The word “jungle,”
which we tend to think of as an overgrown, untamed wilderness, is derived from Sanskrit.
Before coming to Nepal, one of the greatest anxieties among my group of
volunteers was the wildlife (scorpions, cobras, tarantulas, leeches, tigers,
monkeys, etc.) that we would encounter. In Nepali, however, jungle literally just
means “forest.” As I’ve been learning, sometimes the greatest nuisances are the
least exotic of all.
I have been waging
something of a war these past few months. Each time I think I’ve won, I find my
efforts thwarted and back where I started. It’s been largely a quiet battle,
the silence broken only by the occasional outburst of an expletive, which being
in English goes unnoticed by my Nepali family. I’m talking about my struggle
against household pests, namely flies, chickens, and one very pesky goat.
Our kitchen is
inhabited by a large extended family of houseflies. The source of the
sustenance that maintains their steadily growing population is unknown, but my host
family says it’s the same way every year. They swarm around us, coat the walls,
and fly around during our meals, provoking us to eat ever more quickly. Some
also occupy my bedroom—as I write this post, one is buzzing around my head.
I really dislike
flies. I much prefer mosquitos. True, in Nepal the mosquitos carry malaria and
Japanese encephalitis, but that just makes it a high-stakes game. If you’re
attentive you can kill in the time between when they land and when they pierce
your skin. Flies only get under the skin in the figurative sense, with their
buzzing, scuttling, and flitting. They are also more touch-and-go—you have to
strike with speed and accuracy, correctly anticipating their trajectory as they
take off. The back of my Nepali notebook is specked with blood from my success
killing flies back in pre-service training (though my sudden assaults never
failed to startle my classmates and interrupt our lesson). But that was just a
handful each day; here, the challenge is quite overwhelming for a mere man and
his notebook.
So you can
understand why I was quite thrilled to find that the local market sold sticky
traps (although I still don’t know what they’re called in Nepali. I refer to
them as the “traps-that-when-flies-come-they-aren’t-able-to-leave-because-it-holds-them”).
I bought a half dozen and the next morning placed one on the floor of the
kitchen with a little milk and sugar. Here’s what it looked like two hours
later.
We were fly-free
for a few delightful days, but soon they were back in full force. Despite my
family’s wishes, I can’t afford to supply us with a new trap every few days.
I’ve thought about introducing spiders to control their population, but I’m
afraid that would attract lizards to which would lead to snakes, and I detest
snakes way more than flies. I saw my first live one (I’ve seen 8 or 9 dead
ones) the other day—it was about 4 feet long and made me very nervous. For now
I guess I’ll just tolerate them and try to keep them out of my buffalo milk.
The other, more infuriating
annoyance has been the fight with my family’s goat and chickens over my garden.
If you’ve read my earlier posts, you may remember how these roving scroungers
destroyed my crops while I was at in-service training. I have since reinforced
my mosquito net fence with additional wooden stakes, installed sheets of tin
along another side and a half, and blocked off the rest with pieces of metal
grating. It looks pretty ridiculous, but I’m going for function over fashion.
I’ve also been covering the beds with straw after planting to protect the soil
from evaporation—a practice that I think many Nepali farmers could benefit
from.
No comments:
Post a Comment