Basiapai and the termite nest

"Spray! Spray! Spray!"--The Captain

On my last visit to Gunzi, my site, the villagers had tentatively given me the name Basiapai (Bah-see-a-pie), which translates to something like the boss boy or son in law of the boss. Anyways, upon my return there seemed to be some confusion over what the villagers actually wanted to me; some wanted to call me basiapai, others Konipai, meaning smart boy, and still others were opposed to both names. As of now, I am officially the Basiapai of Gunzi. As far as I understand, I have been named after one of the women in the village. Although, coincidentally, when I was first given the name I had been listening to the record The River. I like the coincidence story more.

After many complications in the city, I did finally arrive in Gunzi on August 6th. But not before more complications arose on the way to Gunzi. First, the SUV I was riding in popped a flat tire on the way to the boat port, Atjoni. Uppon arrival in Atjoni, I found out my things for my house were actually in another town back down the river. So I took a short boat trip down the river to collect my things. Unfortunately, as I was loading the boat that would charter my belongings down the river, it began to rain. To make matters worse, the boat would not start for 20 minutes. When I finally arrived in Gunzi my things were soaked and my food boxes were broken. At the time, I had been laughing about my situation up until this point, up until I opened the door to my house. I wished I would have seen another big, creepy tarantula like the last time I had entered my house here. Unfortunately, I had a termite nest on the ceiling, 15 feet up on the inside of my house. The nest was about three feet long and protruding about one foot down from the ceiling, about the size of three or more American footballs. At this point, I was not laughing anymore. I could not flex anymore as the Peace Corps would stress to do.

The afternoon of my arrival the Captain of the village and I inspected the termite nest and he devised a plan to get it down. The next day, the captain showed up at my house with a shovel, wheelbarrel and a ladder, I supplied the bug spray. He placed the wheelbarrow on my house floor beneath the nest and climbed the ladder with the shovel. I can assume you know where this is going. The next thing I know the Captain is hitting the nest and yelling, "Spray! Spray! Spray!" I must have killed about 2 million termites with that first spray and this process continuted for about 15 minutes until most of the termite nest had fallen. I'd assume I killed about 10 million termites that day and I'm damn proud of that fact because those things are a damned nuisance. That day I had to spend several hours and had to make multiple attempts before I was able to completely destroy and be rid of the nest. I also spent a quality hour or more cleaning the floor of my house because all the dead termites did not land in the wheelbarrel. I spent the following three days finding and destroying the other termite tunnels throughout the house. I went through two and one half bottles of bug spray to kill those pests and continue to stand guard looking for the next tunnel to spring up. So far, none have. And, in celebration of this fact, I decided to take a whole day to relax and begin reading the book "100 Years of Solitude", courteousy of the previous volunteer, Katchupai. And thus begin the adventures of the Basiapai...