Battling bats, and Romantic Roaches

Note to Travis: read the fine print in that Team Leader Job Description. Today Scott had two of our boys hold a spindly extension ladder so he could climb through a small outdoor vent into the attic over the Community Center wing rooms. He carried concentrated insecticide, a jerry can of water, a hammer and nails and bed sheets up that ladder, to hang up chlorpyriphos-treated cloths that would kill the smelly filthy infestation of bats whose guano sifts down the walls. This is one step in a process to turn our old Kwejuna-project store room into a community library, and to repaint and maintain the entire building before the Semliki Presbytery holds an official installation service in June.

And for our anniversary, a most welcome gift: dead roaches. Yes, many wives might hope for a bouquet of flowers or a fancy dinner out, but not me. In Bundibugyo there is no where to go really, and no flowers to buy. So . . . Scott went on one of his periodic roach jihads, with our workers, removing everything from the kitchen cabinets (the ones that used to have doors, but after one of his insecticide and fire mishaps blew them off, we found that we preferred the open look and that bugs had fewer places to hide) and spraying and cleaning. I love roses, but I would rather have a roach-free kitchen counter any day. This is the stuff of real love.

When you live in a jungle, you have to either succumb to the bats and bugs, or keep up a constant battle. Truce is not an option.