Une Sourie dans mon lit

So my living quarters, as I have said before are not bad. Yes there is the occasional large spider and yes on my first day I have to clean an actual pile of poop out of my room, but for the most part they are pretty nice. So far I have had only one truly bad experience…

After eating only a few bites of fish rice and some fruit all day, I was pretty hungry before bed. I decided to go into my stash and get a luna bar. I brought it into my bed with me to eat while doing my homework under my mosquito net. My mosquito net is tucked in under my mattress and it is a pain to do so after I come in it, I am in it for the night. Instead of untucking it and going out to the hall to throw my wrapper in the trash can I decided it would be safe to leave on top of my journal in the corner of my bed and went to sleep. At 1 am I was awoken by a sound familiar to me from late nights in Poulton, that is the sound of a mouse chewing on the plastic of a food wrapper. I curled up as small as I could I tried to convince myself that it was not a mouse, but rather a vivid dream caused by my malaria pills. Then I heard a telltale squeak just inches from my ear. I leaped out of bed, grabbed my flashlight, and shone it on my bed. There was nothing there. I took the wrapper out of my bed, I got back in, re-tucked my net, convinced myself it was a noise outside and not a mouse that my drug and sleep addled brain was confusing for a mouse. I started to fall back asleep. I was awoken again by real or imagined mouse noises. This went on for about 2 hours. Then I panicked and thought that I had trapped the mouse in my bed when I retucked my net and crawled to every corner of my bed to look over the edge and check. In the end I fall back asleep around 4 with my flashlight on to scare the mouse from my bed. The next morning I looked at the wrapper and it had indeed been chewed by a mouse. THERE WAS ACTUALLY A MOUSE IN MY BED! How did my mosquito net let a mouse in? That evening when I returned, I noticed the sunhat that I had filled with bandanas and other hair things. I thought to myself that this would be a perfect mouse house and I better move it into a suitcase before our amie colonizes it. As I picked it up, out darted the culprit. It is small and brown and a little cute, but I still hope our cat eats it. And so ends the story of La sourie dans mon lit.

p.s. Let me know if you want to hear about anything specifically or send me e-mails. Although the internet is intermittent, it is still great to get them when I can. Or if you are ambitious, real mails. My goal is to mail Christmas letters this week so if you want mail from Africa, e-mail me your address J