I would like to tell you about a certain night in Haiti that I slept through in perfect peace and tranquility. I was lucky. I was on the second floor.
It was a different story downstairs.
It was our last team for the summer in Haiti. We were in a giant yellow mansion of a house: approximately 15 rooms, a courtyard, an enclosed balcony, two bathrooms upstairs, one downstairs. The girls got the upstairs.
We woke up one bright morning, shuffled down the stairs for breakfast, and noticed that the guys were stumbling about with slightly haggard, not-really-awake expressions. “What happened?” we wanted to know. “Didn’t you sleep well last night?”
“No,” we were bluntly informed. “We didn’t sleep well at all.” And then they told us their story.
It started off with two cockroaches. Two five-inch flying cockroaches. I’ve seen them before. They’re so big, you can hear their nasty little feet tapping on the concrete floors. They like to dive-bomb into peoples’ heads and brush their whiskers against the cheeks of innocent missionaries sleeping on the floor. (Both of these happened to me.) These two five-inch terrors zoomed into the guys’ room just as they were preparing for bed. They buzzed around, making themselves scary and obnoxious, until . . . CRUNCH! . . . no more flying cockroaches.
The guys laid down to get some sleep . . . Only to be awoken not long after by ear-piercing screams issuing from the neighbor’s house about ten feet away. It was a woman, she was weeping hysterically, and it really sounded like someone ought to call 911. Only wait. We’re in Haiti, aren’t we?
The guys listened for awhile, wide-eyed and shell-shocked, wondering what they should do, what they could do. Without warning, the screams stopped. Dead silence . . . Dead might be too apt a word . . . Several loud, sharp smacks. And then . . . “Wah! Wah! Wah!” It was the cry of a baby. A newborn baby, to be exact. Apparently, our neighbor was pregnant. That is, she had been.
The guys swallowed and drifted back into unconsciousness.
It wouldn’t last long.
In the pitch-black hours of early, early morning, Chad woke up and put a hand on his belly. Or what should have been his belly. “I didn’t know what it was,” he said, “except that it certainly was not my stomach!” It moved. Ran a couple circles on top of him, then skittered away. Chad thought maybe it would be best if he ignored it and went back to sleep. Only he was a little thirsty first. He reached for his water bottle. And touched It again.
Chad did what any manly man would do after the type of night he’d had. He screamed his head off.
Every soul downstairs was awake and ready for combat at this point. Armed with flashlights - for the sake of light or a weapon? - the men ransacked the bedroom. They found It. Hiding in a corner behind the door. Teeth bared, fur bristling. It was a rat.
Two dead cockroaches, a mutilated rat carcass, and one very live, crying baby later . . . the girls were extremely grateful we’d been given the upstairs! And to think, I slept through the whole thing . . .
