Little Kamano recently came back from a short stay in the hospital for bronchial pneumonia. He’s fine now, but has passed his virus on to his mother and me. This is the 10th time I’ve been sick in 20 months. It’s more than a little ridiculous and since I feel like I live a super healthy lifestyle I can only attribute my pathetic immune system to increased levels of stress. Anyway, when Kamano came back from the hospital his mother said he told all the nurses all about the animals where he lives…the cows and the goats and the dog and the cat. I kind of feel like that. We have so many different animals in the village, it’s a lot like living on a giant farm and I marvel over it every day. My gogo owns a bunch of cows and goats as do many families in the village. There are sheep, and chickens, and roosters, and baby chicks everywhere. There are a handful or horses that live in the village that I see occasionally wandering around and a family of pigs lives nearby. We have the dog, Lofty who is a normal village mutt. To add to the mix, I acquired a kitten a few months ago. His name is Quatchi, he’s light orange and pretty cute and lovable. Those are all the normal animals in my daily life here. Then there are the odd, more unique ones I sometimes encounter. There was the chameleon I found on the side of the road last winter. He was pretty cool. Sometimes there are snakes. Two nights ago, there was a very big, very scary snake on our compound which was probably three feet long, maybe more. I couldn’t identify which kind of snake it was since it was dark and hard to see and it all happened so fast (and because I really don’t know much about snakes anyway). Shady came outside at dark to get some water and heard something moving and thought it was the cat. She screamed when she realized it was a snake. Julia threw boiling water on it and it started hissing and slithering towards us with it’s head reared up, in attack mode. I ran inside and shut the door while Julia and Shady and Rorisang ran after it with bricks and big sticks and their headlamps, like something out of a movie. The snake got away, but the family thinks it died from the boiling water. Let’s hope so. Then there are the more docile creatures such as the fascinating yet creepy bugs that I’ve gotten used to. This spring there were rainbow locusts everywhere. They just looked like regular green locusts on the outside until they spread their wings and displayed a complete rainbow of colors. On a walk once, I stopped to stare at a pile of dung that was crawling with dung beetles. They were hard at work rolling the dung into perfectly round balls. It was much more fascinating than gross, which says something coming from me. During the rainy season I often see herons searching for things to eat in the puddles around the village. On another walk I strolled past a gaggle of geese who I apparently offended with my presence. They started honking and flapping their wings and chased after me. I ran off in a panic while the owner of the geese laughed form his house. Living in such a natural, undeveloped area is probably what I like most about being here and what I’ll miss the most when I leave. I certainly do love development, but encountering all these things that nature produces that I would never come across in such an intimate setting back home, is truly amazing.
