse hole on my door. On my first trip someone put this glue and wood dust mix in the hole… it looks to still be there… at least enough that a fat mouse can’t get by.

So I go to sleep around 9:00 happy in my new bug hut and sleeping on my new bed. But at 11:30 I’m awoken by the distinctive sound of something sliding across my floor and the pitter patter of tiny little mouse feet! I freeze. All I have in bed is a flashlight lantern. I turn it on but I can’t see out of the bug net. I lay in silence until I can get enough courage to unzip my hut and reach 3 feet to the light switch. How did he get in?!

I fall in and out of sleep for the rest of the night. Every few hours I hear ruffling, but I never see anything.

I eventually get out of bed and realize that my curtains are moving in the wind. I guess one window was left open. As I close it I wonder to myself… “am I trapping the mouse in my room?”

Most of Saturday I spent trying to unpack but I don’t have any place to put things because all of the office furniture and the other bed are all still in here. So I just move things around so all the clothes are in one suitcase and I pull out all my plastic storage bins.

I go to grab something on a small dresser and that’s when it happens… the mouse darts from about 6 inches in front of my foot to another cabinet a few feet away. I let out a scream and go running out of my room and send the boys in after it.

In the deepest part of my logical brain I understand that this is just a little animal, not to much different from the cute hamsters I had growing up. But my body just doesn’t understand. I feel my heart rate go up and I feel the tears hiding out just behind my eyes.

I’m still not sure what the boys think… other than that I’m crazy. They try to help but if they really knew just how scared I was they wouldn’t leave my room without the mouse. But they tell me he isn’t there, he went under the door. I know he didn’t the glue is in the same place as yesterday. He is behind my cabinet.

I frantically zip all my suitcases and put anything food like in my air tight plastic containers. I set sticky mouse traps on each side of the cabinet and put a few of the snapping kind on the cabinet.

I stay out of my room till bedtime and then I sleep with the lights on and even my glasses on. Sunday, I wake up and head right out to church.

This is a new church for me. It’s actually not church… it’s a celebration (their words). It’s a bunch of missionaries who meet at a house on the beach… a really nice house. The music is in English, a verse is shared by the man who hosts the event and then everyone is welcomed to share how God is teaching them and finally people share prayer requests. After that we eat! Lots of food, yummy different food. One woman even brought something that resembled tortilla chips (something you can’t buy in the stores here).

Everyone just hangs out till they need to leave, some go swimming and we just keep snacking. Except that I’m still jetlagged, and was ready to leave after about 4 hours… it was really nice. I guess it meets on the first Sunday of the month. I’m not sure if I will make it next month as we will have visitors (yeah!). But I’m happy to get to know some other missionaries in Pemba.

We go home and I unlock my door, but instead of rushing in to lay down I stand and I listen. I hear something… faint but it just might be a mouse caught in one of my sticky traps. I look around and find Njuale in the yard. I send him in to scope things out. Sure enough he comes out with a mouse!

Relief doesn’t even explain what I’m feeling. I’m beaming from ear to ear. I head into my room with confidence that I’m alone.

I go into Julie’s room to celebrate, as she is the only one who gets it… and while I’m in there Antonio, one of our workers, hobbles up to the house. He says, “I hurt my foot, I need my doctor to look at it.” Even thought Julie is a PA (Physicians Assistant) he is referring to me. The last time I was in town, I help him nurse this same foot back to health after a motor cycle accident.

Antonio was playing soccer on the beach and he kicked a rock. He has walked about 20 minutes to our house and his foot is bleeding from at least two places, but it’s hard to tell what’s going on until we get it cleaned off.

While the cuts weren’t great, they were a lot better than Julie and I had thought, there was just so much blood. I did my best to clean the sand out and Latino (one of our 17 year olds who is interested in studying medicine) also put on a pair of rubber gloves to help me… he isn’t nearly as squeamish as I am.

Later that night I walked into my room and something fell into my glasses and for a second was stuck between them and my eye. Cockroaches always end up in the strangest places and I’ve seen them fall from our rafters. It was dark so I didn’t see it but I’m pretty sure that a cockroach fell on me.

I lay in bed on Sunday night almost laughing. I haven’t even been here for 3 full days yet and I’ve caught a mouse and bandaged 3 feet… all without my Orkin man (Nunu). I’m not even really sure what I think about this. Is it a reminder of just what I’ve signed up to do? Will mice become normal to me? How many feet will I bandage before people start to understand the importance of keeping your feet clean? All these questions… but the one thing I know is that I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’m where God has called me and in the mist of all this craziness I couldn’t be happier or more at peace about my life.

It’s now Wednesday night. With a little bit of this blog left to write I took a break to paint my toe nails. I was just finishing and something grabbed my attention out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and on my wall about 5 feet from me was one of the largest spiders I have EVER seen. It’s legs were at least 3 inches from one side to the other. Ernesto killed it for me… now I’m back in my bug net thinking of the bug bomb I will put off!