Scorpions and Spiders and Snakes, oh my!

The next day, we set off to buy nhoca – covering for a roof made from coconut palms – at a tiny place called Mugeua famous in the region for their skills. We drove through some beautiful scenery, and to our excitement, crocodile and hippopotamus infested rivers. We arrived and began counting nhoca, a thousand in total. We then carried them to the car and realised that these nhoca were homes to numerous animals. Not only were there hundreds of baby cockroaches and other small creepy crawlies running up our arms and legs, but we saw two enormous, dangerous-looking spiders, a snake and a baby scorpion which was promptly eaten by a mangy chicken. We decided straight away to line the roof with thick black plastic, sacrificing aesthetics for a house relatively free of midnight animal assaults. Unloading the nhoca at the house was exhausting because of the beating down sun, but we would choose 1000 nhoca (animals included) over 1000 blocos any day. We returned home filthy from palm mould, dust, squashed insects and covered in scratches and splinters.