Rodent Disposal, and Thanksgiving (plus a kitten!)

So, it’s been a while since my last update, I haven’t fallen off the face of Guinea, I’ve just not been to the internet in Kamsar in a while. I am typing this entry up on another Volunteer’s laptop in Boke while I’m here for my monthly visit, which is why I am not in Kamsar this weekend (I will upload it to the internet next week). Last weekend I was in Kamsar but I didn’t bother trying the internet place because I wasn’t really in the mood to fight with computers that day.


Anyway, I’ll start at the beginning: after leaving Conakry, I took a bush taxi back up to Bintimodia, sharing it with two other volunteers for part of the way (their villages were also near the main road between Conakry and Boke). Partway there we stopped to re-arrange passangers, and I thought I dropped my wallet because it had suddenly disappeared from my pocket (we were 4 adults tightly squeezed into the backseat of a small sedan, so I had a hard time reaching that pocket to check if it was there). We stopped and I went back to look for it, and then decided it was just lost. I wasn’t too sad because I knew I only had a little money left in it (most of it was in my backpack), and the only major loss was my bank card (a slip of paper with my account number written on it), and my Peace Corps ID – both of which were easily replaceable. I had already paid the driver and I had some extra money in my backpack, so I decided – ah well, it had to happen sometime.


I got to my carrefour, or crossroad where my village’s road meets the main road, and got off. I couldn’t find any transport to my village except motorcycles which I’m not supposed to ride, so I walked the 11km to my house. Once there I discovered that in my absence, my village had built a fence around my back-yard. I’d been asking around for a while about how I could get one built, but people kept flaking out on me or saying "oh yeah, sure, we’ll get some kids to build one for you one of these days". I guess they decided "one of these days" was while I was in Labe (note: fences here are made from palm fronds with sticks/tree limbs in the ground for structure). Nobody asked me to pay them for this (the materials are free, and the labor was well…students who work for free), and since I didn’t know which kids specifically did it (my principal said he just got some of the 8th graders to do it), I couldn’t track them down to thank them, I wrote a note on my blackboard out front saying thanks.


While I was in Conakry, I had purchased some "Atrarat" non-poisonous rat-glue. This is a thick rubber-cement like glue that doesn’t actually harden. You spread it on some cardboard and put food in the middle and mice and rats walk into it and stay there. I had been struggling with the mice in my house for a while and I was desperate. I set up a trap and went to have dinner with the Diallo’s (my principal’s family who I eat with twice a day … whether I want to or not), when I came back there was mouse number 1, stuck to the cardboard. I tried to think of a way to quickly kill it so that it wouldn’t have to starve to death or die of anxiety on that damned piece of cardboard, but nothing came to mind, so I just left it there overnight and went to bed.
Around 7am, I woke up and discovered that the mouse was gone, and the trap was moved over several inches, and there was a glue stain on the floor…uh oh. I checked the path the mouse usually takes to its nest (via my latrine), but it wasn’t there, I checked the other nest hole (in the spare room) but it wasn’t there. Then I checked the kitchen, and there, glued onto a tuna can, was my mouse. See, I don’t have furniture yet, so all my food is either in a trunk, or out on the floor, the canned goods are out on the floor since the actual food is protected in the can. This mouse was coated in "non-poisonous rat glue", and had scurried too close to my stack of tuna cans, and got himself stuck to them. Oh, I was pissed. After much deliberation, I decided the best way to deal with it was to get a plastic bag, put it next to the mouse, and then use my broom to rub the bag on the mouse – thereby sticking the mouse to the bag. I then pulled the bag away, and the mouse came with it. I chucked the bag over my (new) fence in the back where I’d seen an ant hill before – so long mouse number 1.


That night I set out another trap like the first, because I suspected I had more than one mouse. I got up a couple of hours later, and there was mouse number 2, stuck just like his buddy was 24 hours earlier. He was already making his escape, and I didn’t want to have another mouse gluing itself to my canned goods, so I decided spraying the mouse with insecticide right in the face would probably kill it relatively swiftly. I did so, and then realized that the (kerosene based aerosol) insecticide dissolved the (petroleum based) glue and so the mouse managed to get free, run around a bit while I chased it, then huddle in the corner, lie down and die. He soon thereafter joined his (decomposing) friend over the fence. So long mouse number 2.


I saw mouse number 3 later, but it did not fall victim to trap number 3. In fact, I haven’t seen it since. I worry that it was a pregnant female because it looked a bit bigger than mice numbers 1 and 2, and perhaps it disappeared to have a litter of mice somewhere. I’m just hoping it sensed that the other mice had died, and decided to find a nest somewhere else. Inchallah.


Anyway, so that was how I dealt with my crawling rodents, as for my flying rodents (oh yeah, I have bats too), I chose a different tactic. At first I was just ignoring them, because other than their leaving at dusk, they generally don’t bother my in my house. AND THEN, one day, I got into my mosquito net to go to bed, and I hear and feel fluttering next to my head (a bat had been roosting inside my mosquito net during the day!). I screamed for the first time in I don’t know how long and fell to the floor, I then saw the bat crawling around on my sheets in my bed. Remember how I said I was pissed when the mouse glued itself to my tuna cans, this was a whole new level of pissed. I got the broom (which I usually have handy for moments like this – I’ve gotten really good at killing wasps with it) and managed to get the bat off my bed – or so I suspected, but I couldn’t find it. I went around the bed and finally spotted it stuck in the corner of the room next to the bed, hiding. I used my sling shot to get it to get out of that corner – and thus scared it out into the open. I don’t know if it was the broom or the sling shot, but it seemed like it couldn’t fly, so it was crawling along. I got my umbrella (which I also keep handy for this purpose) and beat the bat with it until I was sure it was dead (I broke my umbrella in the process). It was a bloody battle, and I was pretty freaked out after this. I wrote a very curse-heavy journal entry, then disposed of the bat over my fence. I still have at least 2 or 3 bats sleeping somewhere in my house during the day and leaving via the front door at dusk – but other than the once or twice I’ve tried hitting them out of the air with my broom, I mostly leave them alone now. The next morning I asked all my students to find me a kitten though.


Anyway, a couple of days later, my nearest Peace Corps neighbor (about 20km to the south) came to visit. She biked to my village, saw me teach my classes that day, walked around the village with me (everybody asked me if she was my wife – when I said she was just a friend they gave me a sly smile and said "oh ok!"), and came to dinner with my host family. The next morning we took off to Kamsar together (she’d been wanting to do the bike ride, but since it’s 40km each way for her, she wanted to crash at my place the first time). It was really fun having someone visit, but since I’m still struggling with getting all my furniture it was a little awkward at the same time. I’m looking forward to her visiting again in the future (we will be working on a project together for my village which I will talk about later). Also, it was great because having her meant I could take pictures of myself along the road to Kamsar. I now have pictures of us crossing the river on the canoe, crossing the stick bridge halfway there, and also on the bike ride itself. I will post these next time I’m in Conakry (Christmas?).


A few days later I brought up to my Principal that I might be spending Thanksgiving in Conakry with some other volunteers. He said "Thanksgiving….that’s when you eat turkey right?", and so I explained the history of Thanksgiving and the reason we have this feast to give thanks for what we have, etc. He really liked this and told me "That sounds nice, I’m going to have Thanksgiving too, I’ll kill a chicken for it" (can you see why I really like this guy?). I spent another day or two thinking about it, and decided to skip Thanksgiving in Conakry and have it with the Diallos in Bintimodia. I was running low on money anyway, and I would spend way too much money in Conakry, plus my favorite part of Thanksgiving Dinner is mashed potatoes, and I can make that in Bintimodia. I’m thinking I will make 2 kg of potatoes worth of garlic mashed potatoes (enough for everyone to try it), and also attempt a pumpkin pie using village squash and a Guinean "oven" (big metal pot balanced on 3 rocks with a wood fire under it). I just need to get some raw eggs and a squash before I leave Boke. I’m looking forward to it.


Since I wouldn’t be going to Conakry next week, I decided to come up to Boke this week and get some shopping and furniture organizing done so all this stuff can be dropped off on the next mail run (I get my mail once a month when the Boke car picks it up in Conakry and drops it off in my village – along with anything else I leave for myself in Boke or Conakry – such as a table, 2 bookshelves, 2 bamboo mats, 2 small wooden tables, a sack of potatoes, a trunk full of books, etc…I feel a bit bad for Bella, our regional driver, but it sure beats strapping a large wooden bookshelf to my bike). I am a bit sad that I won’t get to see one of my better friends from training who I haven’t seen since training, but I will hopefully see him at Christmas, and I’ve left a note for him here in the Boke house (he’s 80 km away from Boke in the other direction).
Anyway, the best part of this Boke trip happened a few hours ago. I mentioned in conversation to another volunteer that I had been looking for a kitten (partly for company, mostly to kill mice, bats, cockroaches, frogs, etc), and a few hours later when she was visiting a Guinean family nearby she discovered a kitten looking for an owner and brought it to me. Apparently the mom is feral "chat brousse" (bush cat), and this little guy tends to be semi abandoned. He(?) is TINY, and ADORABLE. His eyes are kinda crusty, and I still haven’t gotten him to have any milk, water or tuna (I was having tuna salad for dinner anyway, so I saved a bit of fish for him), but I got him to get comfortable with me. At first when I set him up with a bed, a small dish of water and another of milk in a bathroom, he immediately went behind a shelf and hid there. I removed the shelf and then he hid behind the sink and would hiss at me. Eventually, after some scratching and hissing, I got him to realize that I wasn’t trying to hurt him, and then I just carried him around while I did stuff around the house, letting him get used to me. Now, when I tried getting him to go to sleep by himself, he attaches himself to me and doesn’t let go, so I have him sleeping on my (dirty, and therefore me-smelling) t-shirt in a small box by the keyboard. I’m gonna try to leave the box by itself in the bathroom without waking him. I just hope he starts eating tomorrow so he doesn’t die of thirst or starvation. I’m excited to have a pet at site, I just hope everything works out.