Last night I called two of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers (Jean and Lindsey) in what I can best call a fever of “fed up-ness”.

Two nights ago, after a quick conversation with neighbors who were collecting water from the cistern in my front yard, I walked into my candlelit house to find a tarantula crawling across my floor (from the direction of the bed, to the direction of the bathroom). I quickly stepped back outside and yelled “Come here! I think there’s a tarantula in my house!” The youngest son, who’s big and tall, quickly made it to the front door and upon seeing it said, “hand me your flip-flop”. As I handed it to him, I questioned out loud the ability to kill a tarantula with a flip-flop. He walked over, gave it a good whack. It crawled, injured, behind the bathroom door, where he proceeded to whack it a few more times, and then escorted the crumpled up ball of hairy legs, out the front door. His mom, who had been watching from the door the whole time, shoved it even further out into the front yard. She then scolded me for leaving my yard gate open and told me she prayed for my every night, asking God to protect me.  I thanked her, saying I’d take all the prayer I could get. They went back to getting water, and I ventured back into the candle light to take a quick shower, and crawl under the safety of my mosquito net.

Now for last night. The electricity was out again, and I had been over at a neighbor’s reading. I came home, lit some candles, got in the shower, and noticed OB playing with something. I couldn’t see what. I could just see his butt high in the air with a wagging tail and hear his low playful growl. Worried it was another tarantula that might bite him, I quickly got out of the shower and turned the corner to see a cienpie. Cienpie translates to basically centipede. But these devilish looking creepy, crawly, slithery, creatures are NOT the slow moving centipedes from alla. Imagine the same segmented body, but with short tips coming out its sides and then long antenna/claw things coming from its head, and this guy was a good 8-10 in long. Oh and they bite AND sting. Buh. I had heard myths, stories, of these things. Gabi is deathly afraid of them. While Guillermo likes to talk about their beauty as a creature of God. At that moment, watching it crawl up my bed and into my mosquito net, I wasn’t so focused on its beauty or godliness. I ran out the front door, and headed strait for Morena’s house. She’s two doors down. Her husband Hugo always breaks my locks for me when I lock my keys inside. I yelled from the front gate, “Morena, there’s a cienpie in my bed! Well you help me kill it?!” And by help I meant, I’ll shine the light. I thought she would send Hugo, but she grabbed a long fat stick, and we walked over to my house. The best light I have these days is from a small bulb in the shortwave radio Frank gave me. I hadn’t let it power up lately, but it has an arm you can wind to give it power. So there I was winding and walking around the bed shinning it around, pulling at things. I took a step back, and there it was, scuttling by my foot towards the bathroom. I screamed. Morena swung around and thumped the big stick down and pressed it hard. It squirmed as the pressure slowly cut it in two. I’m still winding. Then she smashed and thumped some more. Imagine a sort of pestle and mortar technique. Again, another dead thing was escorted out the front door. She grabbed the mop and said it was important to clean up the venom. I wound the radio light on the venom as she swopped it up. She then went over the bed looking for more. Upon which I asked if they came out in groups. She said in twos. Not what I wanted to hear. I kept winding.  We didn’t find anything. I thanked Morena profusely when she left, but continued the search, and called Lindsey and Jean to share my frustration of two nights of unwanted visitors coupled by no electricity. They heard me winding in the background.