Mini buses and lizards

I told Ray I was going to blog on mini buses and lizards and he grabbed my laptop and wrote the following, “Mini buses and lizards are great and I love them both a lot. Especially the lizards they have such cute faces and bug eyes it just makes me want to hold one or two in my hands at all times.
Signed,
Epstein’s Mother”.

You have to understand his sense of humor to think this was funny. I did not but he wanted me to leave it in. Now, my version…………

The mini buses over here are use for public transportation. They are 12 – 14 passenger mini vans that they squeeze 20+- people into with all of their purchases from the market, their goats, their suitcases, etc. Mini bus drivers do not make a lot of money and are given a minimum amount of money they must make for the owner in a day. So, they fight to get fares. They race, like they are the only ones on the road, to the next stop and even stop anywhere they please to pick up a potential passenger for more money. They do not like people who drive normal and will honk at you to let you know you are in their way. After all, they own the road. They are the cause of a lot of accidents and are crazy drivers. We have a mini bus stage that we need to drive through any time we drive to or leave our house. They gather there early in the morning and are there all day, honking, taking up the entire road and waiting for a potential passenger, or 8 or 20. Driving through the mini bus stage really taxes your patience. There are days there are 20 or more mini busses at the stage and all across the road and it takes about 10 minutes to get through. You have to try and squeeze your way through as they look at you like you don’t belong there. We even had one mini bus driver holler at us one day when we were pulling into our drive way and asked us what we were doing there because we were in his way and keeping him from his job. Excuse me for pulling into our own driveway.

Lizards. I cannot tell you how much I hate them. I realized that hate is a strong word but there are no other words to describe how much I detest these creatures. They are everywhere. There are different types of lizards here. There are lizards that climb on our brick wall outside. There are different lizards that are bigger and you see them scamper on the ground outside periodically. Notice that both of these types of lizards are outside. Those I can live with. It’s the other ones I have issues with – the inside ones. They come out about dusk and are out all night, sometimes even into morning. They range in size from babies about 2 inches long to the granddaddies about 6 or more inches long. They have bug eyes and can really move. They usually hang around on the walls and catch bugs. They also leave their poops on the wall. It is gross. I am constantly looking in each room as I enter it to see where the lizards are. If they are too close for comfort, I have Ray come in and try to shoo them away so I can go into the room. I have real problems with them in the middle of the night when I need to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. I have learned to limit my intake of liquids in the evening just because of the lizards.

Ray keeps trying to assure me that they won’t hurt me. They are just trying to eat. They don’t want to have anything to do with me and are just as scared of me as I am of them he says. I don’t think so. He tells me that my choice is to have the bugs or the lizards. He says the bugs will crawl on me, the lizards won’t. I told him the first time I had one in my bed, I was leaving. No questions asked. Don’t even try to reason with me, just take me to the airport. He told me that they won’t get in our bed. Well, you know where this is going, don’t you? The unthinkable happened. The other morning just as it was getting light, I rolled over and opened my eyes. There he was, a lizard scampering up the INSIDE of the mosquito net that surrounds our bed. (Inserted from Ray: He was not in our bed he was hanging around over the bed. I named him Stubby because he is missing part of his tail.) I freaked. I jumped out of bed and hollered, “There is a lizard in our bed”. Ray gave me that, “Where?”, kinda like he didn’t really believe me. I said, “There, crawling up your side.” He got out of the mosquito net, grabbed the trash can, put it inside the mosquito net and dropped the lizard into it. Now since we have no screens on our windows and it is so hot you have to sleep with the windows opened, he put the lizard outside. I personally would have saved the country of Malawi from that lizard and killed him but Ray won’t even kill a moth in the house – he takes it outside. That was the one place I felt safe from the lizards, in my bed in the mosquito net. But now I think I’m scarred for life. So, after I stopped crying, about an hour later, I did not have him take me to the airport but very seriously thought about it. Next time, I am outta here. It may be embarrassing to explain that the reason I left is because of the lizards but that’s good enough for me.

So you ask, what in the world do mini buses and lizards have in common. Nothing except they are the two things I do not like about Malawi. One of them I feel much stronger about than the other. Can you tell which one? I wonder if they make lizard repellant.

Anyway, have a great “mini bus and lizard free” day! I wish I could.