Scorpion City

Jeff and Minkailou took off to Tabi for a few days of work, leaving me as mistress of the house with Seydou to help out. It’s been rather quiet with just the two of us, but relaxing. Work in the morning, hanging out in the afternoon, maybe a nap, music in the evening.

The rainy season has definitely started. Now there’s a chance of rain basically every day. That means we’re getting into insect time. Jeff had a room of the house redone for me (and maybe Abbie, if she spends any great amount of time here), so with a bookshelf and wall hooks, I could finally unpack. I got a mosquito net here too so I don’t have to constantly transport the tent in and out. Now my beloved Bug Hut 2 stays in the hanger and the mosquito net stays indoors.

My room (my palace, that is, since they call me princess here) is all great, except for an escapade last night. It was sort of cool outside, so I decided I would sleep inside. However, when I got in, I saw something scuttling, and for a second I thought it might have been one of these horrible-looking spider-like things, but upon closer examination, it turned out to be a little scorpion. Of course I screamed for Seydou to come in and kill it, which he did, but that definitely also killed my desire to sleep inside, because I was convinced there was another one that had scuttled under my mat and that would be in the mosquito net with me. Instead, I opted for my trusty Bug Hut 2, which had been zipped up all day, and I slept quite comfortably in the hanger. Seriously, scorpions are awful. What convinced nature to make such a thing?

I’m beginning to be able to converse a bit on Tommo-So. Ramata came over for elicitation this morning, as usual, and slowly, I was able to construct novel sentences. I found a new minimal pair today, too: lizard – gem (LH) and black – gem (H). This led to fun sentences like “the black lizard chatted” : gem gem ge digem kani.

Other than scorpion paranoia and occasional elicitation frustration, all is well.