The Final Straw

Things sometimes go wrong: a fact of life for everyone. But sometimes it can feel like too much goes wrong together- the final straw that breaks the camel's back! That is when I reach my breaking point.

Over the past week, a few minor things have made me frustrated

The local "city power" replaced our normal generator supply for electricity. This can be a good thing, because running our electricity from city power is far cheaper than using up fuel in the generator. However, it can also be an annoying thing, as city power is reliably UNreliable! It goes off and comes on in spurts.

This did not suit my lovely new bread-maker. In fact, it nearly caused a fire in my kitchen, as the erratic electricity last week messed up the bread cycle and my bread was ruined:

Overflowing mixture got onto the element and burnt inside the machine, leading to clouds of smoke billowing out of the vent and some very burnt pieces of dough being extracted from the machine:

My loaf was half-baked: what a waste of flour and ingredients!

Next, I got fed up in my ongoing battle with the disgusting cockroach.
I can live with a few little ones if I have to, even the medium size one that I found crawling over our toothbrushes last night... BUT the big ones are just too revolting.
When a large cockroach appeared on the sofa next to my chair one evening last week, I leapt into action to squirt it with poison.
By the time I got back to the sofa, armed with my can of "Doom", it had disappeared!
I went to bed that night feeling very irritated that it had escaped. I was wondering where it was hiding.
That night, I dreamed that my head and hair was full of head lice, big green bugs, clinging to my hair whilst other people looked on, disgusted with my dirty hair and keeping their distance from me!!

In the morning, the problem posed by nasty bugs seemed much less urgent. However, I still decided to try and find Mr Disgusting. Joel helped me and he discovered the bug under the lounge cupboard!

Lots of poison later, squirted by me as I chased it over sofa and under chair, I cornered him, with Ben's help! HURRAH!!! We finished him off. This is the only way I can tolerate these Juba cockroaches: D-E-A-D!!

A view to scale, next to Ben's foot!

When things seem to be challenging, I find that I notice more annoyances that generally would not seem so bad, but can loom larger when a positive mood is hard to muster. I got fed up with the dust that gathers ever so quickly in this environment, as the rainy season has stopped and the hot, dry air and local fires lead to an increase in household dust. This is what came off on my fingers as I ran my hand over our bookcase: Yuk!

Meanwhile, the noise from a neighbour's generator, outside of our compound, has been making me tired and grumpy. The noisy engine runs late into the night, just a few feet from our bedroom window.
It is hard to sleep as this noisy machine chugs away.
It is hard to resolve this situation, as the neighbours need electricity during their evenings. In this developing country, the generator is the only means they have of electric power after dark. It is just frustrating that they run their generator so close to our bedroom and so late into the night. I am getting tired of  the noise stealing my sleep and worn out from going to sleep later than I want to.

All these minor annoyances of living here have been building up.
Today, I am afraid I am tired and feel worn down. But the straw that broke my proverbial camel's back today was the RAT that I discovered in our kitchen this morning, just as I was getting breakfast ready!!
I don't know if I am now feeling more tired from the screaming I did as I found it cowering by my fridge, or from the crying I did afterwards. Sometimes, all the things I hate seem to crowd together to mock me. It was hard to feel positive today.

When I saw the rat, I ran outside in tears, with Joel in my arms, slamming the door behind us all, with Esther and Ben close on my heels. I found a bemused local staff member and asked him to kill the vermin. He set off for my house, but I went in search of friends for comfort! I found Joel's teacher, who came to my rescue with a hug and a prayer. She then took my camera to get this shot of the offending rat for this blog:

We thought the rat was dead, but as Miss Carolyn zoomed in with my camera lens, the nasty little creature staggered to its feet and tried to run off! I started my involuntary "rat scream", but Brave Miss Carolyn instinctively grabbed a nearby log and beat the rat down, putting it firmly out of its misery and reassuring me that this little rodent would never set its 4 feet in my house ever again!!
I grabbed my camera for a shot of the action, much to the amusement of our compound guard!

After all the drama, it was time to go home- and time to face the mess that had been left on the floor in my house from rat poo:

I'd love to say that I calmly cleaned up and managed the situation.
Instead, I was a mess. I was tearful and totally fed up with not being able to have control of my home: erratic electricity, noise disturbance when I try to sleep, disgusting creatures in my home, dirt and dust in proportions that I just never experienced outside of Africa. It all felt like too much. This was a day that I didn't want to be here.
I cancelled school today, I was too tired to cope with trying to teach AND clean up. Joel went to preschool, but Esther and Ben accompanied me to the local shop to buy every kind of cleaning product, rat poison and insect spray I could find, then they came home with me and had a practical lesson on "Cleaning"!!
We wiped, we sprayed, we swept, we washed up, we moved furniture, we beat the mats outdoors, we mopped, we dusted... then we sat down and ate a precious "mars bar" that we had discovered in the shop! It was a bit stale and tasted a bit odd, but it was still a treat after all that hard work!

Amazingly, since my little dip into negativity this morning, I have actually been encouraged by some lovely, lovely emails that have just come through from people who have known nothing about how I felt today, but wrote just when I needed it, with what I needed to hear. It can only be God's perfect timing, sending encouragement at just the right time :-)
Also, when I sit and watch the latest MAF film that a friend pointed out to me, with some shots of Andrew doing his work, I am reminded of why we are here. And I am reminded to try and get things into perspective, as see that I have so little to complain of compared to the intense suffering of many in this country:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeBecUEkb3E