How could I forget the creepy crawlies?

Yesterday I talked about the dangers over here and I completely forgot to mention the insects. My housemates claim I am obsessed with mosquitoes and will be stuck for conversation without them when I get home - like I'm EVER stuck! Anyway they're extremely dangerous if they're carrying malaria or dengue fever. Almost worse are the black things - cockroaches and other horrible creepy slithery things. Now they are very very dangerous to my mental health and unlike all the things I talked about yesterday, somehow my subconscious never did choose to accept THEM. Nor will it. Which is perhaps why I forgot to mention them, maybe I've just blocked them out.

They are so inherently evil however that they decided to teach me a lesson for forgetting them and one has just paid me a visit. Not to my room - oh no, nothing like giving me the chance to run away. This one visited my person. My hair is currently standing on end as I relate this tale to you. Uncle upstairs (we just call him that) brought me a present wrapped in newspaper - it was a huge bunch of bananas. Very kind. Or so I thought ... I was dishing them out to the visiting field officers when I spotted something similar to, but much fatter and longer than, an earwig!

I did my usual girlie thing (can't help it) of leaping in the air, throwing the bananas at the field officer and squealing that he had to get rid of it. Being a flaming Buddhist of course, he won't just kill it and instead gently brushes it aside, thus giving it time to make its final move. Except nobody saw where it went. "What does it matter?" says the field officer, "it's gone"! "Yes but where?" I replied, "it can't just have GONE"! I searched everywhere and made them search too (they love having me here) - well he searched, Muna just laughed at me and said something in Sinhala to him about cockroaches (can't believe she told him that one!). My paranoia about these things always ends with me shaking my hair just in case it's in there.

And what do you know? It fell from my hair onto the front of my Tshirt!!!!

I am, at this moment, trying very hard to stay sane. Deep breathing. (Maybe I'll start smoking.) Positive thinking. (Or alcohol could numb things pretty quickly. Might even kill the beast off.) It would help if I wasn't feeling it crawling all over me right now. The Field Officer said it was lovely. The THING knew I was afraid, so he found me and came to say hello. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous??

Sorry, positive thinking - yes, it was very sweet of him to stroke my hair so affectionately, he was only trying to be friendly and at least I know in future that I'm not paranoid - after 25 years of dreading, it finally happened. So I was right to be worried.

In an attempt to find something positive in all of this (apart from the aforementioned) I have put a photo of him or one of his family up and if I look at it enough maybe I'll get to like him - it's called aversion therapy. And at least I know when you find them, they're really quite easy to get rid of - unless you're with a Buddhist that is!