Three Sharp Screams

I close the door to the small room where I take my bucket bath. To get it to close enough to hitch the latch I have to press down on the middle of the door as I try to get the latch. Tonight, as I press down on the middle of the door my hand touches something unusual. I turn my face and find I’m pressing my hand at a rat. Aaaaah! It jumps down toward my feet and in its frenzied attempt to find a way out it scrambles over my dancing feet as I try to get out of the bathing room. Aaaah! Aaaaah! Three screams in rapid succession before I’m able to finally get the door open and stumble out. The problem is that the room is so tiny you have to maneuver most of the way towards the back of the room and that was also where the rat was trying to go.

In the aftermath, as I’m staring into the room which is dimly lit by my flashlight and reminding myself not to put off setting out the rat poison for another day, there is a call at my door “hodi” (which basically a way to announce your presence to someone when coming to their house). It’s my neighbors; all three of them. Solomon, Monica and their daughter Ester, at my door in a minute to see what is going on and make sure I am ok. I’m so shaken up by the rat running on my feet that I don’t even feel embarrassed about being half naked with only my towel wrapped around me. On the other hand, I do feel embarrassed that I screamed so loud. I tell them all what happened. Monica comes in to check that the rat has gone and Solomon removes the box which has been on the wall above my bathing room since I moved in (in case that might be where the rats are hiding). We all have a good laugh about it and I learn my vocabulary word for the day: Oyieyo (rat).

It’s hard to explain the feeling of being cared for by people I’ve known for 6 months (and they have treated me this way the entire time I’ve been here). The compassion of neighbors and the way they look out for one another is one of my favorite thing about this culture. Not that you won’t find neighbors caring about each other in America, but just that it’s implicit here.

The other day I came home in the evening when it was already getting dark. As I was putting away my solar charger and the panel I noticed that the cord now had tape around it at two points. Strange considering the tape was definitely not there that morning. Then, at the window where I thread the panel through in the morning, the cord was thread through a different window pane. Finally, after I got into my house, I found the charger in a different place on the table. I stood in my house a few minutes trying to piece together what might have happened – maybe Monica and Solomon needed my cord for their charger and traded me? Or maybe something happened to mine? I was at a loss. But not to worry, a few minutes there was a call at my door “hodi”. Solomon was at my door, ready with the story behind my solar panel. Turns out, the sheep were playing on the patio area in front of my house where I lay the panel out to charge. At some point in the morning Solomon and Monica noticed that the cord was cut (the sheep had bitten through it in two places) and immediately came to see what they could do. They have an extra key to my house, but instead of come into my space they figured out a way to get my charger through the window and Solomon sat on a stool while he pieced the wire back together and patched it up with tape. He then made sure the charger was working before putting it all back through my window and laying the panel out again. Monica came over a little later to also explain, just in case I wanted to hear it from her too.

I feel amazingly grateful to have this kind of support. A family away from home it seems, who will always be there if I need them or just want to talk.