The Creepy Crawlies

About 8:00 Saturday night, Andy and I went out onto our front porch to change the light bulbs. He was standing on a chair to reach the lamp lights while I held the flashlight. Its pretty dark at 8:00 around here and usually going out onto our front porch you see a lot of geckos and some rather large cockroaches up on the ceiling or on the outside walls of the house. Because our outside lights don’t work we haven’t been able to see much else.

Well as I shine my flashlight into the corner for Andy, I see a big black mass out of the corner of my eye. I whip my flashlight around to see a cane spider about the circumference of a soft ball creeping along where the wall meets the ceiling of our porch. Not only is it extremely large, its carrying an egg sac about the size of a quarter. I yell “Andy!”

“Geez! what!?”

About the time he would usually reprimand me for making too big a deal over little bugs - he sees the spider too and yells - “Geez! That things big”.

We hear Suzie yell out the window “Are you okay over there?”

“Nathan you gotta see this!”

Unfortunate for me the spider is hanging onto the wall just above where the screen door opens to get inside.

I’m stuck.

I run around to the back door, yelling “Kill it! I don’t want that thing procreating or leaving its egg sac anywhere near my house.”

I go inside and get our bug spray. Nathan is fascinated and more than willing to kill it with the spray. Suzie finally musters up the courage to come over and have a look too. We watch from the sidelines as Nathan sprays the giant spider. Because of its size it takes quite a lot of ant spray to slow it down. Finally it drops to the floor and separates from the egg sac. Nathan sees that tiny Cane spiders are already starting to emerge from the egg sac. He quickly doses it with spray and steps on it. The spider finally gives up the fight, curls up and dies as well.

I’m a little worried about the few stray baby cane spiders that might have escaped and gather up the courage to come forward and spray the perimeter of the porch next to the house to prevent any spiders from entering the house. Well there’s quite a large crack along the foundation of our porch separating the porch from the house. This is exactly where I sprayed.

No more than 30 seconds passed when the next sequence of events happened.

“Move!”

That’s all Suzie and I needed to hear before we lunged into the house. We turned around and saw that Nathan had trapped a 5 inch long, thick centipede underneath a table leg on the porch.

Just then Andy says “No way! Over there!” A 6 inch long, also very thick centipede emerges from another part of the crack. Nathan climbs over the railing to go after it and kill it. Suzie and I are in the house still and hear:

“Give me the spray”

“ I don’t have the spray”

‘Kill it with the rock”

“Give me the flashlight”

“Do it!, Don’t be such a pansy!”

After about a minute, they tell us its dead and Suzie and I come out to have a look. As we’re peering over the railing looking at it, Andy yells “Look out!”

We again, run into the house, and look back to see another 5 inch centipede scurry past where our feet had been. More shuffling of feet out side, patio furniture moving around and yells back and forth from Andy and Nathan deciding whether to spray it or cut off its head and the third centipede of the night is also killed.

Whew!

While Andy was getting photo documentation , Suzie and I spent the next 15 minutes online researching centipedes, including what they eat, how painful the bite is, where they hide, and how to get rid of them! Everyone says, “Just cut off their heads.” Well lets just say this is easier said than done. Nathan said even when he’d trapped one of them under a table leg, it took a lot of work with a rock to get something that thicks’ head off. All I have to say is – I’m not going out onto the porch at night again with a flashlight. Ignorance is bliss.

Da Bugs

Living in a not-so-tight house and being in a humid climate, we get lots of bugs. Some are common like ants, earwigs, cockroaches (although none in the house so far) millipedes, mosquitoes, and flies. But then we get a lot of bugs I’ve never seen before like flies with yellow on their wings, or bugs that look half spider, half giant ant or the super flies that flap their little wings so fast they look like small pebbles hovering in mid air. And then there’s the greatly feared giant centipedes. These carry a really painful bite and can be harmful to young children and people with bee sting allergies (So Andy and Tyler). We’ve seen 3 since we’ve moved in. Only at night time. One small one and two that were probably 5 inches long. We attack these pretty aggressively with spray and then wait for them to die before throwing them away. We also saw a cane spider on the side of our house one night. They’re fast and huge! I’m glad we don’t have any of those INSIDE the house.

That’s one thing I’m grateful to Geckos for – eating the bugs! Although I still have to spray the occasional ant pile on the counter or squish some smaller spiders, the geckos take care of pretty much everything else. They still scare the day lights out of me when they scurry out of closets or run across the wall when I turn on the lights in a room.

So my intelligent little Tyler has watched my daily encounters with bugs many times and apparently learned a few tricks. I watched him the other day play with one of those small bugs with the hard shell that can snap when they’re on their backs to launch themselves into the air and flip over. We call them the jumpy bugs, sorry I don’t know the scientific name. Tyler got a kick out of this and watched him jump over and over again. Of course I have to tell him bugs are yucky and watch him close so he doesn’t try to put it in his mouth (he’s done this with live and dead millipedes before – gross!). While he plays with the bug he keeps pointing at it and saying “Da Bug…Eww!” and giggling. Then after a few minutes of playing, very calmly he walks into the kitchen, gets one of my shoes out of the shoe bin by the back door, walks over to the bug and whacks it with my shoe repeatedly till it’s a squashed mess on the floor and walks away. He’s actually done this several times since then and has become my partner in crime for squishing all of the bugs in the house. I guess that nick name is taking on more than one meaning now.

Battle Scars

One day last week Andy came home from work and I said “Tyler got bit today.” He suddenly looked panicked and said “By what? A mosquito? A centipede? A dog?” I said “No, Kye. Kye bit him.” Tyler had been playing with Kye that morning and like usual – they were fighting over a toy. Since Tyler is stronger, usually Tyler wins this fight. I guess Kye decided he needed to use another tactic. I hear Tyler let out a huge wail and look down to see fresh bite marks on his arm. Poor Suzie didn’t know what to do, because Kye had never bitten anyone before. Needless to say, Tyler did not mess with Kye after that, at least during that play session.

The night before Tyler fell while playing next to our coffee table and got his first shiner on his upper eye lid. Between his eye and his arm, he had quite the battle scars that day.

The Simple Life

This is a picture of our neighbor’s house on one side. One day I was walking past and no one was around so I really looked at the house and thought, “There’s nothing in it, how can someone live there?” Well another day as I was walking by I noticed some smoke coming from the back of the property. This got me thinking. That’s probably their kitchen back there, just a small fire or an umu (some larger leaves on top of the fire to smoke things). They probably sit on mats to eat and I know in traditional homes they use their fingers to eat too. They sleep on small mats at night and just roll them up in the morning and put them in the corner. Their house doesn’t have walls, but they use sheets when it rains or they want some privacy. Really what else do they need, at least for survival? It made me wonder – are they unhappy with the way they live? They’ve probably never been able to afford to leave this island and probably never will. They don’t have a television and may know little of the rest of the world. If that’s all we knew – would we be wanting more?

I’ve tried to take the Samoan’s perspective on us as the wealthy Americans - what they must think of us. It’s a little difficult because in America there isn’t any comparison. Most immigrants are seen as lower class in our country and have less than we have, not more. I really think this experience will change the way I see our country in the rest of the world or rather how the rest of the world sees our country. Its makes me think that U.S. citizens should not criticize the U.S. the way they do. They really have no idea how blessed we are to live there and have the government, freedoms, laws, and economy that we do. I’m seeing more and more this entitlement that’s growing in our country. Its ugly. That’s the only way to describe it. I think we could all learn a few lessons from living a more simple life.

Our Growing Boy

I decided after talking to my sister-in-law Richelle on Sunday that I’d wait awhile before leaving Tyler in nursery. She said that he probably will mature a lot by the time he’s 18 months and will be better able to handle the “structure” of nursery. So I kept him with me during church this past Sunday which is still difficult but I’ll deal with it a little while longer. Tyler and Kye have pretty different personalities. Kye is a little more laid back and likes to follow Tyler around. Tyler thinks this is great and will turn around and giggle when he sees Kye following him. Kye likes to give things to people which works well because Tyler likes to take things from people. Tyler always says Dank Doo when he takes it. At least he’s polite about it. Kye doesn’t really feel the need to get into every electronic device, trash bin, toilet bowl, cabinet, and clothes drawer like Tyler does. Kye’s a little easier to manage. He’s also a little younger so we’ll see what he’s like in a few months once Tyler’s deviant influence has rubbed off on him.

Sometimes when Kye gets too close to Tyler Tyler’ll give him a little shove. I’m not sure where this habit started but I’m trying to end it quickly. I tell Tyler “No, we don’t shove Kye.” And tell him to tell Kye sorry. He’ll say “sa ee” and do a kiss in the air. Of course there isn’t an ounce of remorse behind the apology but you can’t expect much more from a 16 month old. Tyler has decided that he’s even grown up enough to start calling Andy “Annie (his version of Andy). This habit was created only over the past few days. We always correct him and say Dad. I think he picked this up from me calling him Andy, especially on the phone. He talks on his cell phone now and says “Annie” over and over again.

Making Cookies in Samoa

I had a long talk with one of the owners on Monday, mainly about what they were going to pay me but also about our being Americans here and how we are perceived by the Samoans. Basically he told me that a lot of former American employees have left a bad impression on the Samoan staff here and have come across as pretty entitled. He made me more aware of some of the small things we do that make it look like we deserve better treatment than they do.

I thought about this a lot after he left. I made a resolve to not leave the same impression with these people. I don’t feel like I’m entitled and I don’t want to give them that impression. I’m a guest in their country and should act like it. I should feel grateful that so many of them speak my language while I haven’t made a huge effort to learn theirs yet. A few of the administrative staff have been particularly helpful in making sure our homes were cleaned and comfortable for us. So I decided to make sure I showed them how grateful we are for that. So I thought I’ll make them cookies – simple enough right? . . .

Although I was glad to find most of what I needed in town yesterday to make cookies, I couldn’t find chocolate chips anywhere. I remembered seeing them at a few stores but we weren’t close enough to walk to them with our huge bags, plus I figured they must melt so quickly here. Suzie had a good solution to use her M&Ms that she had brought from the states and put those in. So after lunch today I get out my ingredients to make the cookies and realize I have no measuring cups, large bowl, mixer, or cookie sheet. I decided to be resourceful and do the best I could. The only measuring device I had was Tyler’s bottle that measured in ounces so I used that to convert into cups and measure most of the dry ingredients. I had to eyeball the teaspoon measurement s on a spoon and just mixed everything by hand. I used the rice cooker container to mix everything in. I didn’t have a cookie sheet but I did have a cake pan. So surprisingly the consistency turned out right and things were looking good until I remembered that the degrees on the oven were for Celsius not Farenheight (sp?). I didn’t know the conversion and my internet wasn’t working so I couldn’t Google it either. I guessed what it would probably be instead and just kept checking on them every few minutes. Although they took 20 minutes to cook instead of the usual 10 – they actually turned out pretty good. They tasted yummy too, although who can go wrong with lots of butter and sugar?

Taxis

This past week we decided that since we still don’t own a vehicle and we’re tired of bumming rides off of the owners all of the time we’d start becoming more self-sufficient and use taxis. Of course the art of getting a good fare on a taxi in a foreign country where you’re seen as the rich American can be a frustrating business. On Monday, Suzie, Lindsay and I wanted to go into Apia to have lunch and look around at the shops. Andy just so happened to be coming home from town in a taxi so we used his to get back. Andy had already called around to find out what a decent fare should be and told the taxi driver that if he gave us that rate we’d get his number and use him regularly. So our taxi driver’s name is Wiser. We’ve called him several times now to pick us up to go get groceries in town or to pick us up in town and take us home. However, I’ve noticed that his fees seem to be going up each time he takes us. Originally it was 10 tala for a ride into town. But when he had to come pick us up from town it was 12 tala instead. Then when we asked if he could take us to the ATM for 2 minutes on the way home yesterday, it suddenly became 15 tala for the trip. So I’m not sure how wise it will be to continue to use Wiser. Although, his is very friendly and prompt and helps us with all of our gear with the babies. Another taxi driver we used one day told us it would be 10 tala to get home but when he saw where we lived he added on another 2 tala for the extra block it would take to get to our house. I told him I’d never use him again if he charged me that rate so he gave it to me for 10 tala instead. I guess you just have to be tough but I do understand that the price of gas for these drivers is outrageous right now.

Yesterday Suzie and I really needed to get some food in town so we put both boys down for naps at her house and had her sister-in-law Lindsay watch them while we took a taxi into town. I had brought my big beach bag to put our food in while we made our way around to the different stores. Needless to say after just going to the outdoor produce market we’d already filled that bag. Luckily they sell these really big bags made out of the same material tarps are made out of – that have big handles and are only a dollar or two. They sell them everywhere on the streets so we each bought one – and we filled those completely too. We looked pretty funny carrying around 3 huge bags filled with food that were pretty darn heavy. (I had to choose that day to buy 4 lbs of rice and 4 lbs of flour). Everyone kept trying to flag down a taxi for us, but we kept telling them we’d be fine or that we had already called a taxi that was coming for us. I felt pretty good though that we had figured out how to get into town, make our way around, and get home all by ourselves. We also discovered that going to the food market early is a good idea. There’s more variety and not everything is picked through.