D DAY.

This morning, before the sun had set, while darkness still shrouded the African wilderness, the ants unleashed an intricately planned, clever attack on me and my banda. Judging by the intensity and severity of the attack, it is clear that several colonies had been strategizing about this day for quite sometime. They could not forget the massacre of their brothers that I staged on July 12th.  They formed alliances, attempting to find some retribution for the crimes I committed against their species.  They infiltrated efficiently and quietly- in the dead of night, when they knew a human would be sleeping. At 5:30 AM, the first shot was fired. I was awoken by something bothering my ear. I quickly realized is must be an insect, thinking a mosquito had found a hole in my tent. I grabbed it: an ant. Next, on my neck: an ant. On my arms; ants. Suddenly, I realized that the offensive creatures were parachuting from my ceiling. The suicidal ants fell from the roof and into my hair. They crawled from the floor into my bedsheets. They scaled walls to get to my arms, all the while biting with a vengeance. I grabbed my torch, and soon realized they were everywhere, and that my home was no longer safe.  My security had been compromised. I retreated- running out of my tent as fast as I could to get away from them.  Unbeknownst to me, the ants had already swarmed, their tiny black bodies covering every available surface around my banda. There were thousands, and that is not an exaggeration. At this point, I was desperately trying to remove the clothing I was wearing, the only relief from the ants that were eating my flesh. Half naked, I grabbed some clothes from my laundry basket that appeared ant-free and ran into the African wild, slapping my body and jumping to try to get them to release their tight hold. Often, if you slap them away while they are biting you, the body will detach, and their heads will remain against your skin, holding on for dear life. I ran to the pavilion, getting dressed along the way.

The ants had won for now, but I would not surrender. Just as they had gathered their allies for the attack, I knew I could not fight alone. I walked to the pavilion and found Hamishi, an Uskari (night guard) and told him what happened. “Pole, Pole, Sana,” He told me. Translation: “I am sorry, very sorry.” He woke up Raymond and got another Uskari to try to kill them. The spray kills a lot of them, but the scent stays in the air and causes them to leave, so they used FIVE cans of bug spray to try to kill them.

As dawn broke, my banda has once again become an ant graveyard. Moody and Abra, two of the workers, are going to help me dispose of the dead bodies after school (sweep them away). It has been an adventurous morning, and my skin is still crawling. Salt water has been spread everywhere, and the situation is under control, save for a stray ant here and there. I fear the day that they regain enough strength to come back…only time will tell what they have in store for me next.