Tony 1, Ants 0

It’s official, I have finally outsmarted the ants!

Ok, there are these tiny, relatively harmless ants…everywhere. I have been keeping my house very clean, spraying insecticide on anything that looks like a nest of them in or around my house, and keeping food tightly covered at all times. I have breathed in so much insecticide that I am probably developing little holes in my brain. Ohh, might I add that they don’t exactly have the same laws here that regulate pesticides, herbicides, or any other cancer causing aerosol spray.

Well, these *%$&^%@ eat through plastic bags, they are able to climb under everything but the tightest fitting lids, and they come out of nowhere. I cannot find any nest of ants anywhere, but should I let my guard down in the slightest they appear in force as if they are storming the Beach of Normandy. Also, if there is something sweet inside a container, which they cannot gain entry to, they will just cover the outside of it to the point that if you don’t look closely it looks like the container’s shell is actually moving. But, I finally figured out how to keep them out of my stuff and I did it quite by accident.

One day I put a small can of this sugary syrup, which I add to water and powered milk to make a sweet treat, in a basin, which had a very small amount of water in it. The ants loved this container and no matter what I did they found it and covered the outside. Thankfully they never broke inside, but they did make it through the 3 zip locked plastic bags, which were hidden under a towel. So I forgot about the can for whatever reason and when I came back there was not an ant to be found on the can and instead there were a bunch of dead ants in the water surrounding the can. Guess what, the f$#@!@# can’t swim! Lame, I know, but these guys were really starting to annoy me. Now I put anything that they would like in something plastic and put it in the basin with a tiny layer of water. The first ants drown in the water and are never able to return to their colony to tell there partners in crime where the meal is.

Moving on. Life is going well. I had a meeting with a group of teenaged students who want to start an environmental club the other day and I am starting to figure out what I can do with the ecotourism activity at my NGO. But, it is going to require me to change some things and change is not exactly a popular thing to do here. I am mean, they eat the same stuff in the same way over and over and over again. Even when I have used their foods to cook something different, they don’t like it. But, I have Thanksgiving to look forward to and for Christmas I will be traveling to Kenya. I hope all is well and if you are getting sick of the colder temperatures already the plane ticket to my house is only a measly 2,000 dollars.