Cockroaches and Ants

A blog post by Adam. We have arrived in La Romana, our home for the next 7 months. It's the Dominican Republic's third biggest city and has been my sister Mina's home for the past four years. I'll be volunteering where Mina works, La Clinica de Familia La Romana (www.clinicadefamilia.org.do) and Melissa will be at nearby 180 Degrees (http://en.180grados.info/). We're excited about settling down and putting together our first joint apartment.

We rented the apartment prior to going to Santo Domingo. It's a one bedroom in the same building as Mina's apartment.  When we first looked at the apartment it wasn't in the best of shape. It was dark and dirty. But by the time we left for Santo Domingo it was mostly repainted and was looking good.

Good looks, however, can be deceiving. When we first re-opened up our apartment the freshly painted  walls looked great. Then we opened our boxed up washing machine. And then a bag of random things we had left behind during our month in the capital. And then my large external frame backpack. In our absence, all of these locations had become breeding grounds for cockroaches. And boy did they ever breed. We did not count them, but there were many, many, many roaches of different sizes and colors.  It was incredible. It was disgusting. It was hands up-in-the-air shriek provoking. 

Have you ever taken a brand new washing machine out of a box that is crawling in little black critters? I'm guessing not. And I don't suggest you do, unless you are up for the fight of your life. With the aid of super poisonous "Baygon" spray and some quick foot stomping action, fight we did. We killed lots that first day and quite a few the next (on the second day we had a colony of cockroaches coming out of the kitchen sink).  Since then, we've killed several every day. Welcome to the tropics.

A dead cockroach on our kitchen floor.

Then last night, to accompany our evening roach, we had an army of itsy bitsy ants using our home as a thoroughfare. They entered through a small hole near the kitchen sink, snaked their way around our stove and refrigerator, went through the bedroom door, up over the bathroom door, across an entire bedroom wall, onto another wall, over our closet and out a hole on the other side of the room.  Given their small size this long distance was likely equivalent to us running at least a 10K, possibly more. We do not know where they were coming from or going, but they were moving at a frantic pace. We put a little poison on the path's entrance and within a half hour the thousands of ants were gone.

We will be leaving our apartment once again for more than a week, and we've decided we've had enough. We have nothing against exoskeletons, but we would prefer to live without them. We will have our place fumigated. It's probably not the best plan of attack for our physical health but I know it will do wonders for our mental health. There is nothing like the deathly fear of crossing paths with a harmless bug the size of a nickel during a mid night pit stop.

On a positive note, I learned that my external frame backpack is very easy to dissemble and wash. For the first time in nearly 20 years I took it apart and washed it. It looks amazing and smells pretty good too. Plus, I think I washed it so well, it could easily go another 20 without seeing a washing machine. Melissa may disagree.