We haven’t gone as far as to name the geckos yet but we do recognize certain ones based on their coloring and which room of the house they live in. There is no point trying to get rid of them, like we did the mice, because they will just come right back in through the open vents on each window. You can always tell where they have been due to their trademarked fecal matter (gecko poop is about the size of mouse poop but it can somehow attach to walls and has a white spot at one end of it, I think that is the glue). Truth is, we like them, they are our friends, but most importantly, they eat the bugs. Not all bugs have made it inside but a lot of them have. There are the spiders in the windowsills, the moths at night, the different types of beetles, the flies, the wasps, the mosquitoes, and the ants. The spiders for the most part haven’t been an issue. There are some pretty big, hairy, ones that I have seen outside but the inside ones are more the opportunistic type. They know the flying bugs are going to crash into the windows over and over again so they just set up camp near there and wait for an easy meal. I am ok with this mainly because it helps to keep the flying bugs under control. The moths are what you would expect from a moth, nothing fancy and normal behavior, no African vs. European differences like you may see in a swallow. They wait for night and then they fly towards any light they can and hang out. Heres the catch, we have paper lampshades on our ceiling lights. Seems odd I am sure but basically there is a paper ball twice the size of a basketball that clips to the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. This makes a lot of noise when a moth gets stuck inside and can’t seem to find a way out. It also makes moths an easy target for Trish and the electric bug swatter. Her tennis game is also improving. The beetles make there way in throughout the day. I never seem to notice them until they quit flying and are just sitting targets on the floor. I generally feel bad about killing these guys so I just slide them back under the door and out into nature. They do seem to have taken an interest in our garden though and I would like to think that they are helping our cucumbers grow bigger. The flies come in a couple varieties. There is you average housefly, the kind the old lady swallowed, then you have mango flies, tse tse flies and the neon green looking ones that hang out around waste. I stay away from that type. The houseflies are mainly just loud and stupid. They seem to be the ones that end up hanging out with the spiders the most often, they also get stuck in our screens a lot, literally stuck in the screen. The mango flies are not ones I have had much experience with but they tend to lay eggs in your clothes while you have them outside drying (washer and dryer = bucket and sun). The egg then somehow burrows into your skin and can cause serious infection. To remove it you have to cover it with Vaseline and wait for it to dig its way out. If you try to squeeze it out too early it will also cause infection. The tse tse is almost horsefly like and its bite is also similar. Luckily we don’t have them in Masindi but there are areas we drive through that contain them and they will get into your car and bite you. They can cause African sleeping sickness, the disease where you take a nap and end up in a coma, not exactly Rip Van Winkle style. The wasps, bees, stinging insects are all over as well. I try to keep distance between these guys and myself. They occasionally make there way into the house through an open door but they mostly just hang out in the eaves. If they start taking up too much real estate then I get bold and spray them with something. My biggest question about these guys though is, how do you tell the difference between an African killer bee and just an African bee? We have a tree full of bees in the neighbors yard and I really don’t want to make them mad. Mosquitoes are one of the more common bugs we deal with. They are the ones that can give you malaria but more importantly they are the ones that can keep you from sleeping because they buzz in your ear all night. Now one would think that the mosquito net we sleep under would keep these guys away at night. Reality is it can also trap them inside giving them a 6’3” blood filled feast. Trish regularly puts on bug spray now before going to bed to help battle this issue. Now I have heard that it is only the female mosquito of a certain type that carries malaria and I have also heard that this particular type only comes out between 12am and 2 am but I have yet to see a mosquito wearing a watch. I may have to buy some stock in Off or Cutter at some point in the next few years.
We also have termites around here or white ants. Any of you that have been to Africa have no doubt seem the huge dirt mounds that look like giant any hills. These are the termite mounds, or white ant mound. These guys can be a nuisance but luckily are not a daily occurrence. They are also pretty tasty according to some of our local friends. Every so often they come out in numbers and fly towards whatever light there is. This could be an outside security light or it could be the little LED power light blinking on my computer. Once they have flown into something enough times theirs wings fall off. This is when they are easy to catch if you do want to make a meal out of them. When they come out in numbers, I have made it a habit to keep the bedroom door closed at night, kill the dozen or so that make it into the bedroom and then get up early the next morning to sweep the other hundred or so out of the house before Trish gets up. 
The last bug I want to talk about is the ant. I loved the movie about these guys, they are hard workers, they work together better than most people, but man can they get annoying. We have the standard small sugar ants sometimes. They make there way inside, get what they want, and they leave. These guys seem harmless. You also see lone wandering ants. These guys somehow got kicked out of the hill or lost, I am not exactly sure. They aren’t the ones I dislike either. The safari ants on the other hand will kill you though if given the chance. These guys are on a mission and won’t let anything get in their way. So, there are two sizes of these guys, the small ones are the workers, they are about the size of what we might consider a large ant in the US. When they are on the move they go very fast and by the billions. Their path sometimes is worn an inch deep. Then you have the guard ants. These guys are big, really big, for an ant. They stand over the little guys making sure they stay on the path. If one of the little guys ventures off course the guard ant picks him up and puts him back on path. These are also the ones that don’t like me. I literally had to pull one off my foot the other day because his pinchers got stuck in my skin, looked like a miniature snakebite and was bleeding. These guys attack at once too. You may not realize there are even any on you and next thing you know one is biting your foot while another is on your arm, neck, back, etc. They are fast and they hurt. Luckily these guys stay outside for the most part although we have had a neighbor that was invaded and that made for a pretty awful night. So, before long the geckos will probably have names and we may start setting a place at the table for them. In the meantime they are helping with population control of the not so welcomed visitors to our home. -Newman
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