Those of you
who know me or have read my book are aware of my deep-seated fear of
spiders. Each morning while in South Sudan,
I meticulously scan my clothing with a flashlight and shake each item
vigorously to dislodge any creepy-crawlies. During the day I watch where I
step. I examine smudges on the walls of the outhouse to make sure they do not
have 8 legs. At night I worry that every shadow has legs. I especially fear the
spiders that hop (they love the outhouse, by the way). How can I defend against that? The locals laugh at me, but I
don’t care. They say I should instead worry
about scorpions and snakes and centipedes and even certain thorn bushes (all
very poisonous, some quite deadly).
One night I
heard loud thwacking in the kitchen adjacent to the room where we were eating
dinner: “Thump! Thump! Thrrrump!” This continued for several minutes, accompanied by muttered grunts. The cook had discovered a centipede, about 8 inches in length and apparently venomous, and was dutifully
dispatching it to the afterlife. I later
viewed the corpse with curiosity but did not share the horror exhibited by the
cook. THAT, I reserve for spiders!
Before its demise it looked something like this (a picture which I found later on the web). And no, that is definitely not MY foot!
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