Pleasant Surprise...

When we got home from Ngara last weekend, we were pleasantly surprised to find fresh milk, hot water, and clean clothes for us from Mama Kabibi. She also had the girls do the dishes for us, which was all so kind! The dishes were left in a tub outside in our food room, so I went out to get them and put them away. I picked up the basin and was walking inside when I noticed an unusual movement by my left hand. Looking down, what do I see, but none other than a BAT hiding amongst our clean dishes! This is really the pleasant surprise I am referring too here. I just love when living creatures are within inches of my hand….

So natural reaction when I notice this lovely bat is to scream and half set down/half toss the whole basin of dishes on the ground. Instinct told me to just throw the whole thing and flail my arms and run inside…but considering the possibility of breaking all of our dishes, I did try to remain calm enough to lightly toss the whole thing to the side before running inside.

Of course, the bat is not fazed by any of this, and remained perched inside next to our cups. The dilemma at hand quickly became how to get the bat to leave. We couldn’t tip the basin because all of our dishes were still inside. We couldn’t knock the basin hard enough to make him move. We were afraid he might fly into the house, but we couldn’t figure out how to keep the door closed, but not actually be outside ourselves. Finally, Marisa braved close proximity in order to take all the dishes out of the basin. Once all the dishes were out, we had to figure out who would be the brave one to take care of bat. Luckily, we heard students walking outside our house at that point, so opening the door, we invited them inside and expressed our concern for the PoPo in the bucket. The girls just died laughing. Once we all composed ourselves, one of the girls picked up the bucket, took it outside, and flung the bat into bushes. CRAZY! But she certainly saved the day!

For the rest of the week, every time she walked by our house, she yelled “PoPo!”. Haha. The things we deal with here!