It’s a lie.
I DO.
I DO.
I didn’t think I needed a man, and before your mind
wanders, I am not stating the obvious ‘use’ of a man (is that even PC to say
that?); I’m talking about the handyman jobs around the house. They call it handyMAN for a reason. I thought could do anything that a man could
do should the need arise. Right? WRONG.
I have always been fortunate since moving out of home when I was 16, that
I have never had to live on my own. This
is the very first time. I have always
had a flatmate/ boyfriend/ husband on hand should anything be required fixing within
the household and or also with car issues.
Namely the killing of small intruders (of the insect kind), the drilling
of holes, the planting of plants/gardening chores, painting or any other handyman
jobs that come up unexpectedly.
So not only did I brave a move to literally, a brand new
world, a new continent, on my own at the start of 2013, I also took on the job
and roles of all the above mentioned. It
didn’t seem so daunting back then as I didn’t have a lot of issues that
required a lot of attention. As I had
moved into a newly built apartment, anything that needed repair I could call
the building manager Charles, (man one) and he would come down and sort it out
for me. So maybe my blog title is a
little misleading, and in truth, a lie, as I have a few main men I rely on daily,
if not weekly, to help me settle and live my single life in Kenya.
The great thing being in a smaller apartment block is you
get to make friends with the people that you see in your living space every
day. Within the apartments Charles-my building
manager (man one) and Protus-our day security guard (man two) are 2 men that I
count on here. Protus main job is to
open the security gate, vette people that come and go and he also became an
extra set of hands when I needed help with the unloading of my shopping each
week. The last few months he has been helping
me ferry my 200+ plants down the 2 flights of stairs to my apartment, furniture
deliveries and any other odds and ends that are just too heavy for me to
carry. Of course it is not for free,
nothing in Kenya is free, but giving all these guys a small tip (2-3 bucks) is
worth every penny to get someone to help out on things that just couldn’t be
done on my own. Its’ one thing that you
forget about living on your own, that sometimes you just need an extra set of
hands for certain things. As my personal
items came from Australia I had some paintings and shelves that I needed framed
and hung on walls, and ‘my’ carpenter guy, Peter, (man three) was more than
happy to personally deliver the completed works over the last 12 months, and
for an extra cost (remember nothing is for free), he also hung them on my walls
for me and erected shelves when and where I needed. I have since purchased my own drill and in
the last 3 months I have gone nuts drilling and bolting everything to the walls
myself. My last ‘main’ man in my life is
Steve (man four), who became a fast friend in finding my feet in Kenya and on
the roads of Nairobi right from the beginning.
He became an ear for me to ask all my mzungu questions, his thoughts and
advice on my integration into a country he is proud to call home. Since obtaining my own wheels, he has been a
great wealth of car information and help which in turn fast became Suzy Blues
best mate also. I hate to say it, but
really a car is a man’s department-and I am lucky to have Steve.
Certainly the last 5 weeks has stretched my ‘man needs’
(again is this PC) as I had an invasion of local critters one after
another. It was weird that I had been in
the apartment for nearly 17 months and the only critters that I had seen in
that whole time was a mouse back in May 2103, once, and a spider in
January. If you know me, spiders are a
NO GO for me, but when there is only me, I stepped up to the plate and I annihilated
that sucker with half a can of bug spray, a few thumping’s with a broom and the
killer blow with a shoe. 5 years ago I
would not have even got close to that 8 legged monster, now I just have to. I am thinking the garden is the draw card for
the last bunch of critters that invaded; it is the only thing that changed in
the last few months. It was a new
venture for me; I’ve never had a green thumb and certainly had never cared for
a garden of my own before. Needless to
say I didn’t think of the slugs, worms and other creepy crawlies that come with
plants, but I have sucked up that it is part of the gardening ‘gig’ and I do
what I have to do, as there is just me, otherwise I would have a courtyard full
of wriggly unwanted bugs.
So the first invasion was from rats.
I had actually set myself up for this invasion. I thought it would have been nice to have a
bird feeder in my garden, so I bought one which I stocked with seed. Short of sending out a personal invitation to
the rats with flashing lights, they thought it was super nice of me to feed
them and not even a week of having the feeder up, I heard the rustling and
pitter patter of small feet each evening outside. The food was promptly removed and to help
these long tailed rodents on their merry way, I Googled natural remedies to remove
the critters and with peppermint oil ranking high on the list, I had my garden
smelling like a fresh menthol in no time.
They moved on-no man required for this one.
The second invasion, or should I say standoff was with a
lizard.
I am okay with some lizards. I like geckos and I can handle lizards that
have respect on where they should be and what their jobs entail: eg eating
mosquitos and spiders. Well Maurice was
no ordinary lizard. Besides looking a
little like a snake (UGH) he also had no boundaries. He kept coming INSIDE my house and I am sure
on a few occasions I could hear him laugh at my cries of distress when I saw
him. After showing a few pictures around
(doing no justice on how LARGE he actually was) I was told that he was a skink,
a BIG skink. A big, scary looking skink,
that had to go. I tried natural remedies
on him, from peppermint oil spray, to tabasco spray (which he licked his face
when sprayed directly), egg shells near the door and the last remedy of
onion. I left 3 small trays of onion out
in the courtyard, to which Maurice sat next to one of the plates and sunned
himself all afternoon-cheeky bugger. I
left the plates out overnight, to wake the next morning to find them all empty
(definitely got rid of the rats as they can’t digest onion) but still had Maurice
terrorising me in my own house/garden. I
bought an iron owl, I bought a bottle top snake, and I bought wooden birds all
to no avail. It all came to a head when
I had to head out to a function one weekend, where he crept inside, and we had
a Mexican standoff for 1.5 hours with me watching him, waiting for him to leave. I tired spraying cold water on him, the
tabasco spray and when finally I had to go, I sprayed half a can of bug spray
on him, locked up the laundry where he was and hope for the best. When I returned a few hours later, he was nowhere
to be seen and being optimistic, hoping he had finally packed his bags, I
thought that Maurice was gone and I wished him well. Man power needed.
The third invasion was with mice-well a mouse-but I swear
there were two.
Besides the one little mouse I had seen last year when I
had returned from a 3 week trip to London, mice to me, are things that you just
read about in kid’s books as I’d never had them in Australia. One evening while I was watching TV I saw a
small mouse run from the couch to one of the book cases. I had to take a second, thinking that maybe I
had imagined it when he streaked back the other way when I got up to investigate. It was just weird and I was certainly more
scared of Maurice than of Stewy (the mouse).
Well over the coming days, he kept running around scaring the pants off
me, while I tried natural remedies to get him to move on and I also laid bug
spray on his ‘route’. The final straw
came when I had left a candy bar next to my bed one night and I woke to the
critter chewing his way through the packaging at 2am in the morning 1/2m away
from me. Ughhhhhhhhh. I had spoken to Charles during the course of
the week and phoned him a couple of times when I had a sighting, but Stewy was always
so quick, by the time Charlie came down he was nowhere to be seen and he was starting
to wonder if there actually WAS a mouse.
In one of our last efforts of looking for Stewy, I pulled the fridge out
and I saw a tail, but it wasn’t that of a mouse, it was MAURICE!!!!!!!!! He had been inside my house for 14 days and I
didn’t know about it, and just thinking about it now makes my skin crawl. He didn’t look that great, but he was still
alive and the second he moved I was out of there, screaming to Charlie to kill
him, as I hid behind a wall. Well with a
swoop of the broom his tail fell off and a second swoop on the head and he was
toast! Thank goodness Charlie was there
and he was able to dispose of the body while he was at it. But Stewy got to live another day!
It was time to play ball with Stewy and I headed to Nakumatt
to buy my first ever mouse traps. They
were the old fashioned kind and after I got the guy to show me how they worked
I headed home to set the traps for that night.
I had set 3 just before I went to bed (without losing any fingers-those
traps are dangerous) and I closed my door in the hope that it would help mask
the noise of the little guy getting snapped in the trap. I woke the following morning to trap one
empty of food but had not been set off, trap 2 was also empty but had not been
set off and trap 3 had little Stewy caught by the head in the trap-dead. I felt a little sad, but it was my house at
the end of the day and he had to go and I could finally show Charles that I was
not making it up that there was a mouse in my house and I had proof. I called him to come down and dispose of his little
body for me anyway and I felt like the bear hunter showing off my kill.
Keeping in mind all this happened over a 5 week period, I
was starting to wonder if my garden was worth the hassle it if this was what I
had to keep tackling all the time. But I
think Charles and I have worked out that the mouse was squeezing under the
closed door at night time, so we now have a piece of wood blocking the whole
length of the door and I have not seen a mouse since. I left the traps for a week, as I had thought
that there were two rodents in the house but the bread didn’t budge and neither
did I catch anything further. I would
also like to mention Frankie, who is a black looking gecko who lives on the
wall of my courtyard. I want you to know
that I just don’t go killing anything with scales-Frankie knows his place in
the garden and when he hears me he hides behind the red mask and lets me get
along with my business without popping out and scaring the pants off me. So yes, I can live in harmony with reptiles-if
they stick to the wall and stick to doing their job.
So going from the statement ‘who needs a man anyway’, the
definite answer for my situation is ME! I may have become a gardener, a pest controller and a Bob the Builder all rolled into one but I still need a man to do man jobs!!!!! And I am super lucky to have 4 main men
in my life who are happy to help me when I call, anytime.
So I would personally like to thank Charles, Protus,
Steve and Peter from a single gal making a home in an African country-critters
and all.
You guys rock and are my Kenyan ‘rocks’.
No comments:
Post a Comment