Cockroach Chaos

I will be writing a post about my trip to Lusaka and Petauke later but after arriving home from this trip there was a province-wide planned power shutdown. It was planned to last from 6am until 6pm. We knew about this a few weeks ago. While we spend some of the day travelling on the coach hardly noticing the power was off, when we arrived home the power was still off. Surprisingly the water in the fridge was still cold and the freezer was still cool despite the power being off for around 9 hours. As the time approached 6pm we eagerly waited for the power to come back on. It didn’t.

We were waiting to cook tea since our oven is electric so we couldn’t do anything before then. We had been told that often the power will remain off for longer than it is meant to with no warning or notification. So we decided to try and light the brazier which was left at our house with charcoal to cook on instead. We tried lighting it with leaves as kindling and small twigs followed by the charcoal however this really didn’t work as the wood burnt way too fast to light the coals.

We asked our neighbour to help since her grandson has been chatting to us lots since we got here. He came over and showed us how to do it. He lit some twigs and leaves like we did but he brought some of his own charcoal and lighter fluid. After dousing the coals in lighter fluid he set it on fire and it was going. To get it going fast after this he swung the metal brazier around to get the coals hot and with fewer flames to get it ready to cook on. When it was ready, we made beans on toast as we didn’t want to try anything complex. It made very good toast, much better than the grill does normally!

Unfortunately this is the only photo of the occasion and I seem to be pulling an odd face!

After eating, the neighbour came back to tell us we should put the remaining coals in our bin to burn the rubbish and take the burner inside in case someone took it. While doing this he noticed a lot of cockroaches coming in and out of the manhole covers around our back yard. We had already noticed this but weren’t sure there was much we could do about it since it’s the drain and besides very few end up in the house and, fortunately they were unseen in our rooms. He decided to disturb them a little with his shoe and tonne of them began scurrying from one drain cover to the next. The cover is raised a little so there is the perfect hiding place for them around the edge he asked if we had any doom. Doom is a bug spray that kills almost everything (not humans). It is very effective at killing all kinds of things in the house. So he began spraying the edge of the of the cover. That was when the chaos started!

Loads began scurrying away from the cover towards us and anything else to take cover under. We began stamping on them as that was the only thing you can do to stop them. Lots were running towards the house which wasn’t great. I went in to get a spare shoe to hit them with instead of my flip-flop. After we had done that a few times not many more seemed to be around. Then Yona, the neighbour, decided we should look inside the drains. We did this and wished we hadn’t.

As soon as the cover was lifted you could hear hundreds of them rattling around inside the drain! A couple escaped and we got them before they got away. Then we sprayed inside which caused them to all evacuate at once! Until that day, I was chief cockroach killer in the house so Andrew wasn’t really enjoying this exposure to a swarm of cockroaches. There were literally hundreds coming out all at once in all directions. It was like whack a mole but on a huge scale with many small targets. All of this was done in torch-light since it was around 7pm. Some other neighbours saw what we were doing and decided to come and help kill the many cockroaches that were still hurrying out of the drain.

After using the doom we used some repellent powder in the drain. Then Yona brought some paraffin a stick and plastic bags to try and get rid of some of the last ones. I then went round to the side of the house with my windows and realised id left one open and there were cockroaches crawling below the windowsill! We quickly got theses and I was just hoping there weren’t too many in my room (so far I’ve only found 2) After doing this to both our drains we went next door to sort theirs so as they are connected. For some reason theirs weren’t as bad.

I have to say I haven’t seen that many outside since but there were quite a few in the house to begin with but now there are virtually none. This might all sound pretty horrible however it really didn’t seem that bad at the time as the five of us who were there were all enjoying ourselves despite the disgusting nature of the task.

And the best part was we didn’t even have to bother picking up all of the squashed cockroaches as the neighbour’s chickens went round eating the dead and remaining live cockroaches the next morning!