The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Crunchy – Creepy Crawlies of the Rainy Season

No, unlike the volunteer in Newala, we did not find an eastern green mamba hanging from the beams inside our thatch roof – we’ll thankfully leave that story for another blog. But we did find a baby scorpion in our bathroom the other morning, probably hunting the ants that are often patrolling through the area. And a couple of weeks ago, I came into the bedroom to find a spider the size of my hand in one corner of the ceiling – crouching as though like he was making to spring at my head. He was more legs than body, but it didn’t make a difference to me – I got the bug spray.

The spider in our bedroom.

With the current rainy season, we’ve seen a proliferation of the insect life here on the hot, swampy southern coast. One of the few rewards of this “bounty,” if one can be said to exist, is the mass migration of butterflies that is passing through the region. Sitting at my desk at home, these big, colorful beauties bounce into my view through the window, as they stop and visit whatever plants we might have blooming in the front garden. And riding into town in the late afternoon, you’ll see thousands of butterflies, flying right over the city on their journey north. After their trip through the jungles of Mozambique and the Ruvumu mangroves, they are fat and strong, and rarely land for long. I guess they still have a long way to go, and I’m happy we can send them on their way with a little nectar from our front yard.

It being a tropical country, one also has to think about mosquitoes – and particularly the malaria carrying Anopheles type. With all the rain, Mtwara has no shortage of mosquitos, including our neighborhood and our house unfortunately. We had one Tanzanian suggest that we follow the national trend, and cut down the grass around our house, essentially to the dirt. He claimed the grass would attract mosquitos. I don’t know, maybe he’s right, but I would suspect the huge puddles of water around the neighborhood, left from the daily afternoon rain showers, have something to do with the problem.

But we’ve definitely had mosquitoes in our house, biting us at night, despite our mosquito netting. And then, a couple of weeks ago, just as we’re noticing what a problem it was becoming, Merritt happened to come down with a fever. We take malaria prophylaxis everyday, essentially a low-dose antibiotic, which should prevent us from getting sick, but it’s not guaranteed. When Merritt’s temperature spiked at 102.7° F, we were definitely nervous and decided for her to take the malaria self-test. Thankfully it came back negative, and Merritt seems to have recovered from whatever bug she had, but maybe we will have to get the grass cut anyway. Although I did recently here of another approach we could take for reducing the local mosquito population.…

I actually saw an article recently about some new research on a particular type of spider that preys upon the malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquito, which showed that this spiders are actually attracted to human odor, particularly, as this study found, the smell of dirty socks. Here’s the link to the story, but in case you miss it, here’s the key quote from one of the researchers in the study, Fiona Cross from the University of Canterbury, describing the hunting abilities of the East African jumping spider: “When they smell blood, they can launch into feeding frenzies where they kill up to 20 mosquitoes in rapid succession.”

Dirty socks, eh? Who knew that not doing the laundry and forgoing washing the sheets might be the solution to our mosquito problem? Personally, I was starting to suspect that might be part of the problem.

The East African jumping spider, Evarcha culicivora. I'm
positive I’ve seen these little suckers around our house.

Another somewhat welcome predator of the proliferation of insects is our “jusi,” which are little tropical geckos that are everywhere. They seem to also have found a way into our house, and we have one that we’ve watched grow from the size of a worm to now three or four inches. Lately, this lizard has appeared in our bedroom, hanging on the window screen, slurping up any stray flies. As you can see, we have a veritable circus of insects and their predators in our house.

"Jusi"

But at least there’s the one thing that we’ve thankfully managed to keep from our house – the termites. Now, I recognize that some of you reading this blog already know a thing or two about termites and swarming termites – but these are like the B-17s of termites and their swarm is like the pre-dawn bombardment of the German defenses on Normandy on D-Day. Their bodies aren’t all that much bigger then the typical termite, but its the wings that give it the effect – two oversized sets that create the sound of crumpling newspaper when they’re swarming.

A couple of nights we’ve left our outside light on too long after they’ve started up for the night, and we ended up with a cloud of them around our house. The first time this happened, we turned out the outdoor lights but kept our indoor lights on, curtains drawn. Result: determined to get the next source of light, the termites crawled in between the layers of mosquito netting on our windows and then, now trapped, proceeded to die. The next day, swarms of ants came and cleaned up the gross mess.

Another time we didn’t turn of the lights when the termites started swarming, some kids from the neighborhood came up onto our porch to set buckets of water up under the light, as a trap to catch the falling insects. It was then that I learned that people actually eat these things – apparently they’re quite popular at this time of year, fried up in a big batches until crunchy. We’ve since seen the kids amassing at a neighbor’s house, under their outdoor florescent lamp, swatting the termites into buckets. It’s quite the scene.

So while the inundation of insect life may seem like a nightmare, they’re all relatively harmless (except the mosquitoes, of course), and for some people, they’re even a blessing, an extra source of protein in the middle of the labor-intensive planting season. If we can just remember to turn out our lights when the termites start swarming, I think we’ll be able to tolerate it.

Kazkazi, Maboga, and Our Growing Fundi Collection

In Tanzania, December to March marks the season of the north winds, the “kazkazi” or north monsoon. But after a December in which we had a couple of very big storms (see earlier entry about our flood), January brought little if any rain at all. People were getting nervous about the growing season, and then February rolled around, and it’s like someone finally turned the faucet on. Sunny quiet mornings now give way to gusty, stormy afternoons, with the day’s rain lasting maybe only ten minutes but bringing with it an inch or two of water. The dirt roads flood and turn to mud soup, and then the sun comes out and bakes them hard again, in preparation for the next day’s storms. A couple of nights we’ve had earth-shaking thunderstorms and one afternoon’s storms included a lightening strike within half a mile of our house.

And with the rain, everything is suddenly green and springing into life. The word from up on the plateau is that the people have finally been able to plant their mahindi (maize), potentially averting the food shortages some people were warning about. (One volunteer had a neighbor tell him that as far as villagers were concerned, it simply had to rain because otherwise they would have no food.) Well, the rain has finally come, and the season seems prepared to go out on a bang.

For us, the critical staple appears to be not maize, but rather pumpkin, a enormous plant of which is thankfully growing wild our backyard. We’ve trellised some vines along the back walls and now up onto the water tower. In addition to the actual pumpkins, we’re eating “maboga,” or pumpkin leaves, with dinner nightly. (You pick only the small ones, cut them up, and sauté them with onions, tomatoes, and garlic. They’re delicious – kind of nutty in flavor.) Altogether, we have eaten one whole pumpkin (generating a dinner’s worth of boiled pumpkin and three pumpkin breads), and given two others away as gifts. This all from something we didn’t even plant.


Maboga – On the Loose.



Almost ready – the local pumpkins don't ever turn orange like back in the States, maybe just a little tan when there ready.


Maboga leaves, ready for cooking.


This miracle pumpkin is even the backbone of our nascent garden – providing much of the organic material for the sandy, clayey soil we initially found. We added chopped-up leaves directly into the soil, a day or two before planting, and composted larger piles of leaves for new soil. It’s been growing so much, if anything the pumpkin has benefited from all the trimming.

Though to be honest, the plant has had a little “supplemental” irrigation. Recently, Mtwara’s municipal water supply has been, well, sufficient, to say the least. The only faucet in the house that has yet to be replaced in our time here is finally busting at the seems, thanks to probably 1000 psi worth of water at times. So it was no surprise when I came home from work last Friday to find a small stream running past the back door, which I then traced to a break in the water pipe for our house, square in the heart of the pumpkin patch.

We got the phone number of a local plumber (i.e., “fundi ya bomba,” or literally, “craftsman of the pipes”), but by the time Jamal came on Saturday morning to fix it, I reckon the plant had drunk near a thousand gallons of water. I thought all the water might drown it, but it’s thirst appears to have no limits. It’s now making a break for the roof, after overtaking the water tank.

It was not the first time we’ve had a similar problem, and Jamal had actually been to our house before we moved in, when the water tank was installed. He joins the growing list of our fundis – one for every specialized repair job we need.

I have a fundi for our bikes – a man over by the town soko who works achingly, slow but keeps our bikes in good working order. Most bike fundis specialize in only one trade – repairing “puncha,” or tire punctures. They sit under the Christmas trees along the main road into Mtwara, like one every half mile or so, and can patch a tube in less than five minutes flat. For a 300 shilling, they’re a lifesaver in a pinch. But they can’t fix your breaks, nor might you really want them to try. So I found a fundi for that.

We also have our furniture fundi, Mr. Salumu, who has made, glass windows for our house, a couch, a coffee table, and two beautiful bedside bureaus. This man earned our undying devotion when he and his two helpers spent an entire day installing our windows, staying till eight in the evening, after having to shave down each of the frames by hand (it being my fault the measurements were off). More recently, he kind of botched two picture frames we asked him to build (badly warped), but I still plan to eventually have him build us some bookshelves for the Peace Corps book collection that we’ve temporarily inherited.



The windows Bwana Salumu built for our house – from back in October, when Kali was still a kitten.

We also known of an electrical fundi who lives near us, the cell phone number of a small appliance fundi (recommended by the Indian duka owner in town), and I’ve even scoped out a refrigerator fundi at the market, in contemplation of eventually needing his services on our second-hand unit. Even the young girls of our neighboring family are technically fundi, with the little sewing business they run on their front porch (though Merritt says they might not yet qualify as “craftsmen”).

So fundi are everywhere, and we have a list of ours. Salaried positions are not unheard of here in the town, but they’re still the rare exception – most people are in business for themselves, one way or another.

I recently completed some analysis on a new village community banking program that was established in the villages in the marine park, and people use loans for all sorts of basic businesses, from drying cassava to selling fish to starting up roadside food stands (called a mamalishe). Roughly a fifth of the one hundred and twenty women who borrowed money through the program reported using the money to start a business cooking the local type of doughnuts, called mandazi. But their businesses were generally profitable and few were unable to repay their loans.

Even people with salaried positions with the government, like my boss at the park or the acting principle of Merritt’s school, also own shambas (farms) outside of town, where they grow cassava or cashews for a little supplemental income for their family. (These men, after all, could be supporting a truly extended family, dispersed around the nation.) It’s a place where the majority of paid labor comes in the form of personal services, and the rest of the time, your work probably qualifies as subsistence labor (everyone after all, even the volunteers, have a bustani, or garden).

Some Tanzanians will tell you that the country’s labor system is partly what makes life so difficult for the people. You live from one season to the next, and those who do have salaries, are the cash cows to their extended family. I don’t know enough to weigh in on the economic aspects of it, but I will say that the system is unique at least for the personal connections and social interdependency it builds. As we’re discovering, sometimes the key to dealing with life’s little problems is simply known the right fundi.

February 20 marks six months at site, so we’re about a quarter through our service. As Merritt recently commented, life is entering a state of normality – though it’s a distinctly Tanzanian life.

It's Raining!

Right now it is pouring outside, lightening, thundering, absolutely pouring. And if you didn’t know any better you would think it is raining gold…

So our house is quite a bit larger than most of the houses in our surrounding community, and we also have a safi tin roof, rather than the typical thatch roof. As it started raining about five minutes ago, I began to hear screams and endless giggles. Of course I ran to the window to see what was happening and well, you certainly wouldn’t see this in America. People were flocking to our house, flocking!

Currently, there are eight people right outside the window, mainly young kids, but also two older dadas (sisters) who are around my age. They are all carrying big, empty buckets on their heads and they are strategically placing them along the concrete that lines our small flower beds out front. They are trying to catch the maji (water) that is falling off our tin roof in perfect streams; it almost looks like the stream of a pressure washer as the water is falling so hard.

As they wait for their buckets to fill, three of the little girls, who are around seven or eight year’s old, strip down to their underwear and attempt to take showers in the water that is falling from the roof. They are letting the streams of water fall and hit their faces, they are drinking it, and holding up their hands to it. Wow, they are just giggling their little hearts out, you might honestly think they were at Disney World or something. They are so happy to be playing in the rain and taking a shower (they normal only take bucket baths so I guess a shower is pretty exciting). Man, I wish my camera was charged so that I could take a picture of this…

After some of the buckets are full, the little kids simply place different buckets under the streaming water, and put the full buckets on their heads to walk back towards their homes. But they are not gone for long, they return with new, empty buckets just moments later.

Here comes one of my favorite little girls again, she is back now for her third bucket and has a huge smile on her face. This little girl is super cute; she is about eight, has corn rows in her hair, and is wearing only her underwear while carrying a mini white bucket on her head. She is one of my favorites because whenever I see her she always jokes with me and tries to make me laugh.

It has been about twenty minutes now, and the water is still continuing to pour, but the crowd and the giggles are slowly fading. There is just one last dada (sister) filling up her ndoo (bucket).

In a way, it is raining gold… Water is such a precious commodity that is often hard to come by when it is not raining. Sometimes we will see little kids collecting dirty, muddy water that is in a ditch on the side of the road, because at times people are THAT desperate for water. This rain water will be used by the whole family for drinking, cooking, taking bucket baths, washing clothes, doing dishes, etc.

Water really is an essential commodity that we (or at least I used to) take for granted in the States. It’s just so nice and easy to turn on a faucet and always have continuous, reliable water- BE THANKFUL! Can you image having to run in the pouring rain (in your underwear?), with buckets on your head, in attempt to collect as much water as possible?

XOXOX