Critters

“Atate mu dzina la Jesu Kritsu ndikuphempera kuti mundipatse mphamvu…”

That is the sound of Chinsisi’s before bed prayer. If you don’t recall, Chinsisi is the 14 year old boy with whom I live.

Chinsisi (AKA Sisi)

Sisi loves to pray – he is usually the one who has taken off with the Bible when Aphiri the preacher is trying to figure out where it is. Most nights before bed he prays for a good 20 minutes, yelling style. He does this even on nights when the whole family has done a good hour and a half of joint praying, complete with the yelling, screaming, and occasionally crying that I’m used to hearing.

Here's a glimpse of my night life:

On one particular night, a few nights ago, Chinsisi went to bed extra late for whatever reason, so it was about 11:30 PM when he got started. I had to get up early the next morning, so I was relieved when he was finally done. With the prayer done and my body good and tired, I thought it was time for a good night’s sleep. I was wrong.

Some weeks ago several large bags of maize were moved into my room. They had been being stored in another small house (the house that was originally supposed to be mine but still has no floor), but for some reason the family wanted to move them, so I helped Chinsisi move them into my room. Since then, my room has been the village’s hottest new destination for nocturnal rodents to fill up on as much maize as their bodies can hold.

Now, it’s not the rustling of the many mice who have taken a liking to the bags of maize in my room that bugs me. It’s not the mouse shit that I routinely find all over my bamboo floor mat that bugs me. It’s not even the occasional mouse screaming match (I think they are even fighting or fornicating, or both, or one then the other) that bugs me. Rather, it’s the fact that they seem to be organizing some kind of revolution, and they have allies.

On the night in question, after Chinsisi had finished his prayer, it was time to go to sleep. As soon as I had blown out my candles and the loud prayer had subsided, it was time for the mice to come out from wherever the hell they hide and begin their evening ritual. It started with the signature rustling. The mice climb up the bags of maize and seem to do some kind of dance. They don’t just sit still and munch on maize kernels, no, they move around and choose different pieces of maize from different parts of each bag to maximize the amount of noise they make. Sometimes when they do this I throw coins at the bags in an effort to make them shut up, but it doesn’t work.

Occasionally I even try to quietly reach for my flashlight and turn it on to try to spot them, but I never do. They always hear me flailing around in the dark trying to locate my flashlight and then go into hiding. When I turn it off, they are at it again after around 10 seconds.

On this night, I gave up with the rustling and munching and just let them go at it. Then, as I was trying to get to sleep, I heard a very light thump. Take a dime and drop in on pillow from a height of 10 cm and you’ll hear the sound I mean. Normally a sound of little consequence, but when you know you are surrounded by critters, it's a bit alarming. My eyes widened as soon as I heard the sound. Was it a mouse who’d jumped on my bed and was going to crawl all over me as I was trying to sleep? I lay there stunned for a few seconds, but was sobered by a light touch of something at my side. Something moving, brushing past me as I lay in my bed. Trying to keep still and calm, I slowly reached for my flashlight and turned it on. I removed my blanket quickly. Nothing. Damn it, where did he go? Is the little fucker hiding under my pillow or between my legs or what? I slowly sat up, eying the halo of my flashlight on the mattress like a hawk. I turned my body, and then I saw him.


A mouse??


No. It was a massive friggin’ cockroach who’d squeezed himself under my lower back. This was not the first time I had been infiltrated by insects in the bed. During the rainy season I’d routinely find bits of chewed up wood on my mattress with dozens of tiny termites in them that had been eating the support beams above. And once, back in April, I rolled over in bed to hear a crunching sound and felt something on my side. I removed whatever it was with my fingers, sort of gooey but not quite liquid. I remember thinking at the time, “I don’t recall having eaten any M&Ms since being in Malawi. But this sort of feels like a melted M&M. Weird…” I then sniffed my fingers in the dark, half expecting to smell choclately goodness. But it wasn’t choclately goodness at all. Rather, it smell somehow acrid and biting; it offended my nose. It occurred to me that it could be a cockroach, and I madly scrambled to find my flashlight to hopefully discover that it wasn’t. But it was! I had squished him to a pulp, which was now on my fingers and smeared across my torso. Pieces of his exoskeleton were still on me. That was unpleasant.

But this time I was having none of that – this thing was going to leave my personal bubble, and fast. I freaked out a bit and used my flashlight to flick him off the bed. It didn’t quite work the first couple of times, so I gave him a stronger flick, launching the roach towards the wall, the flashlight slipping out of my hands and flying after him. At least it was still on so I could find it easily. Time to go to sleep, right?

SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH

The mice in Malawi seem to be huge, and can make a disproportionate amount of noise. And as if I was living in some kind of “Azungu in Malawi” sitcom, the mice decided at this point to have their turn. One of them was outside my door, and as my door is a fine example of Malawian infrastructure, it is unduly snug with the floor, meaning that the mouse couldn’t get it with the door closed or just didn't fee like squeezing. But that didn’t stop him from scratching at the door. He was scratching incessantly trying to get in. I threw something at the door hoping to scare him off.

Ineffective. After several minutes of this, I decided he wasn’t going to give up, and I surrendered. I’d had enough. I went over and opened the door, actually granting access to this mouse so he could join his friends in eating the family’s maize. I had to make this concession because they had the upper hand. It was nearly 1 AM by this point, and they had worn me down. Their revolution appears to be making headway due to a strategic alliance with the cockroach faction.

Here is a video log of number of the different factions I’ve come across in Malawi. Note – between 2:46 and 2:47 of the video there’s a really cool recon frame of a locust in flight. I hope you like my nerdy and lame play-by-play commentary. Enjoy!

The current "intel":

Thanks for reading,

~MK