Mr. Jaws, the Purloined Cockroach, and
Missionary Bill
(written during our second term in Chad, around 2003)
Bill & Sonya Shaw
Upon entering my 12th year of living here
on the continent of Africa, I learned there is never an end to new and
unusual experiences. My most recent
adventure took place in the toilet (you read it right- in the toilet. "On" the toilet would not be
physically or politically correct in this situation. "Over" the toilet, maybe, but never
"on.")
You see, lo these many years ago the
Swedish missionaries built this bush mission station, which is well, kind of
like a bush mission station. Look it up
in the Dictionary of Missionary Terms, Random House Publishers,third edition. There under "Bush
Mission Station" you will find the citation "see Swedish AG mission
station in Andoum, Chad." Not a bad
place, but it still carries with it some of that old bush mission
station charm.
One of those old time favorites they have
retained are non-flush toilets. Oh, you could pretend to flush by grabbing an imaginary handle and making the
appropriate flushing noises at the end of Act 1, but the fact is the toilets at Andoum are nothing
more than a slab of concrete with a slit in the middle maybe 3 inches wide and
8 inches long over which you gymnastically posture your posterior in order to
reenact the bombing of Guernica.
The
first thing to learn about living in Africa is to live in such a way
that the necessities of life are not a hassle.
To me visiting "the place where the king sits alone" (as the French so
coyly call it) is an unavoidable necessity- you gotta do
what ya gotta do. So it is a no
brainer to make the place of convenience as convenient as possible. But
you know them Swedes- always trying to
find a more efficient way to get more done in a day. I guess they figure
stretching exercises and
improving your muscle tone and balance are activities to be combined
with the more basic of human procedures. What else can you do there
besides read the paper? Our Scandinavian cousins did consider the
potentially embarrassing ramifications of imitating an Olympic gymnast
doing floor exercises while laying your burden down so they made a nice
private stall of bricks and mortar so however you looked it remained
between you, yourself, and whatever crawled out that slit in the floor.
So, there I was, in the cool of the evening, starring down past the
slit into a pit (which is where you get the term "pit" toilet) using
my flashlight to count all the cockroaches on the pit walls. While wondering when
one of them will get the smart idea to come up out of the pit about the same
time I am gymnastically crouched and terribly vulnerable to external
intervention, I saw this flash of brown something scurry past my foot. Then, almost immediately after, I saw a
second scurrying flash go past my foot.
Unfortunately, I was in the middle of doing my business and was unable
to stop to investigate- the classic "point of no return" kind of stance.
Well, I figured it was two harmless
cockroaches having a late night triste. I thought I was bad
about losing my romantic touch! Imagine
being a high school aged cockroach, and asking your favorite cockroach cheerleader to a rendezvous at her favorite
romantic spot- the human toilet... I
don't think so.
Back
to my drama- as I
finished my business in the semi-darkness, I heard this crunching and
slurping noise. Cue the scary screeching horror movie music, as upon
investigation I found him- Mr. Jaws.
On the wall, no more than 18 inches from my face, was this huge brown
hairy
spider, with the requisite long legs and icky gross body. (BTW, my
girls made me add
the "icky gross" part.) Most shocking of all was his
head/jaws/fangs array- easily double the width of his body and it was
like
he took steroids and worked out at the "Mandible Gym for Herkin' Big
Spiders" three times a week. HUGE!
Under
his jaws was captured my little brown scurry
number one, your typical card-carrying African cockroach. I soon deduced
it was these two who were running across the floor, just inches from my
foot, the chased and the chaser, only a few moments into my visit.
Thank you, Lord, the cockroached zigged up the wall and not zagged up my
leg...
With now rapt attention I watched Mr. Jaws make a late night milk shake of
the cockroach- I mean he was literally sucking the life juices out of this poor
cockroach, and I was watching him do it! Honestly, I did not know who to feel the
most sorry for-
innocent Mr. Cool "meet me at midnight"
Cockroach who was at one moment waiting for his cockroach sweetheart to show up
but who was by now only half the man he used to be,
or
Mr. "Tough Guy Buff to
the Bone" Jaws the spider who had to reduce himself to
sucking cockroach body fluids to make a living (and you thought the
unemployment level was bad in America!)
or
the dumbstruck missionary who was
trying to figure out what to do. Let the spider live to kill again, thus less
cockroaches, or kill the spider and let the cockroaches live, but it may be the
missionary who is at the mercy of Mr. Jaws one day... what to do in these moral
dilemmas.
I
won't tell you what I did- but you really
need to be careful next time you need relief in Andoum, Chad- you never
know who will come calling. And let this be a lesson for you. Listen
to your mother when she tells you to always wear clean underwear because
you never know when you are going to be in an accident...
