More Rats

We have had a real big problem with rats in the recent months. They say it's because of the weather. I could care less why, I just want them out of my house. They eat my clothes, poop everywhere, and make our house smell. My favorite is when they die and you can't find them so everything smells like decaying rodent for days.
On this fun occasion we needed to make some copies for our Bible study. I pulled the printer down from it's shelf so it would be easier for me to reach and all of this junk came down with it. A rat had made a nest behind the printer and had eaten through tons of paper to make it nice and soft for himself. Not only that by ants were attracked by the fabulous rat smell and came to join the party. We now have a huge colony of ants living INSIDE our printer. I tried the zap them with 220v of electricity but those suckers are still alive. Only in Africa!

??

The sticker on the bus says "Do not Panic, Needs Never End". Can someone please tell what this means.

Muzungu Minibus

So how many people can you fit in our car. Legally it is built for 7, but this past week on our way to training we fit 10 with a whiteboard and 3 bags. We probably could have fit more if we really tried but on that day it was crowded enough for us.

Parade or Traffic Jam?

In America we have well organized parades where streets are blocked off and traffic is controlled. Not so here. On any given day you will find a group of people, some as small as 10, walking against traffic or with it which ever they feel like in the middle of the road and they call it a parade. Sometimes they have a police office walking in front of them most often not. The whole purpose for the parade is to get the cars passing by to give money out the window. What it really accomplished is massive traffic jams, a lot of honking, and stress all around. Trust me it's no fun.

Maggots

I was sitting on our rug one day doing some paperwork when this brown thing fell from the ceiling. This is not unusual for us because we have a roof made out of grass and things like to live in it so we have bugs falling out of it all the time. But this was not regular bug, it was poop. Ok fine there is poop raining from above whatever, but it kept falling. So I got up and tried to see if I could tell where it was coming from. It wasn't rat, mice, or lizard poop so I got a little nervous cause the only other thing that would be up there would be a snake. I didn't see anything so I made Mike come in and look at it. He said it wasn't poop at all but rat poison. I said he was crazy because we don't put rat poison up there so why would it be falling from the ceiling. Oh well TIA right. So later that day Steph and I are sitting trying to finish our charts and things start falling from the ceiling again. This time its not poop but huge alive maggots. Giganticly gross maggots! Now I can handle a lot of things but maggots is not one of them.




The next day we asked Roger to climb up in our roof to see if he could find what it was. He found a huge very dead rat (that's where the poison came from) that was full of maggots feeding on it's decaying body. Not I forgot to mention that our room also smelled like dead animal but this is fairly normal for us so we didn't think twice about it. He pulled it down and got rid of all the maggots for us. Sick!

Car Frustrations

We took our car into the shop to get the tires balanced because we were having a problem with alignment and some other things. They quoted us 1 hour until completion. Knowing that this s Zambia we didn't return for two and a half hours. The car was still up and the tires off. The thought they could get away with just saying sorry because this society does not know how to take responsibility for their actions. Yet what the didn't know that Stephanie and I were having a bad day and in the end not only did they fix they car but they gave us a major discount. I may not know a lot about cars but I do know how to bargin.

Rats

Stephanie and I were driving to Lusaka from the base early one morning on our way to get supplies in the city when we st oped in Mazabuka to use the toilet. As we pulled in the grocery store was just opening and the workers were sweeping the floor. Just outside the entrance door there was a trashcan that they were putting the dirt into and on top of the trashcan was a pile of dead rats that they had apparently also cleaned out of the grocery store. Now we are pretty used to rats but it still gets me when you see them running around restaurants and grocery stores. Where is the Health Department when you need them.