African Uno

Since we have been here in Zambia, there have been various creatures we've had to encounter, some more dangerous than others, but none more ANNOYING than the african stink bug...It's a seemingly harmless bug about the size of your thumbnail that has no other purpose than to march around with its friends until the day of its death. At any given point of the day you can usually find 30-40 of these things crawling on the walls, on your shoes, in your tub and in many other places. Killing them is a mistake because of the awful stench they put off when dead so you just get used to them being around. Now in the past few weeks a transformation has taken place and these brownish, walking bugs have turned into bright green, flying, buzzing menaces! Last night we decided to take a break from everything and play a game of uno (everyone loves uno, right?) The game began and within a few minutes it was clear that we were going to have many bright green spectators overhead. But these weren't even the normal flying ones! They seemed to have been put on a mission to disturb and end our fun game of cards as each of them took turns at dive-bombing our heads (at this point there were about 15 doing this) and it seemed they were multiplying as they crawled out of the fan overhead. 10 minutes into the game our director called to check in on us and as Sal (clincal doctor) talked to Jerry on the speaker phone we went to war with the stink bugs! Jessi grabbed a candle holder, I grabbed a towel and Renee was in her battle stance...the plan was simple: I was to climb on the table and smack these things out of the air with the towel so that Jessi and Renee could crush them with fingers, shoes, candle holders, etc. After killing about 30 of these things (and causing a lot of ruckus and stench as Jerry spoke with us about ministry details...sorry Jerry!) we began to think our quest was a bit hopeless. Jerry hung up and we went back to playing cards when suddenly the next obstacle came...Zesco went out! So there we were, in pitch dark, rushing to find candles while the stink bugs took advantage of our handicap and began settling down all over the table and cards. We lit up the candles and that became the stink bugs new attraction. They would fly into the wax and then we would have to dig them out so that the candle didn't carry their smell! It was quite a comical scene! We started up the game only to stop again because of a knock at the door. It was some of the orphanage workers coming to let Jessi know that there were no candles in the orphanage (they neglected to tell her when they ran out the last time power went out) so we took another 10 minute pause to get them some light. After she returned we ended up finishing our game of uno in a romantic candle-lit fashion and just as Jessi and I were about to head home Zesco popped on and we were able to see our major mess. There were well over 100 stink bugs surrounding and covering the dinner table and we all had a good laugh about the "added factors" of playing a simple card game in Africa!
We love you guys and are glad you have enjoyed the posts thus far!
Jake and Jessi