7 December - The morning after the night before

It’s the morning after the night before. The rain was heavy in the night. I know because the evidence is all around us this morning. The roads are smeared with great swathes of thick ruddy mud, branches litter the sides of the road and small lakes have appeared round the small mud and block houses where women will light their stoves to cook ugali. Town at 7.00am has the feel of somewhere reeling after an all night party that went badly wrong; young men sweeping debris from their shops, an old lady spreading grit and stones to fill a huge puddle from round her wooden stall and, as I cycle up to town for breakfast, I pass men in pressed trousers, women in colourful dresses, picking their way round puddles to avoid being muddied.

Last night had a portentous feel to it. The first huge flying termites arrived with the small rains. They are called kumbikumbi and are so cumbersome, they seem stupid; killing themselves as they are caught in our fan, making a small whine as their wings are separated from their bodies. I am told that they are caught in large nets and slowly fried to be eaten as a tasty snack or delicacy. Caroline was not in the mood for tasty snacks as she pulled them out of her hair then, later, watched them circling our bed and bashing themselves into our mosquito net. It was as though the rains changed the balance of things slightly. In our room last night, the geckos appeared, as though for shelter. They patrol the wall near the window and Caroline believes they eat the mosquitos. They could eat hundreds and we’d never know. There are always plenty to go round.

This morning we woke and listened. Nothing. No roosters. No basketball. The call for prayer was even more haunting. As I set off to town, a centipede, the size of a bicycle pump was making its steady way across our yard. It’s a Tanzanian blue-legged centipede and is poisonous,

“Yes. It can bite from both ends. If it bites, you will surely suffer.” said my colleague supportively. In the sandy garden in the front, were burrowing scores of red beetles, also capable of a nasty bite and on the wall of the living room was a cockroach of biblical proportions. The cockroach doesn’t bite. It just spreads disease.

By mid morning, it’s as hot as ever and a sense of normality returns to our community; our community, which includes a diversity of insects, large and small, as well as mammals, large and small, some welcome, others, definitely not.

Ratty came again last night but didn’t stay. I think we’ve pinned him down in the pantry, where he nibbled on some tomato and egg shell. I thought I’d heard him struggling in the glue, and for a moment in the dark, I started to prepare myself for finding him trapped, spread-eagled, a gruesome scene from some Disney horror. But, alas, no; he left, presumably to take cover from the kumbikumbi and the rains.