Houseguests

Living in Burkina Faso means tolerating a certain amount of unwanted houseguests... ants, cockroaches, crickets, lizards... they all live in with me, but don't think they pay rent!

This week I painfully discovered I have new houseguests, ones I hadn't met before. I woke up in the middle of the night being bitten hard by something in my bed..ouch! Then it bit me again, double-ouch! I knew this was no little mosquito-bite or ant-bite. I turned on the lights and saw... a scorpion in my bed!!! Panic!

When I arrived here last november I thought scorpions were deadly. Luckily I had found out that this is not true, that scorpion-bites hurt a lot, but won't kill you. And luckily, Johan was with me that night, so I could make him suck out the poison. Imagine I had been alone and thinking I would die! This not being the case I was just bitten and hurting. All in all the bites didn't bother me all too much, the next day they were just red marks. I think the scorpion (which Johan killed mercilessly) was still a baby, it was smaller than usual, so I guess I was lucky. Still, I have hung up my mosquito-net and tuck it in tight now. Houseguests, fine, but unwanted bed-guests, no thanks!