Underwear, Cockroaches and House Fires
22nd June 2006
While I was in the Philippines (there I go again...) there were many interesting
things that happened that weren't necessarily deserving of their own web
page. Here and here
some good examples.
This is such a page about African happenings.
Cockroaches in the Underwear
There I was one night, cozy and safe in my mosquito
net, when something started to bug me in the middle of night.
There was a strange feeling around my groin area. I've been to
HIV/STD talks on camp so I'm pretty sure that it wasn't some sort of
nasty infection that was causing my discomfort. I reached down to
my nether regions and - before I knew it - I had a cockroach trapped
between my thumb and forefinger.
Yikes! There'd been a cockroach exploring around in my
underwear!
I panicked (just a little) and squash the cockroach. Messy.
I told the story to some of the other volunteers and most of them
said they would of screamed and jumped out of bed, which made me feel
quite staunch. Maybe my bug phobia is finally starting to leave
me.
Just so you know, this
is how big cockroaches get here.
Larry the Current God
People use the word "Current" to mean
"Electricity" here. You don't say "We have no electricity,"
you say "We have no current". Just one of the quirks of
the language.
There was stuff
all current in Guest House One when
I first got here. Maybe twenty hours or so over the course of the
week. I didn't mind living by candlelight, but it was such a pain
trying to get my laptop charged so that I could update this website.
Something had to be done.
I decided to make a burnt offering of an NGO invitation
to Larry, the God of Current. A candle
provided the flame, the invite provided the smoke, Annie
provided the Jazz Hands, and I provided suitably humble praise.
In the time since the burnt offering occurred, we have had current for about 90% of
the time.
Some of you might be a cynical. How could sacrificing an invite
cause the current to come on? I was a little cynical too until
Larry appeared to us in the form of a cockroach for several nights in
the row, in exactly the same position. We
could tell it was Larry because we could only see him when the lights
were on. How else would a god of electricity appear?
Praise be to Larry!
Some non-believers think it has something to do with the diesel
generator that is connected to Guest House One in a roundabout manner.
Heathens.
Fireman Malcolm
We had our first electrical house fire the other day.
Maybe Larry was angry that I had squashed one of his relatives.
Dunno.
Most of the social life in Guest
House One revolves around the dining
room. There is but one electrical socket in the dining room,
so we've been using an electrical caddy as a multi point adaptor.
During one sunny afternoon, Nicholas
was trying to plug in an electrical fan and a laptop computer via the
caddy. All of a sudden the cord started to get very hot. So
hot in fact that Nicholas had to let it go.
We heard the revolutions of the diesel
generator outside go up a few notches and then BAM!, a length of
electrical wire on the caddy caught on fire, which then caused the
linoleum to catch on fire. Wheee!
Nicholas tried to pull the cord out from the
wall, but it was just too hot. Jen got some water and was about to
throw it on when I said, "No! No! That's the last thing
you want to do!"
My primal instincts kicked in and I pushed
Nicholas out the way, booted the electrical plug out of the wall and
stomped out the fire with my flip-flops!
Crisis averted!
A picture of the inside of the thoroughly burnt
out electrical caddy can be found here, and the
burnt spot of the linoleum here.
I suspected the fire was caused by a short in
the caddy.
Questions? Comments? Try contacting
me.
Wanna receive an email whenever this site gets updated? Click here.
(c)
2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
All the stuff on this site is written by me, Malcolm Trevena. Feel free to
link to this page. Heck, you can even copy stuff from here if you
want. Just make sure you sight me as a reference.
|
