Living in a rural area, I am surrounded by nothing but
natural bushland, and this being Africa,
the bush is inhabited by some weird and wonderful creatures, and sometimes
these venture into my house. Many of
them do not last long in my house, as I am not keen on sharing my lodgings,
although some I do tolerate, as long as they don’t bite or sting!
I’ve already mentioned the snake. But I also have this rather large
lizard living in the roofspace. He
climbs the walls of the house and squeezes through a tiny gap to live in the
rafters. This is fine as I’m hoping he
eats some of the other less desirable things that might live up there!
One evening as I walked between my bedroom and the bathroom,
I noticed this tarantula on the ceiling.
Unfortunately (for the spider), I was not prepared to share my living
space with this thing, so after snapping a quick photo I got a broom and
knocked him off the ceiling and managed to get it before it scurried under some
shelves. The picture does not have a
sense of scale… this thing was HUGE! Ewwww
Geckos on the other hand I will quite happily tolerate as
they are so cute! I have a few large
ones that seem to be residents, and are
quite happy to eat a lot of the insects that come in to the house. One evening as I was sat on the computer I
heard a crunching noise.. upon investigation I found it was a gecko munching on
a massive grasshopper! This brave little
gecko crawled up my trouser leg whilst I was sat in the garden.. I managed to
coax him onto my hand, run inside with him, grab my camera and we had a
photoshoot.
And this large lizard was poking around my window long enough for me to catch a few shots of his bright blue tounge:
This being Africa, there are lots of insects.. all shapes,
sizes, colours and configurations! Every
day I see a new type of insect, from giant millipedes, spiders, huge
butterflies, bees the size of small aircraft, various flying things, crawling
things, fifty different species of ants, big things, small things, things that look like other things and things
are are just weird!
Ants can be a
problem, especially when they decide to move their nest into your house during
the night, and you awake to find them congregated by the front door!
After the rains, even more animals come out including these
tiny frogs (see if you can spot it!).. You may not see them, but you certainly
hear them, their croaking is so loud it can keep you awake at night. The frogs combined with the crickets, nocturnal birds and who knows what else that is out there make a deafining noise at night, but you soon become used to and it gets quite soothing... certainly nicer than the noise of cities, traffic, sirens and drunken chavs!
And talking of loud things,
the cicadas' rasping noise can be so loud as to be physically painful when
walking past a tree full of them. The
rains also bring out the Giant African Land Snails (or “snails” as I expect
they are called here…. I wonder if the Africans would say “small English land
snail” in reference to the UK garden snail???)
There are no large animals near the village (these are
mainly found in the wildlife reserve parks) although I did hear reports of an
elephant wandering into a village about 100km from Nyangao (the villagers
killed it and took the meat) and there was a patient who had been attacked by a
hyena in a village near mtwara (he was in his field when attacked and received horrific facial injuries, but thanks to the docotrs at our hospital has recovered well) There
are rumours of a crocodile living in the sewage treatment works of the hospital,
but I’ve yet to see it (probably because I’m not about to start wandering
through the reedbeds of a sewage treatment works looking for an animal that
might bite by leg off!). There are monkeys that visit the trees near the resevoir, and I have seen a glimpse of them, but never when I have my camera!
Of course there are the ubiquitous chickens – even wandering
the corridors of the hospital (could you imagine what the Infection Control
team would do in a UK hospital!) and the mosquitos (although thankfully there are not too
many in Nyangao)
Tanzania has such a diversity of wildlife everywhere, but is
not for those who are squeamish, afraid of insects or who want a peaceful nights sleep!
