Bugs and the Start of the Rainy Season

So anyone who knows me well should know that I have a bit of an irrational fear of the creepy and crawly, namely bugs, insects, xurur/kurur (Serere), whatever you want to call them. Well, with the onset of almost daily rains this past week (sometimes overnight, some afternoon, am, etc), creepy things have suddenly appeared and taken over. It began with the flying termites (Yes…) on Saturday or Sunday (don’t know, I was sick) that filled the air with white specks like cotton and grew as the day progressed. Then came flying black beetles, almost like June Bugs, but larger and land hard on you and buzz loudly as they fly around and eww… One actually tormented my sleep Monday night by somehow getting INSIDE my mosquito net. Not fun. Then came millipedes/centipedes at least 6inches long and soooo creepy (I’m getting good though at sweeping them out of my hut). Also in this mix are scorpions (host dad killed one two nights ago and it was the 3rd I had seen that day), new spiders, large moths, mosquitos, cockroaches (one in my room, yuck!), and random other large insects. And this is just after the first few rains. I’m already not amused by the rainy season and am dreading what else comes. Ew!

I should have taken some pics, but I guess those will have to wait, but it’s incredible the way the grass and weeds spring up after the rains. The road from my village to town already looks like a totally different country and the contrast from the green grass and trees to the blue of the sky is sooo beautiful. However, I’ve recently learned (from teachers and own observation), that the road becomes virtually impassable in about a month because the ground is SO saturated with water. Apparently, you have to take off your shoes and tread in the water barefoot…great way to get an infection. Already, the horses and donkeys with charrets have a difficult time traversing the only partially-flooded road. It’s not just my rural road that’s a problem. Apparently the next village over (nearest Volunteer and where I did my site visit), basically becomes an island surrounded by water and rice fields bc the ground is so flooded and the river is high too. This morning, it was rough just getting to Kaolack bc the already HORRIBLE road and surrounding fields (where half of the driving is done bc the road is so bad) were full of water from the early am’s rain and it took at least half an hour longer than usual, not to mention way more bumps, just to navigate the road. Annoying. That, and the already-smelly Kaolack is now full of mud, water, and raw sewage everywhere. Not a fun place to be.

The start of the rains also means that people are back to work. The millet was planted a few weeks ago, but peanuts have to wait until the rains begin, so now my family (and everyone else in the area, for that matter) has taken to the fields to plant old-school style (ox and plow or horse and plow, not American farming-style machines). The past few weeks have seen the women in every single compound break into their peanut stash, smash and sort the shells from the nut/bean/whatever, and then hand sort individual peanuts based on ones that can be planted as seeds and ones that won’t seed and will instead be cooked for a meal. In another month, once things have started growing, EVERYONE (men, women, kids, etc) will be tending to the fields, peanut, millit, and rice. The teachers and my nurse counterpart have asked what I will do then, when everyone is gone and in the fields? Probably a mix of learning how to work in the fields (yea, I know…but it’s what you do here and people already seem annoyed I haven’t yet been to the fields—hello, I’ve been SICK and unable to eat your food!), hoping to talk health as people work, reading/studying, and then there is the almost month-long IST. Oh, and avoiding creepy crawly things…ew.