Invasion of the killer ants! (literally… im not joking!)

During training in Morogoro I would always hear about these things called Siafu. They are ants which travel in big packs. If you see one then you better be sure that there are THOUSANDS on their way. All of the volunteers would talk about them and about how if they come into your house then you pretty much have to move out for a few days while they get rid of them for you. I also encountered these terrible beasts on my way to school pretty much every morning. Walking across the field to rebeccas house every morning there was a point where I would literally have to sprint because the ants would see my foot on the ground and run straight for it! Crazy things.

When I left morogoro I thought that that would be the end of Siafu in my life. Think again miss mery.

Last Friday (the… hum… 13th I think? Not sure) I left my house around 8 AM in the morning and I walked over to Igoda primary school to look at the beautiful library that is there. I spent the day watching the students (and I will post another post about this whole thing. Its awesome) and the peter and I came back to my house around 4 in the afternoon (peter and Christine came over to celebrate valentines day!) and as I walk into my court yard I hear my neighbor call my name from over my fence and I start to hear the terrible cry of my cat coming from inside my house. She just kept saying miss mery siafu! Siafu! It was then that I looked down at the ground next to my feet.

And there they were.

THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF SIAFU! Im not joking about that either. There are literally thousands. Maybe only one thousand… but that’s still a big number of ants! So I follow the little road that they made for themselves right into my house. I open the door and grab my cat. I was really scared neko wouldn’t be smart enough to get away… but he is a pretty sharp little cat J

Inside my house was much worse than the outside. They had pretty much made a little assembly line and were carrying all of nekos food out of the house. I actually am pretty impressed with the speed of the whole invasion. I was pretty much only gone for about 8 hours. They worked pretty fast to get the whole gang inside and working in that amount of time!

So I promptly ran over and grabbed my second master and he then ran and grabbed some students who fixed the whole thing for me! They didn’t even bat an eye when the little devils bit their feet and wouldn’t let go! They are dangerous like that. Those ants really don’t let go once they sink their teeth (and they have SHARP TEETH…. Ok… pinchers!).

Anyway, those boys did a great job! When peter and I got back from dinner the whole problem was solved and I was ant free… until Sunday.

Sunday the ants decided that they hadn’t finished what they had started and invaded my court yard once again. Blast it all! Sorry mom and dad I had to go on the phone so fast! I just didn’t want them to invade my house again.

And once again I burned them all. It was a little sad because the fire got a tad out of control and burned some of my pretty flowers… but im sure they will forgive me.

And then they came back into my garden again the next day! When I told the teachers that I had them again they all just laughed and they were like “well they like sugar. Are you sure your not dropping sugar on the ground?” Sorry teachers, my use of sugar is pretty much half that of ANY Tanzanian… and I certainly don’t go around sprinkling it on the ground. My only conclusion is that im just way too sweet and the saifu cant leave me alone.

Done and done :)