cockroach trouble

We've embarked on a number of building projects/remodelling the past
year -- repainting the chapel, installing cooking pots and remodelling
the kitchen, renovation of the Mwilu house, building of an ARV center.
After the kitchen remodel was finished, we decided to use the small
amount of excess money left to conduct a spraying of the entire hospital
to try to cut down on the cockroach numbers. Unfortunately, in order to
spray properly, you have to move all of the patients out of the ward for
3-4 hours, which can be a little problematic for wards like maternity.
Anyway, this week was the turn of the TB ward and peds 2, our
malnutrition ward. The TB ward spraying went smoothly, but peds 2 was a
bit more of a problem -- we sprayed overnight but the cockroaches there,
perhaps stronger from all of the malnutrition food they've been feasting
on for years, merely got angry, starting literally coming out of the
woodwork, covering the walls, jumping out on you, so forth. It was like
a bad scene from Indiana Jones. After some emergency purchasing of
additional bug spray, we managed to collect a bit of cockroaches 2 feet
across and at least 6 inches high. Pretty impressive. This is the time
of year where the bugs rule -- flying termites littering my doorstep
every morning with the remnants of a thousand shed wings, mosquitoes
giving malaria to close to half the hospital, black ants boiling out of
the ground in huge trains, ready to devour anyone who is slow enough to
pause accidentally in their path. I guess the cockroaches were just
upset about being left out of the fun.