Rats, rotten mattresses and no water

Anyone who knows me knows I am not so good at coping with ‘nature’. Camping would never be my holiday of choice. Bugs, rodents and any other creepy crawlies are things I just cannot deal with. Nearly seven weeks in and I can just about handle the cockroach situation in My Squat by spraying Raid morning and night, and then just sweeping up any dead ones when I see them. But anything that’s alive and I turn into a screeching wreck. So when I woke up in the middle of the night on Saturday and went to the bathroom, opened my kitchen door to get the bucket to flush the toilet (the water was off) and a rat jumped out of my kitchen bin, ran over my bare foot, and went behind my bed, I didn’t cope with it particularly well. I thought about calling my mum, but realised there was perhaps little she could do to help me in that situation. So I got my hiking boots out of my wardrobe, got the broom and stood on top of my toilet. For two hours. There was no electricity, so I couldn’t even turn a light on, which would have at least made me slightly less terrified of the giant rat residing behind my bed. When I realised I couldn’t actually spend the entire night stood shaking on my toilet, I jumped onto my bed and cocooned myself in my mosquito net so Ratty couldn’t get me, and sat there until daylight when I was brave enough to turn My Squat upside down looking for him. I never found him. But I also never saw/heard him leave, so now I refuse to walk around My Squat without my broom and my hiking boots. Combine this with 4 (and now 5) days without electricity and water, a dodgy stomach and a mattress full of bedbugs, rain sodden, and smelling like a wet dog (there was a torrential downpour the other day and I left my window open, so it rained in on my bed), I was less than impressed with life for most of Sunday. On the plus side, on Saturday I spent half my weekly allowance on packet macaroni cheese and wine gums, so whilst I was unwashed, thirsty and rat traumatised, I at least had some rubbish to eat to console me!

I have now bought a sticky Rat Mat, which apparently I just put down in my kitchen with some food on it, and poor unsuspecting Ratty will fall victim to it. The prospect of disposing of an alive rat whose limbs are stuck to a mat doesn’t fill me with much joy, so I’ll only be leaving that down when I go to work in the morning, so I can then beg someone from my compound to do the honours for me when I get back after work. If Ratty falls for it that is. If not, it looks like I’ve got myself a housemate for the year.