Cockroaches, Mice, Giant Spiders & Rats, Oh my!

Hello everyone!

Last week Abigail was awoken in the middle of the night (when the power was off) to the noise of a mouse scurrying around her room, squeaking and chewing on a bag on the floor.  She called me and we both looked in her room for the mouse but didn’t find it.  The next evening, we saw something scurrying across her floor and I tried to step on it 4 times to no avail.  At first we thought it was a mouse but as I was trying to squish it, we realized it was a large cockroach.  It ran under her bed, so we got the flash light and looked for it, as I put my head down to the floor to peak under her bed, I heard a “Hisssssssss!” noise in my ear coming from under the couch, 2 inches away from my head.  I sprung up and shouted “That giant cockroach just hissed in my ear!” So we flipped up the couch in search of it, but instead of finding a cockroach, we found 4 holes chewed into the couch by mice, or cockroaches or whatever else decided to make the couch it’s home.  We then saw the cockroach hanging off of the side of the couch so I whacked it with a shoe, it fell to the ground and Abigail yelled, “Kill it again!” So I whacked it again, we duct taped the holes on the couch shut and called it a night.

 

The next day, I was walking through the side room next to the kitchen and I saw something scurry across the floor and under one of the arm chairs.  I flipped up the chair and found the hole that the mouse had scurried into.  I called Abigail and Lisa in the room and together we carried the chair outside and cut the bottom of the chair out so no more mice would live it.  As we cut the chair open, a dead, dried mouse body fell out with it’s head missing.  We brought the chair back inside and after much debate, we decided to check all of the other chairs and couches in the room.  We flipped up the other arm chair, no holes.  We flipped up the big couch, no holes.  In the corner of the room sat a piece of furniture with 4 small mattresses stacked on top of it.  We reluctantly removed them to reveal a small, old, dark and dirty couch that was sitting underneath them.  We knew something had to living in it.  Abigail, broom in hand, awaited whatever monstrosity would fall out from under it as Lisa and I quickly flipped the couch on it’s side.  Out from under it fell a big, nasty brown rat.  The girls screamed and jumped up on the coffee table when they saw it as the panicked rat jumped 2 feet up the corner of the wall trying to escape.  It turned, ran towards me, I jumped up on to the now sideways couch as the rat ran underneath me and out the door (At least we think it ran out the door).  We then moved the nasty hole filled couch outside on the patio and forgot about it.

The next evening, Abigail and I were playing video games as Lisa went to the kitchen to look for something.  5 minutes later Lisa comes bursting into the room, out of breath “Didn’t you guys hear me screaming?” she asked in between breaths.  “We didn’t hear anything” we replied.  "I was looking for something in the cupboards, then I saw a big cockroach and tried to kill it, but it ran into the next cupboard, so I followed it and another big cockroach was there, then they both ran into another cupboard, so I followed them into that cupboard and there was a giant spider in there and now I’m here.  Can you come and help me kill them?”  So off we went to the kitchen brooms in hand to kill some bugs.  We looked in the cupboards and the cockroaches were no where to be found, but we found the spider, and it was big and harry.  Besides tarantulas, it was the biggest spider I have ever seen in my life and it was in our kitchen! I tried to poke it with the broom but this ninja spider side stepped the broom 3 times!  Then it ran up a loose board in the cupboard and the board fell over from the weight of the spider!  So we called Christian to come and save us.  He brought rat poison and Raid with him and sprayed the raid all inside the kitchen cupboards and laid rat poison in the corners of some rooms.  We thanked him profusely and he left.

In the morning we found the 2 cockroaches almost dead so we finished them off and threw them outside.  Christian then told us that we might notice some bad smells in the house as the rats eat the poison, die, and start rotting.  We haven’t smelled anything bad yet, but when we do, we’ll have to go on a dead rat & mouse hunt.

T.I.A.

Here’s some more photos.

Read the caption on the left side of the of the truck.

 

We visited the motherless baby home that Lisa visited the last time she was in Nigeria.
 

We also visited the National War Museum

A little mouse we found in the backyard. Probably one of the mice that’s been in the house.

Lisa and I had to wait for a ride from the Library.  Lisa got out her book and i got out the camera.

A Mercedes Benz dealership that we drove by.

Some giant snails that are in the backyard that we are apparently going to eat one day soon.

Lisa and Abigail helping out with dinner.

I love books!!!

So… I’ve been teaching at the primary school for three days now. My task of teaching 1 hour of science to a grade 6 class quickly turned into me teaching 2 grade 6 classes combined for the full day, and then finding a way to teach a few science lessons somewhere in between to the grade 3, 4, and 5 classes! T.I.A. (This is Africa)

If you ever want to feel like a celebrity, be white and visit a primary school. On the first day, I naively thought it would be a fun to play with the kids during their lunch break. The minute I stepped foot outside of the classroom, I was swarmed by the entire school – all 250 plus students!!! Most were too shy to talk to me so they just stood close and stared. Those who managed to push close enough were grabbing at my hands and arms to touch my pale skin. By the end of the day, I was so covered in sweat and stickiness I dumped a bucket of cold water all over myself as soon as I got home.

Today – I brought in the box of books to the school. A retiring teacher at my mom’s school donated her entire library of children’s books. I gave each student one of the new books, and had them all write down a question about the book’s subject before they could open it. Then, when reading the book, they had to look for the answer. (intro to research).I have never seen children so excited about information as I did today!!! It made my heart smile. For an hour and a half, they read book after book, excitedly telling me the answers to their questions, and sharing the new things they were finding out about in the books! Turns out Magic School Bus books are now popular here too! The principal and the teacher were right into the action too! At one point I saw two girls with their notebooks, furiously copying down all the notes they could from a book they were reading on the human body. I told them they were not required to take notes, but they told me they wanted to take the information home to remember! It was so cool to see such eagerness about learning!!! I don’t know if it’s just a ‘teacher thing’, but there’s something truly magical when you see someone excited about reading! That hour and a half made my year!

Photo Updates!

Ndiwo! (That’s the Igbo word for hello) I have a bit of time now, so here’s some photos from our trip so far.

These are the walls that surround our building and every building in Nigeria. Yes those are rusty steel spikes.

We asked for some fruit to have as snacks and this is what they brought us!

This is a soldier ant hole. These ants are bigger than any at home and we’ve been told that they hurt a lot when they bite you.

This is a praying mantis that we saw one night.

They were going to slaughter this chicken in front of us, but Paul asked them not to. So she’s still alive and kicking.

This is a pet Lisa got from one of her students free of charge!

That’s all for now. I’ll try to write another post tomorrow. We miss you all!

Settled in

We are all settled into the University now. It was a crazy drive getting over here. Lisa and I were in a Toyota van (we don't have this model at home) with no seat belts with Paul’s brother Bennet. Bennet is a really cool guy and I hope we get to see a lot more of him while we are here. Abigail and Paul were in an SUV ahead of us most of the time. When we were on the highway, we were driving fast all the time, pedal to the floor whenever there was space. I checked the speedometer a couple times and we were doing about 150km/hr and we were 8 to 10 feet behind Abigail & Paul’s SUV. It got a little sketchy when the SUV in front had to slam on the brakes for various reasons like giant pot holes, other cars, motor cycles or people. I was worried at first but then I soon realized that the drivers we had were very good at their jobs and if they’ve survived this far in life driving like this, then I’ve got nothing to worry about and I managed to get some sleep in the car. I took some videos of the driving and I’ll upload them to You Tube when I get a chance.

As you can tell, we got internet today but we have to pay for it by the hour. Hopefully this is something we can change for the students while we are here. We also just got running water today in our building. Apparently it wasn’t working because they hooked up the plumbing into the electrical system by accident. I don’t know how one would accomplish that, but it happened… somehow.

All of the people we have met here and very friendly, happy and are genuinely glad to have us here. The police look very intimidating dressed in all black with the flak jackets and AKs either in their hand or slung on their shoulder, but the officers that we have talked to have all been very friendly and welcoming. I haven’t got any photos of the police yet, but they will come.
Almost everyone speaks English but they use the language differently than we are used to. For example, whenever we meet someone, they say “you are welcome” to us. I thought it was weird at first, because we say you’re welcome after someone says thank you, but if you think about, the way they use it makes more sense. We met a very friendly, funny guy in Kaduna who greeted us by saying “My name is not MediumMedium, or HiHi, but Lolo.” Lisa and I laughed and he said “She laughs in verses and he laughs in chapters, you two make a good couple.”

The food here has been really good so far and they have the best tea I’ve ever had. I’m going to try to bring some home with me. We had a whole lot of fresh fruits and vegetables dropped off to us today. That made Lisa an extremely happy girl. We sat down and talked to Christian (a guy who works at the university) and he told us that if there is anything we want to eat, we just have to get him the list of ingredients and he’ll get them for us. Hope fully, we can make some food that we eat back in Canada for some of the people here to try out.

We should be able to blog a lot more now that we have internet. Twitter works sometimes here. I think it’s blocked because when I go to Twitter.com, it tells me that this web service is unavailable. I’m working on getting an app that will hopefully work around this.

Well, Lisa is asleep and I should get ready for bed and join her before the power goes out.

Arrived in Abuja

We arrived in Abuja Nigeria about 2 hours ago and we've been driving around the city in a 2 car convoy. Lots of interesting things to see so far including a minivan with about 30 kids inside. Lisa and Abigail have been making fun of my greasy hair today, but it's ok, cause I get to make fun of Abigail's shoes and Lisa's frizzy hair. We're at the Sheraton right now exchanging money and then we're off to the Canadian Embassy to get our Visa's. Abigail wanted me to mention that she has ginormous welts all over her legs. I think she's just a whiner. :-)

P.S. AK-47's are a lot smaller than I thought.