Sunday, April 5, 2015

Lina Versus the Ants

Sorry for the silence; I’ve been recovering from the term, getting caught up on sleep, and trying to wade through some of the tasks that I’ve put off till now. Things like cleaning my house, mending and altering cloths, finishing up my giveaway boxes, and reading for next term. I do a lot of researching for the upcoming history topic as well as reading through the literature books I plan to do. So, I’ve been lazily busy!

On Monday of this week we had a really big storm with lots of rain, and that set off a rather unfortunate chain of events. Because of the rain, the flying termites started to swarm all over my porch and front door.

My poor old house couldn’t withstand the onslaught, and several tuswa (the local word) made it into the house. Beth and I battled the annoying things as they crashed around the lights, into us, and generally made a nuisance of themselves. Mercifully their wings fall off pretty soon, and we were able to enjoy our evening in relative peace. Then phase two began. I looked down and realized that all those dead and dying tuswa were attracting the army ant who were apparently in the area because of all the rain. So Beth and I began to repel the ant invasion. There was much Doom (like Raid), Piff-Paff (the best insect powder ever), and cornmeal (to keep them from crossing into the house) deployed, and eventually I felt like I could safely go to bed.

The next morning I worked on cleaning up the ant aftermath, and then went into my room where I found that my cat had knocked over an expensive glass jar of body cream. As I cleaned that up, I realized that white ants (termites) had come up in my bedroom and destroyed a book. So I cleaned that up and nuked the little hole that seemed to be their entry point. Termite dirt has a very distinctive, musty sort of smell to it. Fabreeze may have been used in the restoration effort. Since then I’ve kept a weather eye out for unacceptable ant activity, but so far things seem under control...in the house. I spent about an hour today repelling another ant invasion with the help of the watchman and some fire. Hopefully they are now on their way AWAY from my house!

On Tuesday Beth and I are heading down for a quick shopping/get off station/visit some friends trip to Kitwe; prayers for safety on the road and in town would be appreciated. I’ll have to do all the driving as I’m the licensed driver, and with all the rain we’ve been having this week the road out to the pavement can’t be that good.

I wish all of you a happy Easter, and that we might all rejoice in the fullness of those simple words, He Lives!