Mosquitoes

Oh, how I hate mosquitoes!!  On an intellectual level, I understood that they were prevalent in Africa, but I thought that by putting on bug spray and sleeping under bed nets we would be more protected. Maybe we would be from American mosquitoes, but these African ones are tricky.  They basically hide in dark places (like under the bed) all day and then emerge to torment you in your bed net at night.  I think there's no worse sound than the whine of a mosquito in your ear at 3 a.m.  (shudder).  I think that could be employed as a torture device alongside the rack.

Luckily we have a very effective weapon at our disposal:  the Zapper.  It's basically the size of a small tennis racket with a button on the side to electrify it.  You swing at the mosquitoes and...sizzle!  they drop dead of electric shock (sometimes the carcass actually fries on the surface which creates a somewhat unpleasant smell).

It's a bit disturbing to admit how satisfying it is to sweep through the bed nets before bed at night and make a bunch of kills.  There's something primal that gets released in me when I do this (protecting my young? dominance of species?)  However, it's a little less satisfying to sweep through the nets in the morning and realize we were cohabiting with 3 or 4 friends.

We have some toxic bug spray that we want to apply to the bed nets, but like many other things in Africa, it's been a challenge to figure out how to do this.  We think we want to do this via a spray bottle, and we've been keeping our eyes open for the past couple of weeks to find one...no luck so far.

Until then, the Zapper is our first line of defense!