Lucky there’s a family guy
Lucky there’s a man who
Positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry
He’s a family guy
- Family Guy
I am a family guy. Because I had family visit me in Burkina. And by family I mean my mom. So, for your reading pleasure, I present a series of three posts describing parts of her visit.
Episode 1: a plague of locusts
So we get to my site in the late morning. That afternoon it rains, so we don’t go into town, we just stay inside. By the evening, it had stopped raining. It’s dark out, and I have my living room light on, as well as my front porch light. We are sitting around in my house, and I notice a bug. A rather large bug. Not a cockroach, but some sort of giant flying ant. I think they’re called carpenter ants? Anyway, I promptly get my broom and kill it. No sooner had I killed it than I spot another. And another. I look outside. There’s a lot of them outside, flying up against my screen door. Now, my screen door, like shaving cream here, is not very good quality. Even when closed, it has spaces where bugs can get in if they want to. And there were enough of these bugs that they wanted to do just that. As I continued to kill the bugs that sneaked in, the quantity of bugs outside my screen door increased to biblical proportions. Seriously. If the bugs had a taste for human flesh, there were enough of them that they could have eaten you alive. As the bugs outside my screen door grew in number, so did the ones that were sneaking into my house. I swear it was like God sent a plague of locusts or something...
I am getting somewhat frantic at this point, shouting at my poor mother to help my kill some of the bugs. I think she is too tired to really care. She is more interested in laughing at me as my house is under attack.
My neighbors, who are more certain than I that the bugs can’t hurt you, are outside on my porch at this point. I am amazed that they are standing there in the swarm of carpenter ants.
“Is this happening just to my house, or everywhere?” I ask my young teenage neighbor boy, Dennis, through my closed screen door.
“Um they’re everywhere,” he replies nonchalantly, as the insects fly all around him. Seeing that I am upset, he kindly starts to kill some of the bugs who are outside. There are so many of these bugs that it hardly helps at all. “You know, if they’re bothering you, you can just turn off the light.”
Brilliant! Thanks Dennis! I turn off the porch light… which leaves the bugs to be attracted only to the light inside my house... which means they all start coming inside. Ah! No!
I quickly turn the porch light back on. “Um, it didn’t work,” I tell Dennis.
“Yes,” he says, “that’s because you have to turn off all the lights.”
Ok. My house is being consumed by insects. And I’m supposed to sit inside in the dark? Seeing no alternative, and the bugs showing no sign of going away, I try it. My mom uses a small flashlight to help me find the bugs who still wander in.
And we sit in the dark together.
After maybe an hour, I dare to turn the lights on. The insects are pretty much gone. Thank goodness.
The next day I talk with my neighbors. Lots of bugs last night, right? Is that normal? It is? Really? That happens often during the rainy season? Because of the rain? Oh. Ok. Um well thanks for helping me last night.
Mom insisted that we go to the Catholic church service in Koupela next Sunday. Thinking God was sending plagues on my city, I saw no harm in it. No plagues since. Flawless.