One of these is the flies which buzz about everywhere. They have an uncanny knack of making their way into my home, especially when food is being cooked, despite the fly-netting we have on the doors and windows. One day in December, I waged war using insect spray and I counted at least 40 dead flies on my window sills when I had finished! The mosquitoes at this time of year are also a problem in the evening and early mornings, bringing with them the ever-worrying problem of malaria.
Another unpleasant fact, especially during this season, is the constant burning of small fires, lit to get rid of people's household rubbish. People light them in the street, on patches of common ground and near their gateways, either during the day or early evening and then leave them to smoulder, which can continue through the night. Everything seems to be placed on these fires to burn, from dry leaves to potato peelings to plastic bottles; the result is very smoky, foul-smelling fires. This is rather a frustration for us in our homes, as the wind here in Dodoma invariably blows the fumes over our home and in through our windows, with smoke curling under the doorframes and infiltrating every room. It can get so smoky in the MAF houses that our neighbour's smoke alarm has been set off!
Since there is no organised local-council rubbish collection like many countries are privileged to have, the fires are one way people keep their homes and yards clear of junk. However, they are not strictly necessary, since there is an alternative option to have your waste taken away by local workers who pull heavy, old carts around the streets and collect up the rubbish to dispose of it at the town's rubbish dump- where the poorer people can be seen sifting through it to find bits they might be able to use. The drawback of having your rubbish taken away for you is that you have to pay the cart-pullers to do so- not very much money, but enough to put people off the idea in a country where the average household income is very low.
As a result, we often have homes filled with acrid smoke, which burns our eyes and throats and makes the home smell most unpleasant. I struggle most of all with the night-time fires, since we cannot escape the fumes- the doors can't be opened in case the mosquitoes come in and the windows can't be closed to keep out the smoke, as they are slatted with gaps to let the air in! There is not much we can do about this problem.
BUT at least when it comes to the flies and mossies, we can go on the attack! One way we can do this is to spray our slatted windows and our fly-netting with some potent poison mixture from the local doctor's surgery, similar to the mixture we coat our mosquito nets with. It may make the windows look dirty, but since Margaret came in last Thursday to do the great deed of spraying, I have hardly seen a fly or a mossie in my house :-)
Margaret on the offensive, in make-shift protective gear to avoid the fumes herself:
Oh my, very much unpleasantries!The nearest we've come to it here is when the local hen farm decided to have a good clean up and sprayed their premises with disinfectant.The flies all took off and entered any openwindow they could find in the neighbourhood.I was worried about the cleanliness of our home until I went to the local shop to buy some fly spray only to be told that they had sold out!But we are very appreciative of our waste disposal and rcycling collections here.
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