Palpitations

I was absolutely shattered last night. I slumped on the sofa and started writing a text message to one of the other volunteers. An hour later I received one from her… I was almost asleep with the phone in my hand and the message still half written.

I made a sandwhich (peanut butter and bananna on brown) and went to bed.

And slept.

Woke up around 2am, when the sicardas and frogs and gekos are quiet, to the sound of footsteps coming from above me…

Footsteps and a tail, I’d say. The ceiling is made of something like thick cardboard. My unwelcome guest walked around above me a bit while I lay still and listened to my heart knockin’ out a rythm like it wanted to get out of my chest and go tackle the rat in ventricle-to-paw combat.

Why do we react so violently to rats?

Maybe its not rats, after all I’ve sat and petted PhreakiPoi’s pet rats, maybe its the invasion of space or the connotations of disease.

When the noises stopped, I pushed my CD walkman, book, and a packet of tissues out of the mosquito net and onto the floor and rolled over onto my front. For a while I could hear every dog in Ukambani from here to Thika, every matatu, every branch moving in the wind. But before long I was asleep again.