Be forewarned…this is not gonna be pretty. However, I committed to share my experiences so I’m sharing. I hope you stay committed to reading through this one!
~~~~~~~~~~
There are rats in the house.
There are rats in the house.
There are RATS in the HOUSE.
I said, THERE ARE RATS IN THE HOUSE!!!
What the ever-loving heck, man???
Before A and I left for Bali, I saw 1 of them 4 times in 2 days. The Saturday after we came back from Bali, we had sightings that turned into a show…a rat-traction, you might say (hardy har har). I’m not ashamed to say that I stood on a chair and screamed like a little girl. I spent that entire afternoon with my feet pulled up on that chair while I worked. It wasn’t comfortable but I managed it.
I could have gone my whole life without living in a house with 2 rats, or even 1 rat. That would have been wonderful. I would have been totally down with that. I despise rats, almost as much as I despise cockroaches (we’re coming to those in a minute). They’re dirty and gross and disgusting and they carry diseases.
It’s really not surprising that there are rats here. This is because people live in this house who do not clean up after themselves; they leave dirty dishes and cups sitting around overnight and even longer. Additionally, there are people living in this house who do not clean up after the people who do not clean up after themselves. I am one such person. I don’t clean up after anyone but myself, and when A was still here, we cleaned up after each other. I have come back from Sundays out and found the kitchen sink piled high with dirty dishes that stay there until Monday morning, when the lady who cleans and cooks comes to work. I have seen dirty plates left on the living room floor overnight. I step over or past it all and turn a blind eye, and if not for the rats, it wouldn’t even bother me.
To deal with the problem, one of the other volunteers (who also happens to be 1 of the persons who does not do well with cleaning up after herself) set some rat poison around the house. After that, we did not have a rat sighting inside the house…for about 2 weeks. Then I saw 1 meander past where I was sitting in a classroom working 1 morning, about 5 feet from my foot. Yeah, I moved with a rapidity that you would have to see to believe.
There are also cockroaches to deal with. Sigh. They come about for a different reason. They originate from the bathroom.
I haven’t really talked about the bathroom here. It’s very similar to the set up in Aceh, except that there’s a squat toilet here (my knees!). As in Aceh, there’s a bathtub that is kept filled with water (though this 1 is more of a catchment than an actual tub) that we use for our bucket showers and we stand in the middle of the bathroom to shower. So there’s a drain in the floor down which the water runs. The cockroaches seem to be coming from this drain and from under the rim of the squat toilet.
Roach killing disinfectant
They disappear for a few days whenever the lady cleans the bathroom but then they come right back and I’ll see way too many of them in 1 day. To solve this problem, we need more than Baygon (yes, they have Baygon here); we need karbol. This is a disinfectant that is also apparently poisonous to those nasty little critters. Twice a day, I throw it around the toilet, the drain and just generally on the floor and leave it to do its job. Because of this, there isn’t a time when I just walk into the bathroom. No, I conduct a cockroach investigation before I step in.
Brace yourself…1 of those little buggers tried to crawl up my leg 1 morning while I was showering.
Ew ew ew ew EWWWWWWW!!! YUUUUUUUCK!
I screamed. I stamped. I murdered it about 3 times. I drowned the bathroom in karbol.
When I was sure it was dead and forever gone down the drain, God and I had a serious talk, which included me saying repeatedly , “No no no no no!! No, Lord! Just NO!” I now consider any roach-less visit to the bathroom a successful one and I think there’s something seriously wrong with that!
I’m telling you, He’s testing me in so many small ways. How on earth am I going to make it through this one??
Go Out And Serve 