The Dull Roar of a Million Peep Toads

Is what I’m listening to right now. We had a night of heavy rain and around five o’clock this morning when I got up to use the bathroom I could hear them as I passed by the window. By the time I got up later for breakfast, they were so loud we could hear them in the living room above the sound of the air conditioner. If there weren’t so many mosquitoes right now we’d be outside poking around mud puddles looking for toads and tadpoles.

But we have to be extra careful of mosquitoes right now. Africa has thrown a few challenges at us in our first week here.

First thing Monday morning Muffin and I took our anti-malaria pills. We call it Malaria Monday and take the pills with breakfast. Later that day I found out that the pills the travel clinic in Rhode Island gave us are no good here. The local malaria strain is resistant to chloroquine so we have to get on mefloquine ASAP. Unfortunately we can’t overlap the two, so we have to wait a couple more days before we can start the mefloquine, which means we are on high alert for avoiding mosquito bites. We have Deet and bed nets so we’re doing the best we can. As tempting as it is to go outside in the relative coolness after the rain, I think we need to stay away from the bugs.

I was hit with some kind of stomach thing on Tuesday. On Wednesday I felt bad enough to see the nurse at Mike’s office. I wasn’t quite sick enough for her to think I had an infection and she didn’t think I’d been here long enough for a parasite to gestate so the best she could do was treat me for dehydration, which was definitely one of my symptoms and certainly something that could lead to the other symptoms I was suffering from. For twenty-four hours I drank a horrible-tasting rehydration solution, but it seems to have done the trick. I’m not 100%, but I feel much better today than I have any other day this week. The five pounds I gained during my winter hibernation have vanished.

I’ve had some ups and downs with the housekeeper. Mostly, she’s very good and is trying hard to be helpful, but due to the language barrier and my not feeling well it’s been difficult to give her accurate instructions. I did some successful grocery shopping yesterday and tutored her in soaking dried beans and making a vegetable soup that I found appetizing, so the good meal has improved my spirits as much as anything could. To be fair, she probably knew how to make this soup already, but my French wasn’t good enough to instruct her in what I wanted, so I needed to show her exactly which vegetables, herbs, and spices to put in. I did not find the Chinese market yesterday, which is rumored to have tofu, but I think I pinpointed the neighborhood it’s in so I should be able to find it next time.

I don’t know how much coverage the airline crash in Mali is receiving in the rest of the world (because due to all the rain, the satellite isn’t working so we have no generic international or American news, only what I choose to read online). I’m glad we flew last week, though, instead of this week. The flight between Paris and Bamako was turbulent enough without landing during the thunderstorms we’re having now.

I’ll end with a few photos from the week. You can follow my photos on Instagram: http://instagram.com/stephaniesdiamond

The fire finches like to hang out in our windows.

Storm clouds on Thursday afternoon.

The view from our balcony.
There's no filter on this; it really does look like the 1970s here.

Feeding our eight parrots.

Driving from Phuentsholing to Thimphu

Day Five

We had one more long day on the road planned. From Phuentsholing to Thimphu is anywhere from 140 to 175 kilometers, depending on the road signs or maps you read. Google maps times it at about a ninety-minute drive. Realistically, it's six or seven hours. But here's the thing: Drivers in Bhutan are so mellow that it's not a stressful drive. It's relaxing. There are plenty of stops along the way for stretching legs and getting a snack. Everyone is driving slowly and there are guardrails along most of the corners so you aren't afraid for your life every five minutes.

Our tour guide was Bhutanese but had gone to university in Chennai, India, so when we told him how much Muffin loved dosa and idli, he understood right away the importance of a South Indian breakfast and knew of a spot where we could get one. The Indian army has installations throughout Bhutan and along the main road between Phuentsholing and Thimphu there is an army canteen. It was the perfect place to stop for a snack, a couple hours after we'd been on the road. We had some great chai along with dosa, idli, and vada. A couple hours later we had another snack stop, where there was a nice green pasture with grazing cows for Muffin to wander around for a bit before getting back into the car. (She was also finding it unappealing to use some of the bathrooms along the way, taking a look and saying "I want to go outside instead." She didn't mind the cows and the cows didn't mind her.)

It was cold and rainy when we arrived in Thimphu but before going to the hotel it was necessary to stop at Memorial Chorten to spin the prayer wheels and circumambulate at least three times in a clockwise direction.

Memorial Chorten on a sunny day. (Image from wikipedia.)

Our hotel was Peaceful Resort and it was located above the city, far enough away so that we couldn't wander around to get some dinner or do some shopping. But it was nice to take a walk and let Muffin play outside safely along the road with few cars going by.

The balcony had a Muffin cage.

And a very short door.

When we arrived this chair was mysteriously placed in front of the mirror.
Some sort of Buddhist mystery to ponder?

I had read in a guidebook, or perhaps on wikitravel, that the dogs in Bhutan don't sleep at night. Yikes. We thought we were used to dogs barking in India, but these guys were nonstop all night long except when it was raining and thundering too loudly to hear them.

Fortunately, we did not have an early morning on the road planned for the next day. We had a full day of sight-seeing in Thimphu, including a nice morning hike.

Day Six Coming Soon

Day One: 8 Days on the Road from Darjeeling to Bhutan
Day Two: Some Enforced Site-Seeing in Darjeeling
Day Three: Aloobari Monastery: Escaping Darjeeling to See Some Nature
Day Four:  We Made the Long Journey from Darjeeling to Phuentsholing

Anantaghiri Hills, Vikarabad, India

A few weeks ago we decided to leave the city in search of nature. Not just any nature. Forest. Green nature. The rainy season was going to be ending any day and we wanted to see something green before the dryness set in. If you take the Outer Ring Road toward the airport and take the exit for Vikarabad (and watch the roundabouts -- the signage is not clear), then drive for another hour or so and take a left at the T intersection, you'll get to Vikarabad. If you go another ten kilometers beyond the center of town, you'll reach the temple with the big Hanuman statue in front. Park at the temple, follow the sidewalk down the hill into the woods, and within a few minutes you'll find yourself surrounded by more trees than people. Once we passed the huge banyan tree after a few hundred meters, we didn't see any people at all anymore.

It was wonderful. We let Muffin run on the path for an hour, then we turned around and let her run back to the car for an hour. There was a little bit of road noise and at one point we veered off the main path and found ourselves nearly in the middle of the road. We could forgive being close to the road for all of the fresh oxygen we were breathing from the trees.

Stop and park at the Hanuman.

Go down the steps.

Trees!

These giant spiders were everywhere, mostly in webs over our heads. 

Back at the car for peanut butter sandwiches and apple juice.

One of the AP tourism resorts is out there, so you could spend the night and explore other trails, but it's perfect for a day trip. We brought lunch but there's a small restaurant across the road from the temple where you could probably get edible dosas and drinkable chai. We arrived around 10:00 and by the time we left around noon it was getting crowded with holiday folks visiting the temple. It might be worth a try to get there even earlier, but I don't know if there's a time the parking lot technically opens.

It was a perfect one-day getaway from the city.

Travel Photo Friday: Nehru Zoo, Hyderabad, India

Nehru Zoo isn't a bad place for getting away from the noise and dirt of the city. It's crowded, but you can find some quiet spots.

The nice thing about zoos in certain countries is that you can get close to the animals:

We keep Muffin up high, above the crowds of her admirers:

We've been twice and we still haven't seen everything yet. Muffin doesn't last too long before we need to head home. You can walk or drive through the zoo. There's a tiger safari (which we haven't done yet), a kids' train, and supposedly elephant rides, but both times we've been the elephants have been in the "garage."

Photo Friday is hosted by DeliciousBaby.com.

Travel Photo Friday: Basket Shopping, Hyderabad, India

Just picking up some babies and baskets.

And we saw a cow, too.

Photo Friday is hosted by DeliciousBaby.com.

We Knew When to Fold 'Em and When to Walk Away

Our vacation wasn't terrible. But we came home a day early. It wasn't what we expected and it wasn't relaxing. The good parts weren't making the lame and frustrating parts bearable enough and since Mike has Monday off from work we decided to come home while we could still salvage some of the long weekend.

Muffin had a blast. She was having so much fun that it was nearly impossible to get her to sleep at night. We saw monkeys right outside our cabin and at the camp restaurant. There were goats and cows along the road. A camp dog followed us around all day and hung out on our porch. There were bugs and dirt everywhere. It was paradise for our little adventure baby.

Packing up.

It didn't take Muffin long to go from hip city kid...

...to Lord of the Flies jungle baby.

Out for a walk.

The Tyda Jungle Bells camp was a bust so it's just as well we only stayed there one night. The trekking they advertised was walking up the hill along a road and they insisted we needed a guide. The guide never showed up so we wandered around on our own until the humidity and bugs drove us back to our cabin.

The language barrier with our driver only exacerbated some of the problems we had with him. A lot of the problem would probably be considered our fault for not wanting to stick to a planned itinerary, for wanting to be more spontaneous. That's the way travel is done here. But we insisted we had reservations at one hotel and even when we showed him the printout, he didn't believe us and drove us to another hotel, brought our reservation up to the front desk, then returned to the car to explain they have no rooms so we'll have to go to the other hotel. No kidding, that's why we didn't book there in the first place.

Muffin gets a lot of attention when we go out in public because she's so white. We're used to it here in H'bad. But out in a remote area that doesn't have a lot of Western visitors, we were mobbed whenever we left our room and it became exhausting. We were seen as the rude ones for being tired of having so many people stop us to take photos and try to hold the baby. It's one thing when it takes five minutes out of our day. But when there are several families taking that five minutes, the time adds up and we felt like we had lost a lot of our own family time, obliging other families and trying to be friendly.

Her adoring fans.

The Borra Caves were cool and we're glad the driver ignored our wishes and took us there early in the morning before too many people arrived. The botanical gardens in Araku were also quite pleasant, later in the day as the sun was going down and we were too tired to worry about being polite, declining all requests for photos with Muffin. And the scenery throughout the trip was gorgeous. It reminded us of the mountains in Burundi and Rwanda. But I think we were actually aching for some Burundians whose French was at least as decent as ours so we could get our basic ideas across rather than hoteliers who didn't speak any English at all.

But in the end, we were tired from Muffin's lack of naps. We weren't doing any of the trekking we had planned. We were spending too much time in the car between the few touristy things that we did want to see, plus the driving between hotels. (And to top it off, we were in a dry county! Not that we're huge drinkers, but we were having the kinds of days were a cold beer at sunset would have tasted very good.) On Saturday afternoon I asked Mike when do we decide to go to the airport and catch the next flight home because it wasn't fun anymore. He made some calls and we were home about thirty hours sooner than we'd planned. Muffin went down for a nap right away and then went down for her regular bedtime with no fuss.

The trip was a learning experience. We now know that Muffin is mostly agreeable (until bedtime) where ever she is and she handles all the attention like a champ. The hiking backpack worked out well. I'm not inclined to go on too many more trips, though, until she's off of bottles and formula. Washing the bottles in the given facilities was a pain. And somewhat begrudgingly we'll probably try a more "Western-friendly" location on our next trip, just to see what the difference is.

More photos on flickr.

Yowling

Every once in a while we hear what we assume to be a cat in heat yowling outside our bedroom window all night long. We don't know what to do about it other than roll over and try to fall back to sleep, annoyed, yet thankful that it's not waking up Muffin. Last night there was yet another cat. Mike and I were both tossing and turning for awhile trying to sleep. At one point it got so frequent and so loud that I thought our cat was yowling back, but she was curled up next to me in bed, also trying to sleep.

Around 4:30 in the morning, at least one tiny little voice joined the chorus of meows.

Great. She had kittens.

We had our share of feral kittens in Bujumbura and any time we tried to help it didn't end well.

Shortly after the sun came up the cats quieted down and we forgot about them. They are still quiet tonight.

I don't want Muffin running up to help every injured or lost animal she sees, because animals are unpredictable and they have diseases. But once she's a little older, I can't see myself teaching her that ignoring crying kittens is an okay thing to do, either. There are just so many of them out in the world beyond the United States, it's exhausting worrying about them all.

Slow Week in the Hills

It's been a slow week here. One of the highlights for me was finding fresh thyme at one of the grocery stores. Four trips out to the quarantine office and Ellie is now here not only in actuality, but legally as well. I bought Muffin some over-priced t-shirts and shorts from the British equivalent of Old Navy here because I was afraid that if I waited for mail-order from the actual Old Navy, she would have outgrown everything I ordered by the time it arrived. We saw the neighborhood Rolls Royce. We saw the hot-pink Mercedes that's owned by someone out in HITEC City. It's been too hot to go outside and have any fun.

Yup, exciting.We're in a summer slump I guess. I hope we can get out to the mountains in a few weeks for a short vacation. We need cooler temperatures and a change of scenery.

Ellie Is Here!

Our cat arrived last night after much stress. From the flakiness of the shipping company in the United States to the bureaucracy of the Indian government, this was the worst pet moving experience we've had so far.

Ellie has been living at my mom's house in Rhode Island. We realized that if she was going to join us, we had a narrow window of opportunity with the weather being neither too cold nor too warm for her to fly out of New England and too hot to land here (as it is, she can only land during nighttime temps here). To help ease the burden on myself and my mom, we used a shipper to make the flight arrangements. We will not be using this shipper again. He was a total flake. We started making inquiries weeks ago. Several times I asked him what documents he needed, no response. We finalized a date for Ellie to leave, but there were two flights on that day. Despite asking several times, he told us on Sunday which flight she was on, for Tuesday. I also asked him several times how to submit payment and he finally got around to telling us on Monday.

Also on the weekend, despite trying to get the ball rolling here in India a couple weeks earlier, we were told that pets can't arrive as unaccompanied cargo. A flurry of phone calls between the expeditor here and various customs officials gave us permission to send her as cargo, confirmed on Monday.

The previous Monday, Ellie was at the vet to get her health certificate. When my mom brought it in to the USDA office personally for the seal (an office is about an hour's drive from her), the USDA vet refused to accept Ellie's Burundian rabies vaccination. She would accept it if the Indian government agreed to accept it. So another flurry of phone calls, emails, scans, and Mike having to make a translation of the document from French got Ellie her USDA certification. (And just in time to be mailed back to my mom before the government shutdown closed the USDA office.)

An import permit was required, but between the shipper in the United States and the expeditor here, the conversation went something like this: "We need the air way bill number in order to process the import permit." "We need the import permit in order to complete the air way bill." "We can't provide the import permit until there's an air way bill." This went on for several nerve-wracking days before each side budged a little and we finally ended up with both, within just a couple hours of each other.

After all that, feeling confident that Ellie would get on the plane in Boston and be delivered here, we found out on Tuesday (the day she's leaving Boston) that the airport here doesn't process cargo on the midnight flights and Ellie would have to wait at the airport until the customs office opened in the morning. What? No one could have told us this weeks ago when we first proposed the flight times? When I specifically said that we'd like to bring her in on the Lufthansa flight that arrives at midnight and I asked if there are any times that the airport doesn't process pets? Really, no one could have mentioned it then?

My mom called early Wednesday our time to say that Ellie was on the plane, Tuesday night her time. At that point we still had no idea if we'd be able to spring her from the airport when her flight arrived Wednesday night, just before midnight. Our plan was that Mike would go out and meet the midnight flight, do his best to get her out, and if he couldn't, leave her with water, food, and a fresh towel in her cage, and I'd go back out Thursday morning to get her.

On Wednesday night, a couple hours before leaving for the airport, Mike received word that he'd be able to bring her home at midnight. All sorts of favors were called in and I'm sure we owe a few ourselves now.

But we have Ellie. She's already shaken off the travel and is settling in. I hope getting her out of the country will be easier. At least we'll have a better idea of what we're in for.

The Littlest Grasshopper and Other Critters

I think it's well known and well documented that I love all animals, even the creepy crawly ones, with just a few exceptions. I don't want them in my hair and I'm waging a constant battle against mosquitoes. Some of them should stay outside. But for the most part, I'm the first person to run up to a bug to check it out, except when Mike beats me to it. India has provided us with many opportunities so far to instill in Muffin a love and appreciation for even the smallest critters.

Here's is the littlest grasshopper, who was hanging out in the laundry room this week:

It was about one centimeter long.

This week we also saw what some people call a water bug or palm bug, but what I refer to as a giant cockroach:

Luckily it was outside, per my verbal contract with some bugs.

And finally this week,what I think is a yellow grass butterfly:

They have been showing up dead all over the street lately. I don't know if it's a seasonal thing or an environmental thing. It's been a few degrees warmer lately than it's supposed to be this time of year so maybe that's affecting their life cycle.

And here's my favorite bug of the week:

She's been known to hover at mealtimes trying for any scrap of food that she can get.

The Urban, Wild, Farm Animals

One of my criteria for choosing a country to live in is the number of cows or other livestock that wander the streets. The more, the better! I love looking outside to see a cow walking through our upscale, suburban neighborhood. On Saturday morning I heard mooing and I grabbed Muffin to go out and look for the cow. She was hidden by some leaves at first -- our terrace is one floor up from street level -- but Mike managed to get a couple shots of her.

Roadside cows, pigs, and goats charmed me throughout our time in Burundi and I haven't tired of them here, either. I love that I can share them with Muffin now, too. I saw a gorgeous chicken the other day, the nicest I've seen here, and if we had a yard I would have scooped her up and brought her home.

Muffin needs more animal friends to play with.

Pet Assistance for Egypt Evacuees

If you live in the D.C. Metro area and can lend a hand with Americans who are trying to evacuate Egypt with their pets, please contact the Foreign Affairs Friends of Animals Network: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=298021694910

From the group's note:

...AFSA and the Foreign Affairs Friends of Animals Network to help with contingency planning on the DC end. We don’t know how the situation will evolve in the coming days, but one scenario may possibly involve flying the pets to the DC area, in which case a network of volunteers would potentially be needed to provide short-term care for some of these cats and dogs.

Are you in the DC area and interested in lending a hand?

- Let us know if you can meet at the AFSA office, 2101 E Street NW in DC this Saturday or Sunday Feb. 5 or 6 at 2 pm.

- If you can’t come to a meeting this weekend, but are potentially available to provide short-term fostering in the DC area for a USG dog or cat, please let us know that too.

Granted, we should consider these possibilities before we head overseas with our pets, but that doesn't make the decisions any easier once the situation arises. You rarely expect something like this to happen in "your" city or country.

Our Dinner Guest of Honor

After Thanksgiving Mike read the Facebook status of one of our friends who had enjoyed a succulent duck for dinner (We've had her duck. It's amazing.) and Mike wondered if we could get duck here. Well, with the help of our driver, Mohammed, my Christmas present to Mike was a duck for dinner.

On Tuesday Muffin and I went to the bird market in the Old City, where there are all sorts of live birds for both dinners and pets. We were surrounded by blue and green parakeets (budgies), geese, turkeys, blackbirds, guinea hens, and chickens. Ducks were scarce but Mohammed assured me we'd find some. First I was offered geese. They looked good, but they weren't what I wanted. And they looked too big to fit into our tiny oven. (I'd been instructed to buy the biggest duck I could find, but I was thinking of the biggest duck that would fit in our small oven and small selection of cooking pans.) The first ducks I found were mallards. They were cheap, but covered in flies. In an outdoor market like this, there are going to be some flies, but I wanted to shop around see what my other options were.

We walked down the street, peeking into every storefront. The parrots and parakeets where beautiful and I wanted a cage full of little blue ones to bring home for our terrace. There were also some beautiful ornamental hens and I wish I had a yard for keeping some in. I saw two of the biggest turkeys I've ever seen in my life. Mohammed said that if Americans want a big turkey they must wait for Christmas; at Thanksgiving time only small turkeys are available. There are enough Christians in the city to demand big Christmas turkeys, but not enough Americans to warrant big Thanksgiving turkeys. (Not that the big ones would fit in our oven anyway.) We passed by dozens and dozens of guinea hens, small turkeys, and geese but after several storefronts we still hadn't seen any other ducks.

Just when I was resigning myself to the possibility of guinea hens instead of duck we came to one of the last vendors on the block, the one Mohammed buys the Americans' Thanksgiving turkeys from. He happened to have two big ducks as well. They were pricier than the first ducks I'd seen, but the conditions seemed cleaner. No flies, less smelly. And the right size -- the biggest I could find and the biggest that would fit in our oven. We made a deal for the three kilo male duck, the larger of the two, for 1200 rupees (about $26). It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but honestly I have no idea how much a duck should cost. He tried to sell me the pair for a bargain price and it didn't occur to me until the ride home that I could have bought them both and put one in the freezer.

Many Americans get excited over buying fresh meat but then make a mistake, only once, about delivery of the animal. After seeing friends have live turkeys and other live animals dropped off at their houses, I knew to ask for the duck to be prepared for us. Plucked, cleaned, no neck, take out the organs, for an additional 100 rupees ($2 -- probably the best $2 I've ever spent).

On Thursday Mohammed went back to the market with a cooler full of ice, picked up our prepared duck, and brought it home. Our housekeeper cleaned it off and wrapped it up to sit in the refrigerator. Mike had his Christmas duck.

Mike did all the cooking yesterday. I'm not confident in my meat-roasting skills, but I was able to stock the kitchen with all the groceries he needed, plus keep Muffin out of the way, tidy up the presents-opening mess, and set the table while Mike went to work with his bird.

Muffin helped a little.

It was delicious. It wasn't perfect, but that's due to us still figuring out the nuances of the oven and the toughness of the bird had to do with the life it led before it met me. But it was tasty and something we'd like to do again. The potatoes and carrots roasted in duck fat were amazing and if duck fat is readily available to you I highly suggest you try it. With some seasoned rice and a cranberry log our friends brought over, dinner was complete.

Note the cranberry log standing upright on the plate...

We had a great dinner with some of our new friends and we couldn't have asked for a better day. I hope everyone else celebrating yesterday had as happy a Christmas as we did.

I Hate the Sound of Squeaking in the Night

If Muffin hadn't woken up hungry at three in the morning, I may have slept through all the noise. But she fell asleep unusually early so I wasn't surprised that she needed a mid-night snack.

I brought her into our bed and was feeding her when I heard a crash followed by squeaking and then another crash. "No!!!!!" I silently screamed. Our neighbors had a rat in their kitchen a few weeks ago and I knew it was only a matter of time before a rat found its way into ours. I grew up in old houses in the country, so I'm used to mice getting in the house. I'm also used to having many cats to help keep the mice away. But rats are a different story. Rats are big, dirty, city monsters. And we don't even have one cat with us right now; even if she were here, I'm not sure I'd want her tangling with a dirty city rat.

The noise stopped as suddenly as it started, so I didn't wake up Mike. Until I heard it again. I poked at him until he got up. As I was doing that, though, it occurred to me the rat might not be in our kitchen. Our master bedroom and bathroom butt up against the concierge's kitchen. During the day we constantly hear people in there. So if the rat noise is so loud in our bedroom, maybe it's not in our kitchen but in the concierge's. I made Mike get up and investigate our kitchen. He said everything looked fine. He hadn't heard any squeaking or crashing, but he closed the kitchen door just in case. He came back to bed and I continued feeding Muffin.

Then Mike heard the squeaking for himself. He went back into the kitchen and could hear the squeaking coming from someplace else. The rat was definitely not in our apartment. Phew. I'm not that happy that it's only on the other side of a wall, but for now we're safe.

She Ate My Moth

This morning I woke up with a funny feeling. I realized that I'd slept well and it's been several weeks since that happened. It was cool last night, which helped. But mostly I think my peaceful rest came from the fact that I wasn't awakened even once during the night by the cat. That's unusual but it didn't cause me any alarm until I found the mess downstairs. The cat greeted me, sitting on the counter with a very pleased look on her face.

She was too busy with a demolition derby to bother me last night. Something was shredded all over the floor. It was the same color as the carpet, but it wasn't pieces of carpet. I couldn't figure out what it was. It looked sort of like wood chips, but it was light and fragile. Also, a bunch of stuff that had been on the counter was on the floor, too: keys, business cards, change. It's like there was a party all night while I was upstairs asleep.

Another thing missing from the counter: the large, yellow moth I'd picked up on one of my walks a few days ago. It was long dead and dried out and I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with it. But it was a moth I'd never seen in this area before and it was beautiful so I thought I'd hold onto it for a few days, maybe take some photos and then see if Mike wanted to take even better photos of it. I'd left it on the porch but when it started raining a few days ago I brought it inside and tucked it into a corner of the counter.

The yellow flakes on the floor were bits of shredded moth wing. I'm disappointed about the moth's demise. But I'm even more annoyed by the fact that I have to drag out the big, unwieldy vacuum cleaner today. I really miss the Dust Buster (which is en route in our air freight from Burundi--Mike packed up the house this week!).

It's been Dullsville around here and I've generally been okay with the quiet, slow pace. If I wanted to break up the monotony, cleaning up moth bits is not how I envisioned doing that. The messes are only going to get weirder when there's a kid around, aren't they?

All that remains of my moth

Plague of Locusts? Not Quite.

While a plague of locusts sounds like fun, I'm getting plenty of entertainment with our recently elevated numbers of nsenene, a local name for a type of grasshopper in the katydid family. (I learned today that they are all grasshoppers, but short-horned grasshoppers are locusts and long-horned grasshoppers are katydids.) Last week I noticed maybe a handful of them over the course of several days. This morning as I walked through my office compound they were everywhere, alive clinging to walls and dead on the ground.

According to wikipedia, where everything is always true, they are a tasty treat in Uganda "and surrounding countries." I haven't seen anyone here eating them, but we are a surrounding country so maybe folks are chowing down. Apparently though, pregnant women should not eat them because the baby will become deformed, in the shape of a grasshopper. So I'm keeping my mouth shut.

Bugs don't really bother me but I could live without these guys and gals flying off walls and into my face and hair when I walk by.

Their appearance is a sign that the long dry season is on the way. It's not really my favorite season, but it's the last time I'll be seeing all these signs, at least here in Burundi. Mr. and Mrs. Ibis returned last weekend; I heard their call early Sunday morning. And the kingfisher is back. So are the giant frogs. All these seasonal creatures that I didn't realize I'd missed until I noticed they were back.

Step One: Le Vaccination Contra Rabies

We generally procrastinate with our moving preparations until they are absolutely necessary. Checking the calendar over the weekend spurred me to dig out the cat's vet records... We realized it's absolutely necessary for the cat to get her rabies vaccination immediatement if we have any hope of getting her on a plane with me in June. The rabies vaccination has to be given at least 30 days prior to flying, but no more than a year before. Ellie's last vaccination was last April. And there's a slight chance my travel dates will be moved up, so we want her ready for that if it happens. Did you know that it's May already? That sort of surprised me.

On Saturday we called the one vet in town. She was closed that day for a national holiday and she's always closed on Sunday. We had her come by the house while we were home for lunch this afternoon. (J'aime vet house calls! For an additional $5, the vet will come to your house, which we know after some experience that that is much preferable to bringing the cat into the laboritoire.)

The vet prepared the shot, Mike grabbed the cat, and the vet jabbed her before she even knew what happened. It was the easiest vaccination experience we've ever had. And I'm still the good guy. The cat came out of hiding as soon as Mike left to return to work.

But the vet did not bring a rabies certificate with her. She was expecting us to have a vaccination card, which we've never had for the cats. Luckily I had the certificate from last year, in French, with all the cat's pertinent information, and she took that with her and will deliver the two certificates back to the house later this afternoon. She also said that it will be no problem to prepare a certificate de bonne santee in a few weeks when we are ready to voyager. Will that certificate of good health be in English? We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I think we can get it translated and notarized for the nice people back at Newark airport (who reportedly tried to turn away an American traveling from Burundi for having a visa from a made-up country).

A tiny bit of my travel anxiety has been alleviated now that the rabies vaccination is taken care of. I always stress out over traveling with the cats. (The fact that we only have one cat now makes me sad, not less stressed out.) And we really, really want her to get on the plane with me as excess baggage. She can't fly in the cabin and by the time Mike flies home we risk it being too warm for her to go in the cargo hold.

P.S. By the time I finished writing this post, the rabies certificates had been delivered. Delivery is one service area that Burundi tends to get right.

Ants Addendum

I can't believe I forgot to mention the most disturbing place I keep finding the ants. In the valve of the water distiller! You cannot imagine the horror I feel whenever I go to fill up a water bottle, pitcher, or ice cube tray with pure, clean water, to have a shower of ants come tumbling down. My clean drinking water, filled with ants!

Ants Are Everywhere

I haven't been this annoyed since the initial culture shock after arriving here. Is the opposite happening now, where as much as I love this place, I'm also ready to be somewhere else for a while?

Ants. It seems like they are never completely out of season, but there are definitely times when there are more of them. They swarm on anything that's left on the counter for just a few minutes. They're all over the sink if you don't wash the dishes right away. (I can tell if the housekeeper isn't washing dishes well enough, because they swarm the "clean" dishes in the drying rack, too.) I'm finding them in the microwave and huddling outside the refrigerator. They're on furniture in the living room. I often find them crawling across the screen on my laptop and Kindle. They are too numerous to bother with traps, motels, bug bombs, vinegar washes. There are always more ants that will replace the ones you get rid of.

I've given up. I'm living with the ants for three more months. I know that there will be ants in Rhode Island this summer, too, but for some reason that doesn't bother me right now. I'm so happy that the mosquitos won't be carrying malaria that I'm actually welcoming the tame little Rhode Island bugs I'll find.

I don't want this to become a complaint blog. I'm trying to enjoy my last couple of months here, because I do love it here and I am going to miss it. As a Burundian co-worker said to me today, we're leaving with a huge souvenir! It will be impossible to forget our time here.

Checking in on Gustave

Let's see how things are going with everyone's favorite Nile crocodile and the man who's trying to catch him.

I don't know when the BBC originally aired this interview. I heard it for the first time today, thanks to Mike. Not much is new, actually. But I can't get enough Gustave media. The best part of the interview is the very end, when he's asked how he'll feel if someone else catches Gustave. He says he'll remain faithful to Gustave and he hopes Gustave remains faithful to him by not letting anyone else catch him.

For any new readers who are unfamiliar with Gustave, he is the world's largest Nile crocodile and he lives here in Burundi. Patrice Faye, pictured, is the man who's been trying to catch him for several years. I've had the chance to meet Patrice several times and he is a real-life Indiana Jones. Burundi wouldn't be the same without him and Gustave here, playing their little game.

Photo from BBC World Service.