The Wet Season

Sophomore fall I took a class called African Literature and Film.  One week we watched a film called Daratt, which roughly translates to Dry Season.  It was about a boy who’s father had been killed in the civil war in Chad.  When it is announced over the radio that war criminals will be given full amnesty, his grandfather tasks him with killing the man who murdered his father.  It’s a great film that won a few cinema awards. 

Anyway, I mention it because if I were to make a film called The Wet Season, the main character would be beetles, with supporting actors/actresses being termites and mosquitoes.  There would be no plot and the entire movie would depict a bajillion beetles flying at the camera lens for 90 minutes.  Did you know termites fly?  I didn’t know that until, one night, I was horrified by the increase in moths we were encountering after the first rains.  Someone proceeded to tell me those where termites.  Immediately my horror grew.  Termites were the things that were supposed to rot your wooden deck.  They were not supposed to fly into your hair and mouth as you tried to eat dinner.  The beetles are a joke.  And by that, I don’t mean they’re an insignificant non-threat and thus funny.  No, I mean it’s a frakking joke how many frakking beetles are around and it’s frakking ridiculous that they cannot avoid you when they’re flying around doing beetle things.  It’s honestly a nightmare.  If it weren’t for my bug net, I’m convinced I’d have at least a bajillion beetles crawling on me throughout the night.

The strange thing is, the mosquitoes are not the worst part.  I was sure the mosquitoes would destroy me, eat me alive, suck all the blood out of my body.  But they aren’t.  In the U.S., we hear all this stuff about endemic malaria, thus an abundance of mosquitoes, and we think the place must be full of the bugs, especially during the wet season.  The summer before my senior year of high school, I went on a backpacking trip in the Wind River Mountain range.  It was, what the leaders of the trip would like to call, Type II fun (not to be confused with Type II diabetes, which is most certainly not fun; also not to be confused with Type II error, which is just boring).  Type II fun is when, looking back on an experience after a certain span of time, you remember it as fun.  Type I fun is when something is actually fun in the moment.  The Wind River Mountain trip was horrible at the time because it was my first outdoor experience and it was defined by mosquitoes.  Usually mosquitoes are few and far between during the day, then they come out in droves at dawn and dusk.  The Wind River mosquitoes had no sense of time, for they were ever-present all hours of the day.  I put on 99% DEET, but the mosquitoes didn’t care.  I was confined to hiking in my raincoat and long pants to prevent against bites.  I was lucky in that before we hit the trail, I headed the warnings of a man in a game shop and bought a bug net.  My face was protected most of the time, but when we ate meals, it was always standing up and always on the move to prevent against mosquitoes landing and sucking (well, mosquitoes always suck, but…).

At least beetles don’t bite.  But they’re bigger.  And grosser in my mind because they’re not something I’ve encountered a lot of in America.  Perhaps Cicada Summers counts as the closest thing, but we have those in Chicago and I don’t remember them being that bad…

All I can say is, if you ever come to Kenya (which you should because it is AWESOME!) DO NOT COME DURING THE WET SEASON.  It’s amazing to see the transition from wet season to dry season, but if you’re coming for a few weeks, and you can choose which season, do dry.