I ended the last post in mid-sentence because I suddenly realized I was out of time and I didn't want to lose it all.

So, to continue: Lunch was stew and dinner was homemade pizza--which I must admit we were leery to eat as it had ground "beef" on it, and earlier in the day we had seen a fellow sitting on a box on the kitchen floor, hacking at a haunch of something raw, bloody and meaty. mmm, mmm good!

So, after dinner on the first night, we were talking with some other people and we noticed these flying "things" about an inch long with pale yellow wings, sort of like a flying ant. Their wings seemed to fall off easily and they'd tumble to the floor and twitch a bit. They were not too horrible and if they flew at you, you could just bat them away and they'd flutter off in a new direction. There were, however, a few larger ones, maybe 2 inches long and their bodies were quite substantial, like a flying caterpillar. They were a little creepy and we left shortly after they started appearing.

When we got into our room Nicole went to the washroom and I noticed a few wings on her bed, and I started to say:"Some of those bugs were here." and then I saw a few crawling on her bed and then I saw hundreds and then I saw hundreds more and they were everywhere, crawling through the screen and falling on our beds and on the floor, and flying frantically through the air. We shrieked and started stomping and them, and batting them out of the air and we tried to close the window as well, but there were SO many of them that the window wouldn't shut and you could hear cracking, oozing, icky noises as their revolting little bodies were being squeezed in the window. I had to reach through them to grab the handle to close the glass..it was like Indiana Jones when he had to reach into that space to push a lever. It was honestly the bravest thing I have ever done, I normally have trouble killing a spider. I must mention that the glass windows were open, but the screens were shut and they still squirmed through. We had foolishly left a light on and they were determined to get to it.

Meanwhile, Nicole had run away--OK---she ran to the kitchen to get help and as none of the girls speak English and our Swahili phrase book does not contain the phrase: "Please help, our room is teeming with thousands of winged creatures." she had to mime 'giant bugs". She came back with a can of some sort of Raid though, so she must have been successful. I had hiked my skirt up to my knees and was stomping bugs, feeling like Lucy in the grape-stomping episode..

We sprayed and stomped, there were other bugs as well, little slithery black things, tiny little beetles (that might have been cute under any other circumstance) and these fat little beetles that curled up and made quite a "crack" as you stepped on them. As we sprayed, we breathed and then we realized we should probably not be inhaling these noxious fumes that were killing the bugs, so we'd hold our breath, spray, run outside, breath deeply of the fresh air, run back in and spray some more.

We eventually completed the killing, came in and shook out all our bedding and clothes (more fell out) put down our mosquito nets and tucked them in very securely and killed the few remaining ones that were still struggling to survive. We had no pity for them and stomped them with great gusto.

We took the spray back to the kitchen and the girl solemnly handed us a broom. I guess this has happened before. When we finished sweeping we had a pile large enough to...I don't know...make lesser women faint????

The smell of the bug spray had permeated the room and we couldn't open the door as there was no screen on it and we didn't want anything else coming in (esp mosquito's as this area is endemic for malaria) and we didn't dare touch the windows as who knew what was still out there, but we also didn't want lung and/brain damage from these fumes, the bathroom had a small window but had a very bad sewer gas problem and it's quite nauseating.

So these were our choices:
1. Keep the doors all shut and asphyxiate.
2. Keep the windows open and chance more bugs coming in.
3, Open the bathroom door and window and hope that the combination of sewer gas and bug spray does not create a deadly and toxic fume.

We stood in the open front door and waved towels around, hoping to get a bit of circulation going, as well as keeping mosquitoes out, but it did no good, so we just opened the bathroom door, and hoped for the best. As I am here to write this now, you can see that we survived....hopefully there will be no long term effects!!!