The Ndudus Have Come

First of all, if you read the title as “the doodoos have come” you would be right. Ndudu is the word for insect and come they have. It all started last Thursday night… I got home from work around 4:30 and had just enough time to shower and be back safely inside when the sky opened up. It had been cloudy on and off all day but dark clouds had been moving in from the south east all day and were now on top of Garissa. What started out as a decent rain, the first I’ve ever seen in Garissa, turned into a torrential downpour equal to the power of the storm that came through Seattle a couple years ago turning all streets into rivers. One of my roommates was already gone for the weekend and the other was still at work so I was home alone to enjoy the festivities of a awesomely powerful storm. Naturally my first reaction was to go to the window and watch the magic, but I soon realized this wasn’t really a good option (at least not in my room, or my old room). Standing at the window I quickly discovered I was getting wet. The thing about the windows in my house is that they have no actual glass. They are simply netting to keep mosquitoes out and metal bars running horizontally every 6 inches or so. As much as I wanted to I wasn’t going to be able to watch the storm. The rain coming in my window concerned me a little, but I figured it wasn’t worth dealing with until the pounding had stopped, or at least the wind that was brining all the rain into my window.
Since there was no power I decided to get to cooking in my already dim kitchen before no light was left at all, and besides, I could watch the storm better out the kitchen window because it was sheltered from the wind and no rain was coming through it. As a bonus the tin roof in the kitchen doesn’t have a second ceiling like my new bedroom making the sound of pounding rain insanely cool. Shortly into my cooking endeavor I noticed that rain was coming inside the kitchen under the door leading outside. Slowly but surely the puddle was growing in size and venturing deeper into the room. It was about this time that I started wondering what was going on back in my room. I quickly ran in and pulled back the mats covering my floor to discover a massive puddle getting larger by the minute and also discovered that the side of my bed nearest my second window was becoming damp. I pulled the mats out of my room, ditching them in my old bedroom which also had a quickly growing puddle on the floor but at least nothing in its path it could destroy. I did my best to mop up the puddle (maybe indoor swimming pool is a better description?) using my super-absorbent towel but wasn’t getting much accomplished. I threw in the towel, quite literally, after I realized I was fighting a losing battle and worked on making sure none of my things were in the danger zone (read: anywhere on my floor). Curtains have no beneficial effect whatsoever when there is wind and rain, just so you know. One nice perk of homes in Kenya though is that they are made of concrete and therefore the floors are indestructible (at least by water or other liquids) so the fear of damage due to flooding is drastically lower than it would be in a house in America.
I went back to the kitchen and continued cooking by lantern light. The puddle continued to make its way further into the kitchen until at some point I ended up standing in it as I cooked. As the first deafening boom sounded I began to ponder my current situation: cooking while standing in a growing puddle coming from outside, in a house with a leaking roof, the roof being made of metal, in a thunder and lightning storm… my conclusion being, “Is this safe?!” Since I had no one to ask and no phone battery left and no electricity to charge it with I continued cooking. By the time I finished the rain had let up a little but the wind was almost gone so the rain had stopped coming into my room/indoor pool. I mopped it all up and spent the rest of the night listening to the rain on my roof and the sound of thunder in the distance.
By morning everything in my yard had changed: the slope of the hill behind our house, the slant of the front yard, the shape of the ground by our gate, the amount of rocks and pipe exposed. The paths I normally take to work were liked dried up creek beds and at least a foot or two deeper than the previous day. Trash and debris were strewn about all the streets in town from flooding of the gutters lining the roads and all side roads were drowned in massive puddles. We got a ride in a truck out into a part of town I hadn’t been to before to go to a community health day festival and had to drive through 3 foot deep puddles. It was amazing to see the difference to our town in one day, one night really. The market was a mess (not surprising considering its all built on dirt). Much of the town reminded me of the pictures in Six Months in Sudan after the rains came there. And yes, of course, there were ndudus a plenty. The air was swarming with winged insects that I don’t know the name of. I must have seen them on a show once though, maybe about Africa, because I knew that people catch and eat them as a good source of protein. As we were sitting in the truck waiting to pick someone up one of my bosses said “the ndudus have come” (which of course made me giggle), and right she was. As the day progressed more dark clouds moved in and by 4 it was pouring again. I walked a short way home in the rain (because the taxi wouldn’t go onto my puddle-ridden street) and had to wade my way through the streams that used to be the paths home. I stopped at a neighborhood duka to buy some milk so that I could make hot chocolate because even if it wasn’t exactly cold, it just felt right. That night I realized that more than just the winged insects had arrived. Along with the roads and paths in town the rain had also washed away my peace. Outside my window there were now not just goats and donkeys and children making noise, but also crickets and bats and frogs and the low-level electricity-like hum of some type of bug and all other manner of racket-making insect; my very own personal cacophonic serenade. The cockroach family in my choo, previously made up of three members with whom I had a good arrangement: they crawl away when I enter either down the choo or out the back, is now made up of a regular 6-10 on any given day who crawl wherever they feel like it – including across my feet while I’m squatting. There are so many more lizards around now too, maybe their burrows have flooded or maybe they’ve just come out to eat all the bugs. I saw one almost a foot long the other day with a red head and a teal-blue tail.
The other effects of the rains are less welcome than even the bugs. The water we get from the tap in our yard, normally clear and consistently-running, is now cloudy and sporadic. Some days we don’t get water at all for a whole evening (not at all fun when you get home sweaty after dealing with the hot temperatures and now humidity of Garissa). On the days we do have water it is cloudy, sometimes just barely – the new good days – but more often it’s a brownish red that looks like either rust or clay and is likely a combination of both. It settles at the bottom of bottles for the most part but makes drinking difficult because the water is still a yellowy-brown color. I’ve been told this will last as long as the rains. Additionally, the road to the coast is now water-logged and unreliable meaning my plan to go to Mombasa for Halloween is in jeopardy. As long as the rains don’t come back with a vengeance (they have been mostly gone for the better part of the last week) I should be able to make it, though now risk being caught in one of the tiny towns between should things get sticky – or more accurately, muddy.
The rains came every night that weekend giving me a much needed break from the wilting temperatures and a feeling of being at home because after all it is October and what could be more perfect than a good storm in October? Thankfully my supervisor, Rumana, who owns the house I live in, hired a fundi immediately to come and put actual glass panes in the windows. A fundi is basically any skilled laborer: carpenter, electrician, tailor… etc. She said she would call and let me know when he was going to be coming over so I could make sure to be home. Saturday I was sitting at home waiting for my friends to come over and cook dinner, and I had left the gate unlocked so they could just let themselves in, while I read. Suddenly I heard the gate, but I knew it was way too early for my friends to be coming over so nervously I snuck a peek out my window (remember, my roommates were not home). There was a man walking into my yard. Holy shit! I freaked out and backed into the most hidden corner of my room while trying to figure out what to do. I tried to calm myself down by telling myself no one could get into the house anyway since the doors are locked but quickly remembered the back door was not locked just pushed shut. Crap. I would have to make it there before the mystery man did, but first I would have to arm myself. The only weapon-like thing in my room was a giant wooden mixing spoon (mwiko in Swahili) so I grabbed it and slowly moved into the hallway. Before passing the next room I glanced in and through the window and saw the man looking back at me through the mosquito screen. I raised my mwiko (feeling a bit ridiculous, but also really glad he was still towards the front of the house so I could beat him to the back door and get it locked). He must have seen how freaked out I was because he immediately began explaining that he was just a fundi sent by Rumana to fix our window situation. Thank god. His name turned out to be Frederick, a really nice guy who took a few seconds to measure the windows before leaving to buy the supplies.
He came back Monday morning before I left for work to begin installing our new windows. I left him working in my house, after being promised by Rumana that he was a trustworthy guy and wouldn’t take anything. I didn’t really need the reassurance, I could already tell he was a nice, decent guy and had no problem leaving him to his work. I returned from work the following night and was standing by my gate when I met up with a neighbor of mine (Rumana’s sister’s husband who lives next door). He began telling me a story about earlier that day when he passed my house and heard odd noises coming from inside. He is a protective neighbor and decided to investigate. He grabbed the biggest, strongest stick he could find and slowly creeped his way through my yard until reaching the house. He could hear something going on inside and new all of us girls would be at work at that time so he naturally thought someone was breaking in. He crept up to the window and peeked in. He saw Frederick and Frederick saw him and once again had to explain to a weapon-wielding stranger exactly what he was up to. Poor Frederick the fundi… just trying to do an honest day’s work and getting nothing but grief. I’ll be surprised if he’s ever willing to come back to this house again after all the harassment he suffered. Haha It is, however, reassuring to know that I have neighbors on the lookout for me. And it’s also nice to have windows in my windows! They aren’t traditional window panes (which I’m thankful for because those wouldn’t allow for a breeze). They are 6-inch window slits that work like blinds that can be tilted upwards if you want them closed or downwards if you want them open. They don’t close completely but they should keep most of the water out in case of another storm so I don’t end up with another swimming pool.