When Roaches Attack
August 11th, 2005 by Sarin
A very obvious fact about Cape Verdean houses are that mostly all of them are never finished before they are inhabited. Some more obvious than others, like houses with only 2 sides of the exterior painted (like a halfway house) or totally lacking a roof in one room of the house. This leaves the family to finish the most important aesthetics that they desire and then just forget about the rest that nobody will probably see. Some individuals will see the economics and the superficiality of this type of living as different, but how often do you look at the inside of a shoe to see how well it comforts?
In my situation, my homestay family’s house has an unfinished bedroom and unfinished common area that holds the stove and a dinner table. I ate in this common room everyday with its unpainted foundation and cement floor. The unfinished portions of houses like mine are susceptible to attacks from various insects. Sometimes spiders, ants and oh I chased a cricket with my sandal the other day. Also the house cat likes to torture a gecko that it never eats within the confines of this unfinished space.
So as I was eating my breakfast the other morning, I was not surprised to see a cockroach fly by and land perfectly on the floor beside me. I’ve never seen a cockroach in person in the states, and now here’s a special one that knew how to fly without killing itself. Because this is Africa, I get off my chair without any second thought and without any enthusiasm and slowly step on the cockroach with all intent of killing it. It’s ok, I think, I’m used to it and its nothing I haven’t done before.
A half minute later, as I’m minding my own business chowing down on some eggs, I feel something big start crawling up my foot, something obviously a lot bigger than a fly. I look down and it was a huge giant cockroach moving rapidly up my foot with all intention of attacking me. Panic ensues and I start stomping my foot on the ground with the wussiness of a 4 year old girl. The roach didn’t want to quit. It held on for dear life. I didn’t want to stomp on it because its gut would be all over me. My foot could have been on fire and I probably would have acted the same.
10 seconds later it somehow lost its grip on me and landed on the floor. I stomp it with much anger, once, twice, three times to make sure its dead. Calm arises and I wonder how some superhuman roach would get the better of me. As if this “super roach” really wanted to crawl up on me.
I had this curiosity and looked over at the other dead roach that I thought I had killed earlier. It was not there anymore. That same roach came back from the dead and climbed its way up my foot for revenge.
So apparently in Africa, not only can the roaches fly, but they also can resurrect themselves from the dead. All I needed was this horrifying traumatic experience for me to find out.
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