Sleepless in Ntcheu

Lately has been a particularly busy and stressful time, with me getting involved in organising VSO national conference and a doctors’ professional peer gathering, not to mention numerous projects coming to fruition at work. And the most valuable commodity for me during that phase? Without a doubt a good night’s sleep during which to recuperate!
Of course, I don’t want another blog to draw pity onto myself, but the combination of elements that contributed to my recent wide-eyed restlessness are quite informative in their own rights. The first element will obviously come as no surprise to you- the sound of Ntcheu. This, however, is not all from the main road bottlestores for once. They also include a number of social gatherings, including one of the volunteers’ leaving do, for which a deejay was hired to play in the garden. The party incidentally formed the climax of my composing skills, where a certain R&B song (Empire State of the Mind- Alicia Keys/ aka New York) was converted to the beat of Ntcheu. The next round involved gathering all the guests of the garden party at my place for a group singing session- with troubadour Klaas expertly commanding that guitar-, which we finally performed live for our departing volunteer in the garden!
With the nightclub beats having become a regular occurrence lately, owing to the hot season attracting more thirsty customers, my sleep was unlikely to improve. What with the heat making matters worse! Fortunately I acquired a fan, which partly helped to address the issue. Once I got over those first two obstacles (noise and heat), I would brace myself for a sound slumber until the morning. But here an unforeseen nuisance manifested itself. The Udzudzu... Any guess as to what that might be? Just try imagining the sound of the word by humming it a bit. Get it? Well it’s the pain that be the mosquito! Somehow, for days on end, a few of them managed to infiltrate my net as I was sleeping. As I would be woken up at 4am or something to relieve some violent bout of itching, the task of eliminating these intruders would prove harder than I imagined. Shaking the net, inverting and brushing it and even crushing it into a tight ball were to no avail. Finally on day4, having concluded I had merely been imagining things or resigned myself to the fact that my problem might be bedbugs rather than mosquitoes, I decided to “Doom” the net and go to sleep in the living room. What a cruel satisfaction overcame me when I finally turned up in the morning to find no less than 5 mosquitoes sprawled all over my bedsheets- DEAD!!!!!! Since then they have not dared make further appearances. The expression pain in the a... shall aptly be renamed Mosquito in the net in my vocabulary henceforth!