Of Rats and Bugs and All my Favorite Things

The first night I was at the orphanage, Leslie, an American volunteer who is also staying at the orphanage, saw a rat in her room.  Now, before anyone gets too excited, i should note that I have never seen a live rat here.  Leslie, unfortunately, has now seen two in her room.  That was the start to my visit here.  She was, understandably, very upset and emotional, but I didn’t know what to do or say.  Since then, though, I’ve felt very wary of any nighttime noises in my room…

Bugs, on the other hand, are a constant nuisance.  There are no screens on the windows, so bugs freely fly and crawl in to my room.  While there are few remedies for ants or flies, there are a number of tools one can use against mosquitos, none of which, in my opinion, work very well, except for the mosquito net.  The coil has a very pungent odor, but I’m not convinced it works… and the gadget I brought from Dhaka requires electricity, which we often do not have from 6 pm to 10 pm.

You can imagine how nice it was last night, when I got food poisoning and began throwing up around 6:45 pm.  No electricity, fumbling around for a bucket to vomit into, then clumbsily trying to put the mosquito net up long after I had been bit multiple times.  At one point, as I searched in my suitcase for some gum to counteract the taste of vomit, I almost found the whole situation humorous. Almost.