Day 43 - Unwanted House Guests

There are many reasons why one may choose not to do business in Africa. It may due to the lack of infrastructure. Perhaps it is because you would be too far away from family. Language may be an issue for some. You may love American food too much. For me, however, one reason could possibly be the unwanted house guests (I have had such a great experience here that I could probably get over this one).

I was chilling out in the battery room this evening when Andrew came in and said to me, "you're gonna want to see this. Grab your camera." Thoughts went racing through my mind. What could be so spectacular that he came rushing in to the room. "Is it a bat?" I speculated. "You'll have to come and see," was his reply.

I ran into the conference room to grab my camera. While in the conference room grabbing my camera, I happened to glance at the ceiling and saw one of the biggest spiders that I have seen. Coming to Africa, I expected to see a lot of spiders and bugs. I have definitely seen my fair share of bugs since I have been here, but haven't seen many spiders. Although I loved the movie Aracnaphobia, I am actually quite terrified of spiders. If you don't believe me, just ask my wife about the story of "Wolfy."

However, the spider took back seat to the bat, at least temporarily. Andrew took my camera into the room and got some footage of the bat flying around. Andrew had been sitting at his computer in the other room when all of a sudden he heard a noise above him. Looking up, he saw that there was a bat flying around. The building that we stay in is fairly old. When Burro first moved in here, there were a lot of holes in the ceiling and there were some problems with bats in the attic. There are still a few very small holes in some of the rooms and best we can tell, the bat came down from the attic through one of those holes. Andrew opened the door again to look for the bat, but couldn't see it at first. He happened to look up, and the bat was hanging above his head. Not knowing how to take care of the bat, we decided to deal with the spider first.

Heading back into the conference room, we tried to develop a game plan on how to take care of the spider. The ceilings in this building are fairly tall, probably about 14 feet or so. It was no easy task to reach up to the spider. We tried to find something to use to kill the spider, but had a hard time finding something tall enough to reach. We finally found a mop and removed the mop part, just leaving a flat piece of plastic. Up Andrew went onto the table, while I stayed away filing the footage. He took a jab at the spider, but missed. The spider started running all over the ceiling and I started screaming!!!! Andrew repositioned himself and was able to half squash the spider, although the spider fell to the ground and was still partially alive, but not moving. I grabbed the can of raid and finished the job!!!

Back to the bat. Before going back to the room that the bat was in, we decided to shut all of the doors to the rest of the house just in case the bat came flying out. As we went to shut the door to Jan's room, it appeared that there was a bat hanging from the ceiling in her room. Upon closer inspection, we noticed that there was just a hole in the ceiling and it appeared that some of the insulation had started to fall through from the ceiling. (We later found some insulation on the table in the room that the bat was in and believe that the bat must have come in from the ceiling in Jan's room). As we went to leave Jan's room, Andrew happened to glance over at the other door in Jan's room. Above the door, there is a small pane of glass. There was another spider just hanging out on the pane of glass. We started to wonder if a nest of spiders had hatched or something like that. The saga continued as Andrew attempted and succeeded in killing this spider as well. Things didn't go as smoothly with this one, however. He wasn't able to kill the spider while it was on the wall. The spider fell to the ground, and Andrew chased it around the room. He finally got the spider cornered and want after it. The spider literally started running at Andrew. Even after Andrew whacked off a couple of the legs, it still kept moving. Finally he stopped the stop completely... whew!!!!!!

Finally back to the bat. Andrew decided that he was going to go in the room armed with a towel, a laundry bag, and an umbrella and take care of the bat once and for all. I think he was a little disappointed after he entered the room and wasn't able to find the bat at all. There is an adjoining room and he searched that one as well, but we never did find the bat. Perhaps the bat was able to get back up into the attic through one of the very very small holes in the ceiling....

The morale of this blog post is to think about what is important to you if you decide to do business in another country. For me, I am not a big fan of unwanted house guests. But as long as I have an umbrella, a mop stick, and a can of raid, I can probably handle anything that comes my way (unless I have someone else there to take care of it for me!!!! Thanks Andrew!!!!)