The mystery of The Brown Splodge, Part III

So far, no-one and nothing has returned for the final piece of bread. Whatever it was, it seems the poison worked. Until next time...

The mystery of The Brown Splodge, Part II

As I was pottering around at home yesterday afternoon, I found two actual poos: one by the front door, one by the bed, and both as big as those oversized jelly beans you get in liquorice allsorts (torpedoes?). Now I come to think of it, I think they’ve been there a couple of days and I was just in denial, subconsciously convincing myself that they were just bits of dirt from my shoe, or a dead insect or something.

So, I went straight out to find some rat poison. You’d think it would have been easier to get hold of than it was, but nonetheless, I eventually found a shop that sold it and bought 10 packets (I wasn’t taking any chances).

As recommended by the shopkeeper in broken English, I tore a slice of bread into four pieces and placed each on the lid from a jar or tupperware. I then sprinkled two packets of the very, very fine, dark grey powder (who ever thought it would be a good idea to make a poisonous substance so fine that it puffs up into the air so you can breathe it right in?!) over the four pieces. I placed one lid by each of the poo sites, one near the kitchen (figuring it was probably after food) and the final, biggest one by the drainage pipe in the bathroom – the only possible entry point I could identify, unless he was casually strolling in through the open door on a sunny afternoon.

Within half an hour of putting the poison in place, I heard a slight scratching in the bathroom. When I looked in, the entire piece of bread – a piece the size of my palm – had gone! In broad daylight, and while I pottered in the other room with the radio on, the beast had snuck in and stolen a piece of food half the size of his body. 

Now, I don’t like rodents. In fact, that’s a bit of an understatement: ever since a mouse ran out from under my pillow whilst I was in the bed (London mice are the cheekiest, stupidest little creatures), you could say I’ve had a bit of a phobia. But the brilliant thing about being out here and being afraid of everything, is that, it’s helped me to put certain fears into perspective. For most of the things I’m scared of, when I ask myself “What’s the worst that could happen?”, the answer is usually death. So when something comes along that in can’t really hurt me, let alone kill me, I’m actually pretty thankful. Nonetheless, my knees were wobbling a bit.

So I moved two of the other pieces of bread to what I now knew was his entry point, leaving the one in the bedroom in the hope that it would remain untouched and I could convince myself before going to sleep that he didn’t like coming into the bedroom. I went out to meet up with some other volunteers for a couple of hours, and when I came back, the other two pieces in the bathroom had disappeared. 

Assuming that Nigerian rats were considerably smarter and more cunning than London mice (since it was managing to steal large pieces of bread without me even seeing it), I wandered round the house carrying the radio and with heavy footfall to make sure it knew I was back. The bread in the bedroom remained untouched; relieved, I moved it into the bathroom. I jumped straight into bed and tucked the net in extra tight (thank God for mosquito nets!).

This morning, the final piece of bread is still there (a three course bread-and-poison meal is probably enough for any rat), and I can neither see nor smell any signs of dead rat inside the house. And I have to say, I’m pretty proud of myself for dealing with it all on my own and managing to spend the night in a house with a rat.

Of course, there’s a big assumption I’m making here. Having never seen it, and not being an expert on animal droppings, all I know is that something or someone is sharing (and pooing in) my house and it likes bread but can’t manage a fourth piece. Who’s to say it’s actually a rat…?

The mystery of The Brown Splodge

Our transformer still isn't fixed, but apparently we are now sharing one with another line; so we get NEPA one day, and they get it the next, and so on. Obviously, NEPA isn't a continuous concept, so you only get it for part of your allotted day, if you're lucky, but at least this has introduced a degree of predictability which we never had before. Fortuitously, the lovely 'Sea Breeze' (a bar with a garden and gorgeous view of the river. Though not the sea. But there is breeze.) is on the other line, so whenever our fridge is off, their beers should be nice and cold.


This means that many nights are spent in the dark, sweating from the general heat and also that generated by the candles, hoping that the laptop battery will last until the end of whatever episode I'm watching and trying to hear anything other than the whirr of generators (all of our neighbours seem to have them). 


Last night, while watching an episode of Glee in the dark, I closed all doors to the living room to block out some of the noise. And when I opened it again, there on the floor was a small, brown splodge. It was directly underneath the open hatch into the roof, so I looked up to see if I could see or hear anything up there. I couldn't. I got some loo roll, wiped it up and - and I know this is disgusting - sniffed it. It smelled of fish. The only explanation I could think of, was that there was some fish-eating beast with diarrhoea in my home (or somehow, expertly squatting over the side of the hatch to do his/her business, but then I reasoned that if you've got diarrhoea, you probably don't have the strength in your leg muscles to attempt that). 


I didn't look too hard for this beast. Instead, I went to bed, tucking my mosquito net in extra tightly and turning up the volume on my ipod. There was no further evidence this morning. The mystery continues...

7 days and counting...

Today is our 7^th day in a row without NEPA (mains electricity). Apparently the transformer has broken, which means that our whole road has no power (or ‘light’ as Nigerians would say). The volunteers who live on the next road also had no NEPA for a few days and were also told it was something to do with a transformer, but somehow their power is back and ours is still off.

This has meant that most of the food in our fridge has gone off. We had got complacent and started to cook up batches of food to store in there and to buy large amounts of vegetables at the weekend to last us the week; so most of that went off and we’re now back to buying food on a daily basis.

It has also meant that we’ve had to make sure that we take our appliances to work every day (laptop, phone charger, ipods, digital radio/speaker) to charge up. This hasn’t been too hard – I’ve been at a workshop at a hotel for most of the week, and since Nigerians are used to the electricity problem, it’s not thought at all odd to plug in your various things to charge around the workshop room!

It was frustrating at first that we couldn’t have the fans on in the evening – especially since, with no light, we use candles to see by, which only adds to the heat in the house! But I think we’re getting used to it, and the fans really were a luxury in the first place.

I think the main thing I miss when we have no electricity – apart from being able to watch DVDs or email without worrying about the laptop battery – is being able to have a cold drink. We boil and filter our water, and so it always ends up tasting like the filter ‘candles’ which are made out of something chalky; not the worst taste in the world, and when we’re thirsty, we’ll drink it, but so much nicer when it’s cold and you can’t really taste the calcium in it!

I learnt from Facebook that a volunteer elsewhere in Nigeria went without electricity for 20 days. That’s the kind of thing I wish I didn’t know. It’s like when you have hiccups, and you think “It’s ok – they can’t last forever.” And then you remember that woman who got into the Guinness Book of World Records for having hiccups that lasted 29 years. I’m sure this won’t last 29 years. And even if it does, the bar down the road has a generator and a fridge full of beer.