Creatures

We thought we were prepared to live in a tropical country during the rainy season; we thought a bunch of mosquitos and a couple of spiders would not scare us; we thought that the animal kingdom had no mystery for us, after watching hours of documentaries on TV. Our first and, well, only night at the village taught us otherwise.

During the day, all you have to do is try to avoid some huge flying things with various colors, squash a battalion of mosquitos, and ignore the feeling of being steadily watched by some creatures hidden in the bushes. But when the evening comes, when frogs and geckos start singing, another story begins. Huge ants in black and fiery colors start crawling everywhere, massive spiders make their way out of their nests, and cockroaches emerge out of nowhere. The evening is loud and alive in its own way.

Probably not many Westerners can take it that easily. We are used to living in our over-hygienized life-free houses full of poison and chemicals, for it is not easy to deal with such a lively, animated environment. If the tiny, cute geckos are a nice company most of the time, when their amount triples and their two-feet long cousins come out, the average Westerner immediately thinks of a young alligator and runs away. If European spiders cause some shouting, Thai spiders cause fainting. Even the innocuous ants and the usually-not-so-creepy cockroaches drove us to insanity. Our attempt to recreate a homey disinfected life-free zone awoke tons of beasts in the house where we were supposed to stay. Wrapped in mosquito net and stinking of poison and mosquito repellent, every time we managed to get some sleep, we woke up shouting because some huge bug managed to infest our nightmares as well. We gave up on staying in that house, arousing the amusement of kids and teachers alike. Haha, the spoiled Westerners defeated by a couple of insects. Our story will be narrated for years. Our perspective? If only they were “a couple”, and, hey, we did try!

The villagers simply live with it. No chemicals released, harming the environment, and people co-habit with any forms of life. They do not impose their presence exterminating what was there before them; they know how to handle it staying safe. It’s impressive how we could not even spend one night there without breaking down; apparently we do need a chemical-poisoned environment to survive. The Westerner in us? Maybe, or maybe it was too much on our first day and we were too tired to have to deal with that too.

And - ho well – speaking of creatures, we saw two pink chickens! Oh, an a couple of green ones. What? “Impossible”, you say?