Ants In My Pants
Living in Africa, I always felt like something intended to kill me, be it venomous snakes, parasites, my motorcycle, lightning, or hippo and croc-infested river crossings in a pitching dug-out canoe. The locals, however, insisted with the utmost sincerity that I was safe from the crocodiles because I am white. I looked at them dubiously cocking my head like a dog does when trying to make sense of something. ‘So, they will eat you and not eat me?’ I asked. They explained that my body was invisible in the water because I was white and the crocodiles couldn’t see me. Of course, I didn’t buy that for a second, just like I didn’t buy the men’s claim that women couldn’t eat particular game meat, like python, because it would make them infertile. I joked that they just wanted to keep the best game for themselves. All these years later, childless, I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have eaten that python…
I regularly experienced intense anxiety with every harrowing river crossing I had to make. I had to psyche myself up at the river’s edge at each traversing over the sometimes mile-wide stretch of muddy water. Depending on the river, I had one of two ways to traverse it; in a dug-out canoe or on a ‘bac’ — a raft big enough for a good-sized truck on a pulley system. In the canoe, I was reliant on the boatman’s skills to keep the canoe upright with my motorcycle perched just so, like walking a tightrope. There was just a plank to board the bac, six inches wide and eight feet long. In my mind, it was a reverse pirate gangplank — my demise would be in driving up the plank to board the bac. Too little gas or a steering error an inch in the wrong direction, and I and my bike would fall off the plank and crash onto the river bank — my body tensed in the memory of previous accidents. Too much gas and I would drive right over the far side of the bac straight into the deep part of the river — there was no rail or bumper to stop my momentum. There were no practice runs. I would sit on my idling motorcycle and, like an elite athlete, close my eyes, take deep breaths, and envision my ride up the ramp, front tire centered perfectly, giving it just enough gas, braking on time once up on the raft.
On one of these river-crossing trips, I went to the Catholic Mission to run errands, get my mail and visit a Peace Corps friend, Emily, who lived near the Kingandu mission. Emily lived in the jungle and taught farmers how to build ponds to farm tilapia fish to sell as income and harvest fertilizer for their crops.
Visiting a fellow volunteer was always a treat. It felt like a novelty to speak English with a fellow American and to have ease of shared cultural norms and history, conversing without the need to explain oneself. There were always anecdotal stories about the crazy experiences we had since we last met and the reminiscing over our favorite foods we missed.
That night after we went to bed, we continued talking until our voices began to fade into silence. I started to dose and was then rousted by a sound my brain couldn’t quite understand — a sound that was everywhere. ‘Emily!’, I whispered loudly, ‘what is that??’. We froze for a moment, listening to the ghoulish sound, and then turned on our flashlights. The house was crawling with siafu — also known as Safari or driver ants. The sound we were hearing was hundreds of thousands if not millions of them crawling on every surface, devouring anything edible. Siafu are small, vulnerable, and pesky, easily overcome if one of them is isolated as a single ant. However, when banded together in unity for the sole purpose of the survival and strengthening of the community, they are virtually unbeatable, taking down all kinds of different animals, from goats to buffalo. Emily and I were paralyzed for a moment with dread. Then the siafu made their way up to the legs of our beds and began to bite. We screamed and bolted out of the house and into the road away from the hut.
Standing in the pitch-black of night, we sensed something wasn’t right; we heard something wasn’t right, and shining our flashlights to the ground, we found we were standing in a river of ants as they climbed up our legs, hoping to make a meal out of us. Screaming and slapping at the ants on our legs, we were about to hightail it to escape the invasion until we heard the cry of Emily’s puppy. Good grief! We had forgotten her small puppy and kitten in the house as we fled the tiny raiders. We ran back to get them and found them shaking with fear and pain, covered in biting ants. Once we had the kitten and puppy, we made our way down the road until we were free from the raging river of ants. We spent the rest of the night huddled outside. We were waiting for the nightmare to be over.
At first dawn, we made our way back down the road to Emily’s place. There was not an ant to be seen on the road. As we approached the house, we could see no sign of them. Inside the house, we noticed that everything was in its place except that every bit of food was gone. The tsunami of ants came, saw, looted, and left. The trial was over. We were exhausted but relieved.
Years later, I read the novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver about an American missionary family living in the bush in Zaire. She described a scene precisely like what we had endured. I laughed as I read the passage in uncomfortable recognition at the calamity the family faced as I understood all too well the force and seriousness of nature‘s destructive power.
Not too long after I returned to my home village, Mutelo, my domestique Saakul showed me that we had an invasion of termites in the roof rafters. If we didn’t take care of these fast-moving termites quickly, my roof would become unstable and likely collapse with heavy rain. Of course, I had no idea what to do. It’s not like there was a local Orkin man I could call!
A couple of days later, Saakul appeared with what looked like a good-sized hornet’s nest. He often brought found items home that set off alarm bells in my head. I am thinking, what fresh hell is this? Is this dinner? I had grown accustomed to eating all sorts of insects as my primary protein source, just like everyone else, so my concern that this was my next meal was not out of the realm of possibility. Saakul explained that it was a termite-eating ant nest. So, not dinner. Nature has an answer for everything. Saakul saw the look on my face given my recent run-in with siafu ants and ensured me these would not bother me and stay in the roof rafters. He carefully secured the nest in the rafters, and true to his word, the termites were taken care of in short order. The nest was returned to the tree where he found it.
First, ants almost killed me, and then ants saved my house. Nature brings everything into balance. Nature is not good or bad. It just is. That’s why it’s called nature or the natural world — it’s behaving in the only way it can, in its authentic expression of creation, destruction, life, death, power, fragility, compassion, exquisite beauty, and deadly violence.
So many of us have become removed from nature and the heady wildness it brings. In the modern-day world, we seek to tame and control nature. In the natural world, one is simply a part of the circle of life. I discovered purpose and exhilaration in the day-to-day effort to survive Mother Nature and live to see another day. We humans need a challenge. Challenges demand that we become resilient, creative, and clever problem solvers. It makes us better people. It lets us shine beyond our perceived limitations. I hold deep gratitude for the blessings of every adverse experience my life has offered me and the fortitude I have earned traveling this unusual and extraordinary life path.
