I (H)Ate bugs

I do not like insects.  I am not one scream and run away when I see them, but they make me unhappy.  I think it is mostly an issue of personal space.  I like my own space, and only things I invite into my little bubble are welcome.  Now people, and animals such as cats and dogs, can be welcome in my space, but when I don’t want them I can close a door or simply say, “Leave me alone.” And I have my space back; this is not the case with bugs.  No matter what you do they will invade your space.  You can sleep under a net and the little ones will crawl through, you can spray noxious insecticide everywhere and they will soon appear again; bugs are persistent, annoying, and unwelcome.

Most recently bugs have invaded my food.  It started with rice weevils.  I opened my bin of rice and found a few little weevils crawling around in there.  Being a sizeable quantity of rice it would be silly and irresponsible (um hello, Africa?) to toss it out just because there are bugs in it. The solution: cook the rice as normal, just skim the little buggers off the top of the water when then float up.  Of course muttering to yourself with exclamations of, “Eeeww…, gross,” and, “I hate bugs, I hate bugs, I hate bugs” will come along naturally.  Any bugs left in are simply a bit of extra protein—yeah, delicious.

After the rice came the beans.  I bought some dried beans in the market and when I proceeded to sort through them to get rid of little rocks and bad beans I found more bugs.  This time they were sphere-like flying insects.  Their quick escape from the beans into my house freaked me out a bit and I had to take my bean sorting outside.  I did my best to shake out all the bugs and pick out beans that looked fishy, but still today I found one of these bugs hanging out in my beans.  No worries it was squished successfully.  The result of this? I am going to go on a bean diet for the next couple of weeks to use them all up before new buggies hatch.  I really should have bought a smaller amount of beans…

I have looked online for solutions to the “bugs in my grains” problem, but the number one suggestion is to freeze the rice or beans to kill the eggs and keep new ones from hatching.  If you remember I am without a refrigerator and getting anything below 85 degrees is highly unlikely.  The other option given:  Toss them out, but as I said before, I live in Africa…

Other than the bugs in my food my ritualistic spraying with insecticide, which will surely lead to cancer one day, has kept the buggers at bay.  Of course there is a constant parade of ants tromping though my bathroom, but without real ant traps there is no way for me to get my bug poison down to them. 

Another handy solution to my bug problem is that I have a lizard living in my ceiling... or that’s what I think it is… I’m pretty sure this friend, who I hear scurrying around on my drop ceiling periodically, eats up those more unpleasant bugs like big spiders and cockroaches.  At least I haven’t ever had any real problems with them, so I like to assume that that scary sound in the ceiling is doing some good.  Just like those extra bugs I eat give me the little boost of protein that is keeping me healthy, after a few “uggh’s” you have to look for the positives, it's the only way to stay sane. That, and liberal amounts of insecticide.