...but somebody's gotta do it

My kitchen might qualify again under US health codes, but it hasn’t been easy.

There have been two recent bouts of waterlessness in my neighborhood which inspired challenging questions, such as: do I take a shower or flush the toilet or wash two sinks full of dishes? Because with one bucket of water - brought by a guy on a bicycle – I can't do all three.

Usually the dishes lose, and in that respect, the biomass lying-in-wait in my kitchen wins.

I know all about roaches. I know their infinite forms and varieties. I've seen them squished between bills dispensed by the ATM, scurrying inside a ball cap I removed from my head, hidden like Where's Waldo in more meals than I'd like remember, and once a tiny one was in a sealed package of bubblegum (figure that one out), proving their limitless ingenuity.

Just last night I let my cat play with an elephantine specimen which lumbered out of the shower drain. Stella has so few toys to play with.

So while I was not necessarily surprised that two species helped clean the dishes, I was surprised by their quantity – the sheer magnitude of their forces.

One species was long, thin and pinkish - somehow shrimp-like, but with wings. The other black-brown and pyknic, peppercornesque. Both now dead.

As men laid pipe on the lawn to fix the pump, I gathered my supplies: anti-bacterial soap, trash bucket and a large kitchen sponge I received as a birthday present last year (which I had saved for a special occasion such as this). I tried to divine assistance like the commercials where Mr. Clean jumps off the bottle and mops the floor in one, big S-shaped streak. But clearly I was going to be doing this alone. I rolled-up my sleeves and stood at the ready. When I heard air, then the water, gurgling in the pipes, I got to work.

I soon found the bugs' secret lair and annihilated it in a progrom I call "shock-and-eww." Confident about the thoroughness of my cleaning, I returned to food preparation at home. And when we lost water the next week, well, I repeated the whole process over again.

I sometimes forget that in Kigoma you're never alone. I walked into my kitchen the other night and discovered a noisome odor that could only be one thing: dinosaur poo. More specifically, the white, liquidy guano too often secreted in our attic by Monty, the non-pet resident monitor lizard (who hasn't paid a shilling toward rent).

So I checked the ceiling and there it was: the telltale white stain situated over the drying rack next to the sink, the dishes from which I had just stowed in the cupboards.

So what sponge does one use to clean monitor lizard poo off otherwise clean dishes? If I ever find the dish it landed on, I'll be sure to let you know.