Through out my service, I have had one true enemy. Yes the heat is bad and the littlest Malians that run through my closed concession gate at full speed drive me bonkers, but they are not worth more than a sigh and a stern face. And while the rains that come through my roof in rainy season irk me, and the yelling of "tubabu" by the street children and sometimes even the adults make me cringe, they are also not at the top of my list. Long lines at the bank only to be cut by the old man who ignores the bright red numbers atop the cashier's window that conveniently correspond with the number on the slip of paper in my hand and use instead the Malian hierarchy of old over young are frustrating. And barking dogs, crowing roosters, donkeys braying with all their might and guinea fowl clucking along the outsides of my walls, all adding to the before-dawn prayer call are rather bother-some. But all of these things, and everything else that I have found less than pleasant about Mali are nothing, NOTHING, compared to the item at the top of my list.
Scorpions.
From the first time I saw one trying to join me in the nyegen for my evening bath back in homestay my first month in Mali, to the almost 60 others I have seen and killed in my house, they have been my worst enemy, loathsome, awful creatures who inspire the fear in me like no other thing here in Mali. So how fitting it is, that as I am spending my last night in village, up on my roof taking in the brilliance of the stars in such a wide open sky that I would feel a pinch in my upper left arm. Of course, thinking nothing much of it, i brushed at what ever was causing me trouble. "Ugh, stupid dugu mene (biting tiny ants)," I was thinking. But the pain would not abate and began to get hot and spread through my lower arm and up into my shoulder. Henry looks for a mark, a bite, something. And as he sighs, telling me there's nothing much to see, his eyes wander to the spot on the roof I had just occupied. "Well," he says, "there's a big ass scorpion right there...."
He got the CHACO of justice, that bastard, and still I have the last word.
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