Operation Cockroach

Yesterday was Operation Cockroach and so far it looks like we've won the battle, for a while at least. We've always had cockroaches. When we first moved here, they arrived in our fridge and slowly populated our kitchen. You could always count on seeing a few scurrying across the kitchen table or up a wall if you turned on the kitchen light at night. Most were relatively small, Montreal sized cockroaches. But the occasional one was a few inches long and once I thought I saw a small mouse run under the bed in the living room. It turned out to be a huge cockroach. Lately, the numbers of cockroaches had been increasing exponentially by the day. The last few nights I'd gone into the kitchen and seen, I swear, one hundred of them running across the table. They'd even started coming out during the day. They were clearly trying to take over our house. So on Saturday, when we had the day off from school for Mohamed's birthday, I decided to take serious action. The entire kitchen was emptied, including a big box of old tin cans and bottles that we'd been saving "just in case". That got dumped in the front yard and after the cockroaches had scattered, the neighbourhood kids quickly scooped up the contents. Then Kim went in and "toxed" the kitchen.. Tox is a bug spray that people use here. It's probably illegal in Canada and most likely contains horrible carcinogens, so we tend to avoid using it, though one VSO mistakenly used it as a mosquito repellent for a few days. We left the house to detoxify itself for a few hours. Then I spent the afternoon putting things back in place. I think it's paid off though. We haven't seen many critters scurrying around since. We let a big lizard come into the house as well, to tidy up any of the stray bugs. By the way, cockroach in Tigrinya is "dede" said front deep in your throat so it sounds like a growl.

Aside from that, we've had a nice weekend. No less than 8 VSO have visited, 5 of whom have spend at least one night. Right now two of them are cooking up some tortillas for our burrito supper. Maya made the salsa and I cooked up the beans. We really are eating here, though it looks like the blog on our ongoing difficulties getting bread had some people worried that we were starving to death, judging from our emails. Luckily, Kim found a bakery that gives us as much hot bread as we need. This was pretty lucky because now the local store wants us to show them a rations card to get bread. Every Eritrean seems to have one of these ration cards, but we don't. We don't have a clue how to get them either, so it's probably a long and frustrating process. Hopefully our bakery will continue to sell us bread for the next three months so we won't need to get a rations card. So we're fine with bread these days, but there are things that we can't get and that we have constant cravings for. We can't get broccoli, tofu, whipped cream, chocolate, ice cream, apples, Thai seasonings, Chinese food, a really good pizza with a thick crust and lots of cheese dripping off it, junk food of any kind, and many, many other things. But in a little over three months we'll have an endless supply of these things, so I'm sure we'll manage until then (though we never complain when a chocolate bar arrives in the mail!)

Kim had an ego boost today. The boys had friends over to play with their coorars, which are tops made out of the acat, the fruit of a local palm tree. Some of them stopped playing and came to watch Kim as he played "Mr. Bo Jangles" on the guitar. He hasn't played it in a long time, but he did okay, and he jokingly said to one of the boys, "I'm really good, aren't I?" "Yes, said the boy. You are the best than Abraham Afwerke!" Abraham Afwerke (no relation to President Isais) is everyone's favourite singer. He died tragically last year in a boat acciedent off the Dahluk Islands. He's one of the few Eritrean artists whom Kim and I really like. We're not sure if the boy was being serious, sarcastic or just polite though.

Simon and Lukas now have quite a selection of coorars. Their friend Daniel is very skilled at making them and seems happy to make them on request. The best ones have a hole through them so that they whistle when they spin.

We've adjusted to the heat now. It's regularly getting up to 35 degrees in the heat of the midday sun but I can make it up the hill after school on my bike without keeling over. A few days ago, we were having breakfast on the front porch and I had to go in to get a fleece sweater. I checked the thermometer and it was twenty degrees. Canada is going to feel pretty cold.

Guess that's all the news for now.

Take care,

Barb