Meg's Musings

Cockroaches

This was written a while ago, and still needs work, but as I found a cockroach carapace in the theater this week and still couldn't pick it up, I thought I'd share a bit of my history with the little creatures.

I woke up in the middle of the night. Only my second night in Zimbabwe. Still kinda feeling like I should be up and doing things. That time change thing.

I swung my feet off the bed and slipped them into thick cork flip flops (a gift from a much-loved roommate who knew what I’d be facing in a third world country), I heaved myself up and groggily tried to remember where the light switch was. Crunching across the floor, my hand unsuccessfully searched the wall. In the dim light I thought I saw something small move. Opening the door into the hallway, I wished I’d put on my glasses. My tired eyes were telling my exhausted brain lies. It seemed as though the walls and floors were shifting uneasily in front of me.

Still feeling drugged, I switched on the hall light and to my horror, thousands of cockroaches scattered back in to the floorboards, out the windows and into the cracks in the walls. I suddenly remembered that floors aren’t supposed to crunch. With some trepidation, I took off a shoe and looked at the bottom. Sticky with bug guts. Incredibly gross, but what could I do? I shuffled down the hall and used the bathroom, crawled back into bed and tried not to think of what horror movie activities might be going on as I slept.

That was my first indication of the war to come. As we settled in there were more small battles. Some of them were won, but I am uneasily aware many more were lost. I’d open a new box of cereal and pour myself a bowl, only to discover a tiny head with feelers poking its way out of the milk. These half-grown insects were the most troublesome size. Just about the size of a ladies’ watch face, they slipped out of my bible in church. They skittered from my text books in class. They got inside the peels of bananas and waited for me to open them so they could pop out and shout “Boo!” Anywhere there was space to slide a penny (and some that I am sure there was not) was almost sure to contain a cockroach or two.

I drove my roommates nuts with my stifled yips of surprise those first couple weeks, but eventually I acclimated to their revolting presence. Don’t get me wrong, to this day I dry heave at the memories, but I gave in and washed my dishes before and after I ate. I got used to finding bugs in anything that was not in an imported Ziploc plastic bag. I skimmed tiny cockroaches no bigger than a grain of sand out of my rice after I dumped it in to boil and ate the rice anyway. I calmly shook bottle cap-sized ones out of my clothes before dressing. I knew I had acclimated too far when I woke up one night to a tugging at my lip, brushed away the cockroach that had been drinking my saliva and rolled over to go back to sleep with only a slight sense of disgust.

I have very few phobias, but cockroaches top the list.

posted by Me @ 12:54