Uninvited Jungle Visitors
For 16 years while living in BYT we have had trouble with rats in our house from time to time. But right now in History, mark my word, it is worse than ever. Right now they are taking over our house. They are not even afraid of us. These are not the little pesky mice that city people get, NO, these are field rats measuring approximately 10 inches, give or take. If I get up in the night to go to the bathroom they may cross my path. The other evening I was in the store room and saw two or more rats going up and down the wires leading into the ceiling from our solar system! The ceiling is full of holes where they have chewing and urine stains where they had had their nest of babies. The other day I was appalled to see they have been in my metal cabinets which are only open in the day, but tightly shut at night. They had pulled an ace bandage out of the box and took it into a box of white roll gauze, chewing all the plastic wrappers to shreds and ruining the box. In the other cabinet were Q-tips and cotton balls all chewed. The food cabinet had a noodle package chewed. Sometimes I wake up at night and hear very LOUD noises and banging. I’m wondering what BletJhaw is doing at 2:30 in the morning! Then I realize the rats above me in the ceiling are having a party! We have used 2 different traps, sticky glue, rat poison, and even a metal box rat trap! Nothing works because these guys can get the food off without getting killed. Cats are not easy to come by in our village. I’d like to have 3-4 of them. One time I was chopping onions in the kitchen. When this house was built, the builder had never put in counters and sink before, so the corner of the counter where I like to chop my vegetables, had an open space in the corner, with a small opening on the outside, but widened to the size of the large black tile in the back. While I was chopping I heard noises. Upon closer observation I discovered a rat had a nest with babies in the empty space! BletJhaw took a household stick used to kill snakes, etc that come wandering into our house. He poked around in there and 5 babies fell out, then the large mother rat went running. BletJhaw was chasing it with the stick, and I was running the opposite way with a broom handle, we went laughing and chasing that rat wildly through the house! Finally she went down the drain in the bathroom and came back the next day, when that procedure was repeated all over again!
We plan to take off our roof and ceiling when all of our building projects are finished, and replace the wooden tresses with metal and put on a metal roof. That would be extremely loud in rainy season, but at least no rats can live above our heads. Other people in my village and surrounding villages do not mind the rats because they catch and eat them. The little boys make homemade rat traps out of bamboo and are very successful in catching them out side. Then the grateful mother or grandmother will roast them and eat them just like that, or in a curry dish as you can see here!
Are you still hungry?
You might have lost your appetite now. Sorry, but I could tell you many more stories that might make it worse!!!
People who live further away from us do not know our dietary habits and may try to feed us rat etc. We visit other villages often so got to be careful! One day we were in a distant village, BletJhaw told the lady that I did not eat meat. When we sat to eat there was a bowl of vegetables. Food can look very unusual here because often they cook in plant roots or banana flower which is brown and looks like some kind of meat. Well as I took a spoonful of that vegetable I took a closer look at the white “Root-looking things.” They were grubs with little leg-like things. The lady said that grubs are not meat! I am very fortunate in villages all around BYT They know very well what I don’t eat. They work extra hard to fix me real vegetarian dishes! That is so thoughtful of them because I am the only vegetarian for miles around and the only gulawah, (Karen word for white person)!!
One day I was with one of my visitors in another village while we were waiting for our truck to be repaired. Because it was a small mechanic shop there were problems. They ordered a part that was too small, so they ordered again and the part was too big. Finally it got fixed but it took several days. We were staying with a lady who knew we did not eat meat and she fed us decent vegetarian food at every meal. Finally at the last supper we sat to eat with her nephew. We both took a spoonful of the closest dish to us and ate a half spoonful of whatever it was. After that was swallowed, the nephew said: “This is pig, this is buffalo, and this is fish!” We had both eaten half a spoonful of the pig! I was horrified. Neither of us ate any more of that meal. I went to sleep that night at 9 pm. At 11 pm I woke up with diarrhea, and vomiting. Good thing the outhouse was far away! I was up almost the entire night. (Might have been Psychosomatic. I don’t know)!! The next morning I greeted my visitor friend, asking him how he slept. He had slept all night very well. I told him:
“I got rid of all my pig, but you still have yours!”
BletJhaw and I eat with many different people in many different villages eating very different foods. Some meals are good, others are difficult to swallow. Usually there is a bamboo floor with cracks in it. If you get something in your mouth that you cannot chew or swallow, you just secretly slip it through the crack in the bamboo floor and the chickens enjoy it. If you are on a solid wooden floor, you just have to swallow come-what-may!
During cold season, December and January there are less bugs. We wake up in the morning to temperatures 45-55 degrees Fahrenheit in our house! You can see your breath! up until 2 years ago, we only had cold bucket baths, and believe me, that bucket of water is very icy cold! It is easy to take that freezing cold bath after I have worked out in the morning - so invigorating! But when you get home at 2 am, dead tired and feeling filthy dirty after being in the hospital with a patient, you must take a bath! Now after 14 years of cold dipper baths, we have discovered we can have a propane shower with hot water! What a luxury!
In February it suddenly gets hot. March and April are the hottest months with temperatures soaring up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit! The hot season will last all the way until December again. During this time we have an abundance of bugs. Mosquitoes fill our house. Often while treating patients there is an orchestra of mosquitoes and DaGwaDay’s droning away. The patients, visitors, BletJhaw and I are all clapping them with our hands. On the floor are tons of dead mosquitoes to sweep up! Let me explain a DaGwaDay. These are tiny little Bee-like creatures that are smaller than a mosquito, but they are very fast and will bite you from behind before you notice them. Suddenly your entire arm will itch intensely, all the way up to your arm pit and you don’t know where it bit you. Soon you will see where it bit you when one finger swells up twice the size. The good thing about these little DaGwaDay’s is they do not give you a disease like Malaria or Dingue fever, and the itch will go away quite quickly. Unlike a leach bite, when they get a chance to really suck your blood, you will bleed for hours and the place will itch for 2-3 weeks. One Sabbath while I was preaching, I got 2 DaGwaDay bites - one on each foot! So hard to concentrate on your sermon when that happens!
Anywhere from May to November is rainy season - my worst favorite season! At the beginning of rainy season we get what I call the plague of flies. Maybe they are flying termites. Their bodies are kinda fat and they have 4 flimsy wings, 2 on each side. I can see them coming like a dark cloud in the sky! We must turn all the lights out and just use a candle. They are everywhere - eyes, nose, ears, hair, in your cooking, on my patient cards as I am writing up my patient. The patients on the other hand love them. They are grabbing them right and left in my clinic and popping them in their mouths, wings and all! PeeWah, (Which means White Grandma, in the Karen language), is out on the porch with the porch light on. She has a bucket of water and catches tons of them when they fall from the light. She will go home and roast them! Finally in self defense you go to bed under a mosquito net - safe at last, but in the morning they have dropped their flimsy wings and they sail around in the air making it very difficult to sweep up! You may find a few wings a year later in the back of the drawers and other places.
Another problem in the rainy season is the toads. They turn a light tan color the same color of our walls. They appear everywhere in our house! When you come near, they are afraid and jump, but they don’t know which way to jump so they jump right on you. They pee when they jump! disgusting, right? Well BletJhaw is very good with a heavy rubber band, one like he has on his sling shot. He always has perfect aim to hit and kill any toad, spider, lizard, centipede, millipede or scorpion!
Another problem with rainy season other than the mud and bad roads is the leaches. At the very first rain, they pop out of the ground. Just to step out of the truck for a moment is enough to get one or two on your feet. It’s good to get rid of them right away before they bite. These ugly creatures are very smart. They will bite you between your toes or under a bandaid where you cannot see them. They must have some kind of lidocaine in their saliva and anticoagulant in their mouths because you usually cannot feel them. But if they have time to bite and suck your blood, that place will bleed for hours and itch for 2-3 weeks. I would like to study these creatures, as they are very wicked but very smart! Salt or a spray bottle of alcohol will make them drop off and they will die immediately.
Karen people call these creatures: “DaBau”. One bite from these creatures causes more pain than a scorpion! One big strong Karen man in our village got bitten by one of these and he cried for 3 hours on the way to the hospital. You will not die from this creature’s bite, but you might wish you would! Some of them are black and have red legs. It was a black one about a foot long that came walking past me during my devotional time when I was on my knees praying in the clinic one early morning during rainy season. The Lord must have made me open my eyes before it crawled on me! I killed it with my shoe and swept it out! Praise the Lord!
In the next story I will tell you of greater dangers than bugs, insects and scorpions!