I Still Can't Sleep

So last I mentioned about sleep, there were rats playing soccer in my ceiling and roosters waking me up at the crack of dawn with that wretched screeching. Maintenant, there is an unknown creature nestled in the thatch roof of my hut. The creature that never sleeps….

For the past 3 weeks (maybe more) I have been tormented like never before by something living in my roof. I’m not sure where it came from because I was sleeping like a baby the first month at site and I don’t feel like I have changed any of my habits to entice any creature to feel that that have a free place to stay at night.

Anyway. Every evening when I’m finished with my students around 6:00pm I head home, spend a little time with my petites and depending on what we’re eating, eat with my family or in my hut. Usually around 7:30pm I listen to the BBC News and then take my night bath and hop in the bed with my headphones or a book and fall asleep.

Usually between 11:00p and 1:00a is when I am awakened by this thing. It starts off with a little rustle of the straw and then continues with this uncontrollable scratching and knowing of the bamboo, that makes me want to scream. It goes on for about 30 minutes then takes a break for about 5 or 10 minutes and then goes back to work until the wee hours of the morning.

The first time I heard it I was scared out of my mind. Every sound that I hear is magnified through the silence of the night, so I layed in my bed with my heart racing trying to decipher whether this noise was coming on the inside or the outside of my hut. If it was outside it was just a cow, goat or chicken eating a midnight snack of dried grass and weeds. Sometimes they get really close to the hut because it’s nice and warm on those cool nights when the temperature drops. I tried convincing myself that the noise was coming from outside to calm my nerves. I sat up in my bed and my flashlight around the hut for confirmation. If it was a rat or any rodent it would run away if it saw the light, right? But it didn’t so I knew it had to be outside. Unfortunately even if you convince yourself it doesn’t necessarily mean the noise is going to stop, it just means that your mind at ease. So the rest of the night I layed in my bed listening. I was finally able to fall back asleep around 4:30a only to have to wake up for work at 6:30a.

During the day I kind of forgot about the thing and kind of chalked it up as a one night occurrence. So I did my normal routine that evening with BBC, bath and headphones, only to be woken up again in the early morning hours by this knowing. I told myself, ‘oh Larc, go back to sleep, it’s just a cow outside.’ But then I heard pieces of my roof fall to the cement floor. My heartbeats quickened, and the fear sank in again, and now I was wide awake with my mind racing, thinking the unimaginable, like “Oh God, a giant bush rat is about to eat its way through my ceiling, land on my mosquito net and knaw it’s way through and eat me.”...really Larc? That clearly didn’t happen but I was petrified to the point where I wanted to cry, mostly because I was so tired and I didn’t want to have another night like the one before. Basically I just layed in my bed, listened to a little music, read a little bit until he was finished. Another sleepless night went by.

So at this point I realize that this is not a one night occurrence and it’s time to get other people involved because I can’t live my life like this. I ask around and people keep saying “oh it’s just a rat,” but I really don’t think so.

After a couple nights of this nonsense, I was pissed. So the other night he started his usual business, but I was too tired to put up with it, so I had to take matters into my own hands. At about 2 o’clock in the morning I had, had enough, so I put on my headlamp, grabbed my sharpest knife, and a broomstick and stood on my wooden chair with every intention of murdering what was up there. The broomstick was just long enough to reach the point of the roof, so I used all of my force to slap the pieces of bamboo and the tip of the broomstick to punch through the straw.

Despite my efforts I found nothing. Now I was wide awake with tired arms. So I climbed back in my bed and read a little bit hopes of falling asleep, because there’s no way thing would come back out after all that noise I just made. I had to have scared him away right?...Sike! Within 20 minutes he had gone back to work. I hate to admit this, but I think this creature has gotten the best of me. It’s still there. I’ve resorted to going to bed earlier so I can be in a deeper sleep when he comes out and I also stick cotton in my ears to smother the noise he makes. I’ll be sure to inform you all once I discover what it is.