An International Dislike

Whether I’m in the comfort of my home in the States or in Ethiopia, one fact remains the same: I HATE BUGS.  Spiders, creepy-crawlies, roaches, ants; you name it, I hate it.

Way back around Halloween, when we were at the Amare’s for pumpkin carving, I had my first giant spider encounter.  I have no idea what kind of spider it was.  I don’t know if it was poisonous or not.  I just know that it was BIG.  B. I. G.  I was sitting in a chair and for some reason I turned to my right and saw this big thing on the wall next to me.  I’m getting the creepies just thinking about it!  It was fat and looked kind of flat and hairy.  ICK!

Within a week or so, I walked into my bedroom after getting back to the apartment.  I put my bag down at the foot of my bed and noticed something on the wall.  I slowly looked up and saw another big fat spider on my wall – right next to my bed!!!  I cautiously backed away and started trying to call Kyle to come kill it.  I hate spiders.  I hate small spiders and I hate big spiders.  I don’t like to kill them because I’m afraid they’ll run away too fast or they’ll jump on me.  With this spider, I had additional reasons as to why I didn’t want to kill it.  1) What if it was poisonous?  [So of course my logic is “Kyle should kill it”]  2) I did not want to feel that giant spider squish under the force of my hand (with a tissue, of course).  3) What if I missed and it went under my bed and then I couldn’t find it!? [Kyle is obviously much better at killing giant African spiders than I am]

The only problem with the whole “get Kyle to kill it!” idea is that his apartment has very poor cell phone reception.  Call after call I received the same Amharic message “ye demanachu blah blah blah” (ok, that’s not what it really says, but that’s definitely what it sounds like!) which basically means the call could not be completed because there was no connection; I sent text messages and just hoped he’d randomly need to come over moments after getting to his apartment.  His apartment is a mere 10 second run from mine, but going there would require me to lose sight of the spider.  That was not going to happen.  Eventually I got a hold of him and he was my knight in shining armor – squishing the giant spider with his swift reflexes and a radiant white tissue.

I haven’t had any more giant spider encounters since that day, but Friday night I had the most disgusting bug experience ever.  I went to the refrigerator to grab a cucumber to snack on.  When I turned on the kitchen light, a couple roaches scampered out of sight.  I hate roaches.  They freak me out. 

Short story before elaborating on the one I just started:  One day I was peeing in the bathroom (T.M.I., I know) and I saw a roach on the bathroom door.  It’s a very small bathroom so I reached out and kicked it with my foot.  It squished and its guts went everywhere.  The poor, dead roach sat there on the ground right under where I needed to put my foot so I tried to move it with my slipper.  That darn roach wasn’t dead!!!  Its guts were on the floor and the door and it looked like it was flattened, but as soon as my foot touched it, the roach popped up, grabbed onto my shoe, and started to climb up as if it were going to go up my pant leg!

That was a no no no no no nooooooooooooo for me.  I squealed [of course] and kicked my foot so that the roach flew off and hit the door.  It fell between the door and the floor (the bathroom is slightly higher than the living room).  When I left the bathroom, I checked to see where it was.  Sure enough, it was still alive and moving about.  I tried to squish it with my slipper again, but it ran away under the flooring.  I still do not understand how that roach survived.  Now back to the main story…

So I’m in the kitchen, just turned on the light, wanting to get in the refrigerator to get a cucumber to munch on.  A couple roaches scamper out of sight.  May and I have been noticing more roaches than usual, lately.  At this point, May is at the Amare’s for Family Night (I wanted to relax and get some work done tonight so I stayed home) and Roza is in the shower.  I saw a couple more roaches so I grabbed the insect killer May recently bought from the supermarket.  I spray those roaches and they die.  It was quite satisfying.  As I go to get in the refrigerator, I notice more roaches.  So I spray again.  For some reason, more roaches keep appearing.  I start talking to myself (or more like, the roaches), “why are you in my apartment?!”, “why can’t you leave me alone?!”, “where are you coming from?!”, “JUST DIE ALREADY!!!”  It was quite an experience and I’m sure if my non-English speaking neighbors saw/heard me, they’d think I was insane.

The roaches were climbing on the refrigerator, the walls, the floor, everywhere.  I kept picking up my feet quickly so nothing would crawl on me.  EGH.  The spray was really potent and the apartment filled up instantly with the smell of deadly poison.  Roza got out of the shower and helped me massacre the roaches.  We both developed a nasty cough.  We moved the refrigerator out of the kitchen and killed all the roaches that were on it.  There were more behind where the refrigerator was, more on the ground under the sink, and a few under the stove.  Gross.

When we swept up at the end, we had a nice big pile of roaches.  I’m pretty sure we killed at least 20 of them.  Gross.  When we talk about fire safety with our apartments, the boys say that there’s nothing that would really burn in our apartments since they’re made out of concrete.  I can confidently say that at the end of our roach killing spree, out apartment was flammable.  The highlight of the event was when we found one last roach still living.  It was by the bathroom, not on the kitchen side of the apartment.  I shut the bathroom door quickly and the moving air pushed the roach off the wall.  It was a big one.  Roza said it was probably the papa roach.  She made as if she was going to squish it with her flip-flop, but instead she kicked it at me!!!  I screamed [of course] and we couldn’t see where it went.  I started freaking out that it might have went up my pants or something, and then I felt something in my slipper which made me scream again (don’t worry, it was nothing).  We found it a few seconds later back on the wall.  This time, instead of letting Roza take a go at it, I squished it firmly with my mighty slipper. 

Roza said I will never be afraid of roaches again.  I’m fairly certain she’s wrong.