All Creatures Great and Small

There hasn’t been a lot of wildlife in the school compound but we do have some regular visitors.  Hens, goats and chickens are the most common visitors.  They are very comfortable here and have to be chased from classrooms on occasion.  We also get a lot of stray dogs and a couple of cats.  Their favourite locations are outside the kitchen and around the teachers’ houses (presumably because they are the main locations where food is kept)

Coloured locust

There are a few monkeys but they are only seen in the early morning or early evening and usually when you are walking off site. Cows and donkeys are usually accompanied by Maasai herdsmen. So it’s a bit like a petting zoo on occasion.

As for beasties – they are really not bad.  There is no sign of the biting mosquitos that plagued me in Uganda or the giant cockroaches of Rwanda.  There are some flies as you would expect.  Food waste needs to be wrapped up to avoid fruit flies.  I am taking malaria tablets as instructed and have a mosquito net but I’m not convinced that I need either.

Recently, there has been an influx of tiny black centipedes and they are crawling everywhere.  I swept about 100 from the step outside my front door and within 5 minutes another 100 had appeared.  Mummy Nora advises they must be kept from the house as they are dangerous.  She will not be drawn on the exact nature of the danger.  Just a lot of head shaking, eyebrow raising and finger wagging is clearly explanation enough.  Joanne, appears with the solution.  She sprinkles Dudu dust (whatever that is) at the entrance to our doors.  It seems to do the trick and prevents an imminent invasion of the centipedes.

Giant locust

Just then a giant locust appears – easily the size of a child’s fist.  It is well camouflaged and almost looks like something that has just fallen from a tree until it flies towards me. I almost jump out of my skin.  “Pffff,“  says Mummy Nora. “Don’t be a baby.  That one is harmless.”

That’s me told.

So I have seen two varieties of locusts but they don’t come inside.  One is very colourful and rather beautiful – a bit like a cockroach with wings. The other is the gigantic but harmless brown one. And as for the scorpions, I have only seen two and they were both tiny!