"Liming" with the Rats and Lizards

Living and working in a developing country is challenging,exhilarating and sobering in it’s stark contrasts to the infrastructure you are used to. The average wage here is $40 thousand GD(Guyana Dollars)per month,or just a little over $200 CAD.I get a stipend as a VSO volunteer that is slightly more than that to live on, but I also have my rent, gas, electricity, telephone and insurance paid for which the average Guyanese does not. My flat has cold and cold running water, an infuriating propane gas stove that you light with matches,loud humming fluorescent lights, metal gates and bars on every door and window, barbed razor wire fencing, a mostly flushing toilet, a working refrigerator, a landline telephone,two loud fans instead of AC, frequent power outages and a room mate. We share our back porch and the highly appealing hammock hung there with a health practitioner, whose clients use the hammock as a makeshift waiting room. VSO provided us with a personal safety alarm, a water filtering system, a flashlight, a mosquito net, a smoke detector and a bicycle purchase allowance. We pay extra for high speed internet, bottled drinking water and any laundry we do not want to wash ourselves by hand in cold or cold running water. I am keenly aware that this living situation which may appear to be a huge step down for me compared to North American standards is in fact pretty good for the average GTown resident. All around us in our neighborhood of “Kitty” as it is called, residents do what they can to augment their livelihoods from their homes. On my block alone there are two “rum shops” (bars with a strictly gentleman clientele),a furniture repair store, a laundress (thankfully right next door, a hardware retailer, a license plate maker, three “snackettes” which have so much security you can’t even touch any of the bags of chips or strange looking cookies to check expiry dates or read ingredients before buying, a barber shop and “Desiree’s Hangout” which appears to be another lockdown "snackette" except witha few chairs thrown in to sit on out front and maybe some rum shop dealings on the side hence the “hangout” or “liming” potential.("Liming"is what they call hanging out here).That is if you want to “lime” with the pack of wild dogs that live at that end of the block and chase cars and bikes ferociously. The high level of security employed here on all buildings is intimidating, visually unappealing, and a royal pain in the ass to get used to. Try unlocking five padlocked gates, each with a finicky key and three bolts ANYTIME you want to go anywhere, but sadly it is also essential. A fellow VSO who lives next door (gulp) had a break in at 2 am just a few mere months ago. This despite the excessive armoury there for protection. Then there is the ahem, wild life to contend with. I have seen rats directly out front of my flat, big fat wet rats the size of rabbits crawling out and looking right at me. I am terrified of rats and try to remain calm by telling myself that they have so much good food to eat in the ditches that they do not need to come inside. Same with the giant flying cockroaches, I have seen them and they are hideously scary but so far only outside. Inside we do have moths the size of hummingbirds and huge red dragon flies that occasionally commit suicide on the fluorescent lights and of course the nightly choir of crickets and frogs that sing so loudly on the porch it is sometimes hard to talk over them. We have a firmly entrenched resident army of miniature ants, the size of a grain of sand that converge on any crumb, speck, morsel, drip or drop of food you leave behind on the counter, sink or garbage. I have employed a strict “no crumb left behind” policy and keep all food in the fridge and remove garbage as it is created. Sadly "Lenigans Ants" also like toothpaste, shampoo, and body lotion. So they also clamor for any spittle, bristle or jar lid in your bathroom. I probably unknowingly consume thousands of them a day, a protein source if you will. I have a gecko or “house lizard” as they are called here who regularly manages to get INSIDE the mosquito net and scuttle about. After my first few shrieking sessions I have come to embrace him and his presence and have named him “Thin Lizzy”. I hope he at least eats some of the mosquito’s whose guerilla tactics allow them to breach the perimeter of the net each night and sup on my blood. I have become a ruthless killing machine that nightly hunts mosquitoes and other flying biting creatures that are inside the sanctuary of my net before climbing under to sweat myself to sleep. Despite this slick warfare I still wake up each morning with new welts. I average about fifty bites on my body at any given time. I’m clearly not batting 500 yet in this battle. Maybe I should get two lizards.