Crunch You Up Real Nice, Mr. Tap-Dancing Roach

July 24

It is true that no matter where we are, we always have our bad days.

Like today, for example.

This morning, at approximately 7:30, I rolled over and noticed a large, black silhouette in the far reaches of my mosquito net. I wasn’t wearing my glasses and it was still dark in my room making me really really hope that it was just a Lariam hallucination. As I reached for my glasses, the shape zoomed down the side of the net. I punched the light switch and jammed my glasses on to my face just in time to see the enormous cockroach land on my bed. On the inside of the net. I only screamed a little bit. My host mom laughed at me, then proceeded to tell me that she would be gone for the entire day and that I was in charge of the baby. And in charge of making dinner. Mais bien sur. Then she left. I was still in shock from the whole roach incident and didn’t get a chance to mention the fact that I have a good deal of homework due tomorrow and A LOT of dirty clothes to wash. We did just get back from site visit yesterday.

After she left, I ate and got the neighbor to watch the baby for a few hours while I met up with some friends to discuss homework (and our various site visit adventures). At the SED house, someone informed me that a package had arrived for me. YES! A PACKAGE! Anyone who has ever been in college or to summer camp knows the incredible weight of this word. This package in particular was sent to me by my mother on my birthday about a month and a half ago. When I went to pick it up, the man informed me that I owed him some money which, if converted into American dollars isn’t that much but is definitely a big portion of our stipend here. For example, with this amount of money I could buy lunch and a beer at one of the nicest restaurants in town. Worth it? For a package? Of course. Except, it looked to me like they had decided to take a little look-see to check out what was inside, and then resealed it with packing tape. When I opened it, my suspicions were confirmed along with a cold hard plunge into the well of truth about the postal system in Cameroon. Not only will they open your package to make sure that the cake mix your mother sent you is not cocaine, they will eat ALL of the jellybeans she sent you and put the empty bag back in the box! Not only will they look at the color of the cake mix through the bag to make sure it isn’t suspicious, they will rip it open as an extra precaution and then place the open bag back in the box, resulting in a dousing of fine, sticky, brown powder over everything remaining. And with that, my package high was instantly snuffed out as I tried to salvage the lonely card candles, and birthday balloons. Even now, I realize that I should have thrown it all away, because I already have a cockroach problem in my room and a sugar-covered card will probably attract ants. Partaaay!

The rest of the day has been relatively uneventful. I washed my clothes, towel, and sheets for about 3 hours. I scraped caked, dried mud off of my shoes with a machete and scrubbed those too, crouched on the floor of the bathroom, trying not to spray myself with muddy water. I made pasta with tomato sauce, which is definitely harder without any prefabricated ingredients especially when babies are poking you the entire time.

I just saw a mouse poking around the egg crates on top of the fridge, and my host mom killed one last night. I’m worried that this out of the ordinary infestation rate, coupled with the fact that I took my Lariam yesterday, will give me absolutely horrible nightmares tonight. A lovely ending to a lovely day. And you bet I would like some cheese with that wine. Cheddar? Roquefort? You know it.

So I am grumpy. I know, I know, I know that tomorrow will be better. As the Cameroonians say, On va faire comment? In the mean time, I will try and not think too frequently about the apartment with a balcony that is waiting for me at my future post… Where I’ll have some personal space and time to write long, winding emails to all of those wonderful people I have been neglecting. Only 4 more weeks of Stage to go!