Mosquitos, mosquitos, mosquitos

Some of you have asked for a picture of my bed.  I have a very comfortable and commodious bed.  I also have a mosquito net over my bed.  Here is a picture of my mosquito net rolled up during the day.

And here is a picture of what my bed looks like when I get into it at night:

I thought it might feel claustrophobic, but it doesn’t at all.  It effectively keeps out mosquitoes, although one morning I did wake up to find a mosquito inside at the top of the net.

I thought I was doing a good job of avoiding mosquitos (making sure my windows were closed from 4 p.m. till 7 a.m. (which is the time when mosquitos love to be out and about) and wearing long sleeves and long pants in the evenings.  In the evenings and mornings, I always see a few mosquitos and have even killed a few, though hardly making a dent in the population.  A few days ago, I happened to look down at my feet and saw that they were covered with small red dots, which I was completely unaware of.  No itch, nothing.  Those sneaky little mosquitoes found the one exposed part of my body, because I love to wear sandals!   Fortunately, I take my anti-malarial pill every morning like clockwork, so no malaria symptoms yet.

Because there is so much rain here, it’s a perfect breeding ground for those nasty little critters that pack an incredibly powerful punch, considering their minuscule size.  And, I find it amazing that malaria is still so prevalent in so many parts of the world and that the only answer is mosquito bed nets.  But that’s another subject.

I knew that my house was far from mosquito proof.  I had noticed that my double metal front door had a gap in the middle where the 2 doors come together and on the bottom, perfect entry points for those little pests. The gap on the bottom is so big that a small lizard entered last week, which actually made me happy because lizards eat insects like mosquitos.  I had tried to block that gap with a towel, but the mosquitos were still getting in.  So I decided I needed some thick tape to tape over the gaps.  I had been looking for tape in the market for a couple of weeks and had not seen any.  So I looked up the word for “tape” in a Kinyarwanda dictionary: “ibande,” from the French word “bande.”

Equipped with my new Kinyarwanda word, I went to the market in search of “ibande,” but again did not see any.  I stumbled on a market stall that sold hardware items: tools, nails, plumbing items, etc.  It was like a mini, mini Home Depot.  Aha, I thought, it must have ibande.  So I asked the market seller if he had ibande.  He looked puzzled, as he repeated the word “ibande,” shaking his head.  As usual, a small group of Rwandan men crowded around to see what the umuzungu (foreigner) was up to.  They also looked at me quizzically when I said I wanted “ibande.”  I even wrote the word down, thinking perhaps my pronunciation was off.  The men all looked at the word, as if I had written down something in hieroglyphics.  As I continued to scan the numerous items in the market stall, I finally saw a large roll of tape in the back of the stall and pointed excitedly to the tape, shouting “ibande, ibande.”   Everyone was still confused by that word and the men and the market seller pointed to every item on the shelves except the ibande that I wanted.  It was quite comical, with me saying “oya” (meaning no) to every item presented to me.  I also tried using the word “tape,” which brought even more perplexed looks.  Finally, I got the seller to see the roll of tape.  And, everyone shouted what the name of that item was:  “Scotch.”  “Scotch?” I scratched my head as the seller handed me the tape.  Nowhere on the packaging was the word “Scotch.”  However, the word “TAPE” in very large letters was on the package, and I pointed that out to all the men around me.  “No,” they unanimously insisted, “The name is Scotch.”  A lesson in the enormous power of corporate advertising.  The 3M company, the owner of the tradename Scotch tape, should be proud of their marketing team.

Well, I was happy to have found the Scotch.  As soon as I got home, I used the Scotch to seal the gaps in my door to keep those pesky mosquitos out.  But, as there is always something else, this morning I noticed that a window in my house had been broken, creating a brand new welcome mat for the entry of mosquitos.  I used my new roll of Scotch to tape a piece of cardboard over the broken glass, which will do to keep out those awful pests until the school replaces the glass in the window.