Revenge

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I sit in my plastic lawn chair reading my latest Halo Book:"First Strike". I am into it as the Master Chief blasts the hell out of various aliens that belong to the religious zealots known as The Covenant. There are all kinds of nasty aliens, and reading about them being blown away is satisfying.

Wait... Whats that?

I see an alien form slithering rapidly from near my feet.

A mouse? It's going the right speed.

Nope - Too serpentine.

I stand and greet my nemesis, the evil molokau. It is seeking relics, or more likely seeking a mouse or giant cockroach for dinner.

I want to take a picture, but if I get my camera it'll be gone. It only takes a few seconds to cross the room and it'll be through a crack in the wall.

I grab my dust broom and pan. I brush him in. He rears to strike. I toss him into my Tongan washing machine, an eight quart plastic pail.

I shoot the shot for this post. Now I'm stuck. What to do with the alien beast?

I use the method proven by many a parent for the disposal of a dead goldfish. I toss it into the toilet.

This guy was big. maybe 8 or 10 inches, and he is as angry as a Covenant Elite facing a Spartan.

The giant centipede starts to climb out of the toilet. I watch it squirming up the side of the bowl and rush to gram my 24" bush knife. By the time I return to the toilet he is reaching over the rim and he is pissed!

I draw back to strike and he curls down and disappears into the rim that supplies the flushing water. He is gone, his cloaking device activated.

Well... lets face it... I won't be able to sit on this throne with a giant venomous centipede right under the lip.

I flush the toilet. We have two flush buttons, #1 and #2. I push #2.

He is pushed half way out and I strike. Clang - I missed and he is gone.

I wait none to patiently for the tank to refill. Finally it does.

I flush. He slips. I strike.

I have split him in two. Both halves continue to squirm and fight, but he can no longer swim worth a darn, and he sure as shootin' can't climb out.

Victory is ours. It feels good to blast the Covenant into slipspace. I hope he was the bastard that bit me in my sleep a couple of weeks ago. Revenge is sweet.

Easter in Tonga - Not much goin on

Good Friday. It is one of those "special" holidays here. Everything is closed with the notable exception of the bread shops. Thank God they are open.

No cabs or buses, no ferries and, obviously, the airport is closed. I am up at 03:00... not healthy. The church bells clamor before 05:00. The bells wake those roosters that are still snoozing and the clamoring is deafening. I am listening to the radio, on these 'no work' days they play a feed from the BBC world service. I can't hear anything until the bells finally quit.

After tea I wait for sunup then I wander the town, chatting with folks I see. The local bakery has hot cross buns to celebrate Easter, so I grab half a dozen and eat them outside the closed public market.

All in all a quiet day. Good for reading and not much else.

Saturday is the opposite. Everything is open, at least until noon. We know that both Sunday and Monday are holidays here so everyone is bulking up to survive until Tuesday.

The Prime Minister's grocery store has a remote from Cool-90 FM. For the remote they are offering free ice cream cones and cheap sausages. They have boxes of expired wine at about half price. I battle through the line and scarf a free cone. I load a box of wine into my back pack along with a six pack of roach baits and a bunch of small presents to send to my PCV friends on Eua. A couple of PCVs from here are heading over for Easter and offer to carry the stuff.

I bike out to the campsite and empty my backpack, then back into town. There is a place near the market that has a couple of freezers and a scale. The freezers have frozen slices of local tuna. I grab a chunk the size of a dinner plate. 2.2 kilos. It is frozen solid and that's a good thing.

Back to the campsite to toss it into the fridge. I will eat half of it today (Easter). Then back into town.

As you may recall the male PCVs all dropped a dangerous amount of weight during training. I lost over 20 pounds, all muscle, in only ten weeks.

Since coming to the capital I have managed to put it all back on. I go the the gym and often bike ten or twenty miles a day and a heavy and primitive bike. I eat about a kilo of meat, a loaf of bread, a couple of cups of white rice for dinner most nights. I may die of malnutrition, but i won't be a skinny little twerp of a corpse when I go.

Today is Easter. I manage to sleep until the bells, real progress for me. I turn on the lights and... no scurrying roaches! I look in the kitchen, there a few roaches, but they apparently died while practicing the backstroke on the kitchen floor. Good riddance. I recommend the Mortein roach baits! I don't really mind the little arthropods, but I'm concerned that their presence may attract the larger predators. And I do NOT want another interaction with a molokau.

After doing my daily emergency coordinator research I do the rounds of the bakeries. Nothing available early, not unexpected, but I appreciate the chance to get some exercise. I'll go back to the bakery, this one is about 4 miles from my campsite in Maufunga. It is early so I usually hang for five minutes and chat with the bored staff. They and I both appreciate the company.

It is about noon here now and I'm thinking of heading out again. They promise to have cinnamon rolls sometime today. Having just talked to my daughter who is making the same at her boyfriends house, I'm kinda craving them. There is a heavy downpour outside the Peace Corps office. As soon as it quites I'll make another dash to bakery.

Pretty quiet here. My molokau bit is still inflamed. Not much else to report.

Bank On It!

As usual I am low on cash. I try to keep my cash position low to help reduce spending and minimize the impact of any loss or theft. I cycle into town on my newly repaired bike (long story) before dawn and decide to hit the ATM before checking out the bakery for cheap food.

The ATM is displaying a screen that indicates it is not going to be of much use to me. No worries, there is a second. After all I am at the main Tonga branch of one of Australia's largest banks.

The second ATM is also feeling under the weather. Hmmm. Here is a note informing all customers that the ATM and EFT networks are down until further notice. I still have $3 cash, so I buy a loaf of whole grain bread for $1.80 and skip my usual donation to the old lady beggar of the bakery. I am glad it is $1.80. It is a different price every day and sometimes it is up to $3.30. Same bakery. Same clerk. And no, they don't actually change the prices every five minutes. It is just Tonga.

Later I head for the local bank branch near work. The ATMs are still dead.

I hit the very long line, but enjoy the wait as this is one of the few buildings in Tonga with air conditioning. Finally it is my turn.

"I'd like to take out $100 please" I say.
"Do you have your last ATM receipt?" asks the teller.
"Uhhh... No." is my reply.

A worried look. Normally I just give my name and over the counter comes the cash. No passport, no drivers license, no ID of any kind. This is, after all, Tonga.

The problem today? No computers at all. None. But no worries, we fill out a withdrawal slip with just my name, no account number, and I eventually get my $100. I know I'm good for it, but I am thankful the bank agrees. I suspect that being a palangi helped.

Try that one at home.

My Campsite is Starting to Really Bug Me!

I spend the evening (Friday night) at a gathering at the Australia High Commission. The Australians and Kiwis have a lot of parties and know how to have a good time. No good food this time (unusual) but an endless supply of beer and a lot of important contacts to chat and network with.

I finally return to the campsite about 11PM, later than usual. I turn on the fan and crash.

I am really pooped so I am sleeping pretty good. Am I dreaming? Maybe, hard to remember.

Then...

Owww!!! Holy Crap! It feels like there is a knife being driven into my hand. I try to brush "it" off, whatever "it" is, but there is nothing there. By now I am beginning to enter the realm of consciousness and find I am standing by my bed vigorously shaking my hand. On with the light. Nothing in sight. I strip the bed, and easy job since I have only a sheet, no blankets. After all this is only a campsite, not a viable home. Nothing there. "It" has made its escape.

I rush to the kitchen for my bush knife. This is a significant knife. It has a 24 inch blade. I loan it to my landlord so her son can trim the hedges with it. I also have a file, so the blade is far from blunt.

Why do I need a bush knife at 04:30 in the AM of a Saturday morning? Because this is my preferred weapon for battling molokous. Molokous are the giant tropical centipedes that are but one of the diverse pests that infest my campsite. Readers of this blog will remember past references to my previous traumatic but up-till-now painless encounters with these nasty beasts.

I poke around with the knife. Under the bed. In the dirty cloths on the floor. No dice. No molokou. I cock my head and listen. Can I hear the little bastard laughing at me from within the termite infested walls? Maybe. Or maybe its just the scurrying of a mouse.

I go to run cold water on my hand. There are two holes, viper like, in my palm. Each sports a tiny drop of blood. Mine.

I look down as I wash. All of the rat poison is now gone. Eaten with no apparent effect. I've been spending a small fortune to reduce the number of rodents that share my campsite. I have learned that anything edible, such as crackers or bread, must be stored in the icy (refrigerator) or they will be gnawed open. I hope that removing the readily available blood supply offered in the form of the rodent hoards doesn't make the Dengue Mosquitoes any hungrier for my blood. Perhaps I should get a hairless cat and offer it as a sacrifice to the bloodsuckers?

These random thoughts help me to control the pain. The bite of a giant tropical centipede really hurts. There is a video on the web of one striking a mouse. They strike just like a snake.

Why won't they eat MY mice? Perhaps they do, maybe that's what attracts so many of the venomous arthropods to my campsite in the first place.

As a rare individual who has now been bitten by both a rattlesnake (while in Texas) and the Centipede I would have to say that this Tongan critter hurts a lot more for the first couple of hours, but in the long haul the Texas bite was nastier.

Tomorrow is Sunday here. Maybe I'll ask the Fifekau (minister) to give a special prayer. "Please Lord help me find a tolerable place to live soon." Maybe if I give him a good mat and some tapa he would put in a good word?