bugs, bugs, and more bugs

I got to talk and pray with my dear friend Amanda this evening! What a blessing. She laughed at the following stories, and I hope you will, too.

1) Earlier this week, we discovered small piles of shavings underneath our kitchen cupboards, a sure sign of wood mites. I walked into the kitchen after school today and spotted a gecko on the wall. I actually spoke out loud to it and commanded it to go behind the cupboards and eat all the mites, which it promptly did. In response, I audibly exclaimed "Yesssss!" You know you've adjusted to Nigerian life when...

2) The rains have once again returned to Nigeria, and with them, the flying termites have come out of hiding. Imagine the body of a carpenter ant with the wings of a dragonfly. Two dropped down around me in the living room last week. I freaked and stomped on them. Then on Wednesday, I walked into the kitchen at school and found one of the cleaners frying a panful of wingless termites. And next to her was a huge 5-gallon bucket of them, fried and salted. You guys, they eat them here for the protein. As Hannah would say, sicknasty.

3) I bought a box of macaroni & cheese at the supermarket this week. It was expensive and it wasn't Kraft, and the macaroni was neither fun-shaped nor individually packaged, so I should have anticipated what came next: As I emptied the pasta into the boiling water, I watched a bunch of tiny black flecks pour out, too.
Oh yes, my good friends. Some kind of small bug (fruit fly, perhaps?) had infested the pasta, laid eggs, and were in various stages of development when I decided to cook my mac&cheese. I scooped out the fully mature bugs while it was boiling, and strained out all the tiny larvae, too. But some of them had worked into the holes of the pasta and hatched there. Those suckers got boiled, salted, milked, and cheesed along with the pasta, and I ate it, bugs and all.
I told my flatmate and she said, "Wow, Maggie, you have become a true Nigerian!" Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment.