chateau cockroach

After two months of couch surfing and living out of a suitcase, I *finally* moved into my own place on Sunday.

Finding a place to live was much harder than I expected. It is the rainy season right now and people do not like moving during the rainy season (and after trying to move during Sunday's torrential downpour and getting stuck in the mud for far too long, I completely understand).

The entire process of looking for a place to live, dealing with agents and landlords and trying to find an acceptable place has made me appreciate even more how fortunate we are in Canada. In Canada rental places come with closets, cupboards, a refrigerator, a stove, and a hot water tank. I do not know if we appreciate the luxury of running water and a hot shower as we should.

At Chateau Cockroach (yes, it has been sprayed, but there are so many it needs to be sprayed again) I do not look forward to the freezing cold shower. I am pretty sure that the water is piped from a glacier somewhere (odd, I know as there are no mountains close by) because my teeth chatter and my lips turn blue and I wonder if I will ever be warm again. And although one might think that it is always warm in Zambia, the nights and mornings can get surprisingly cold.

As for the cockroaches...if they were like the ones in Wall E, they would not be so bad, but there are too many ranging from small, to almond size to large nasty nasty ones. I cannot even pretend that they do not gross me out. My aunt says that cats kill cockroaches so perhaps a cat roommate is in my near future?

This evening I put a couple of dishes in the sink and walked away for a minute to get something in the other room and then returned to the sink to wash my dishes and was so grossed out to discover an extended family of cockroaches had moved in. I will be respraying the entire house again this weekend with a double dose of cockroach killer! And I am getting a cat (and hopefully she will be the cockroach killing queen!).