I am sad to say that the animal rights people will be celebrating the unsuccessful termination of one rat, said to have met its demise at the time of the last post. I celebrated prematurely it would seem. I left the house to shop and allow the rat time to stop its thrashing before I tried to collect it. Call me cruel. When I came back to perform said rat’s last Rites, it has managed to save itself. Turns out that the glue constituting the trap dries out a bit too quickly. If this were the States I would take this product back and present it with evidence of the rat having been there and gone. But alas, this is Uganda and such recourse is not available. Besides, no Ugandan would buy this new-fangled thing… I shared my dilemma with Samil, my favorite store keeper. He went to great lengths to explain how to mix a poison paste using these nasty little silver fish sold by the mound (literally – there are huge piles of them in the markets). I wrinkled up my nose and gave an involuntary shudder, explaining that this was too messy and that the critter might just go hide someplace and stink. But this option is seeming better and better. There may be a use after all for these horrid silver fish which I call Rac ma rec in Acholi. Translation: BAD FISH!
As if failing to trap Howard (isn’t that the name of the rat in 1984???) wasn’t bad enough, this morning I saw his smaller rodent cousin, a mouse, trying to hide in my bedroom wall. Not to be outdone a second time, I placed the trap between this mouse-house and the only exit and waited… Finally, I had him! YES! Afraid this might be another rodent-Houdini, I found an empty detergent tub and got the stuck-mouse and trap, trapped and took both to the pit out back. But relax, animal lovers – this one ALSO managed to get out of the glue. So, Blue-Glue as I think it’s called is a worthless piece of !*#+ and no longer the best 6500 Sh. I’ve spent. But at least I have one less mouse in the house. This is getting old. Peace Corps needs to raise our daily allowance for varmint control.
It has rained all day and after finishing another book, I resorted to finishing my 2011 Income Tax Return. And yes – we are volunteers, but would you believe we have to report the “walk-around money” we get during the first three months of training. It must translate to at least $25.00 (I haven’t studied the form yet). God bless you Danny Davila for doing these for me while I’m in PC. To those of you in the States who think doing taxes is a pain-in-the-rear, let me give you another thing to think about. We get so accustomed to things like calculators, printers, scanners, phone calls to get 1098’s etc. we fail to think about life without them. Danny’s office sent me a perfectly good online copy of the Tax Organizer I’ve been using for years. It has all of last year’s data, complete with SSN and info you’d rather not share with others. I asked them to send me a hard copy, which they did after I explained, “no I can’t just print it.” Here’s how that would work here.
- Email the document to a business here – so they can make a hard copy, thereby giving them access to all of the financial data, SSN, account numbers and therefore my identity.
- E-mail it to someone at at my office – and have it saved where? in THEIR files to print, if there is power, if the printer is working, if their is toner.
- Put it on Flash Drive and take it to a business that makes copies – once again allowing them access to my data AND having to dispose of a perfectly good flash drive, because once it’s been inserted in a local’s computer, chances are almost 100% that you’ll get it back with a virus. Cyber version of “unsafe sex.”
- Put it on a CD and take it to a business, but again trust them not to save and use in some nefarious way.
Sounding a little paranoid you say? Until you’ve lived in such a place, there is simply no reference for the kinds of security issues faced every single day. Even getting money from an ATM is fraught with risks, not including the obvious one of being robbed. At least once every few weeks, there is another ATM scam on the front page of the paper. Some are quite elaborate and inventive. The most straightforward things get so complicated, it’s almost embarrassing to try to explain it to someone because it sounds like you’re making this stuff up. But there it is. Thank you Tammy for the hard copy. You and Danny get another star in your crown of sainthood.
Back to mice – as I sit here, I’m hearing suspicious sounds. And as a fellow PCV was describing to me yesterday, I am all-too-ready for a “mouseacre.”
Some day in the future, when I am ensconced in a comfy chair, sipping an icy drink with actual ice-cubes, having had a hot shower and then dressing in non-missionary-style-clothes, I may think back on these days and remember with fondness the rain storms, the mud, the church music, the mice But that day is far-far away in a different galaxy. For those of you who asked how many days ’till I come home???? A rough count would be a little less than 480! But then again – it could be tomorrow.