Until now, I almost forgot that I've been in Africa. In our trip's glory days, we were forced to wear sweatshirts and cover ourselves with wool blankets at night. When we awoke the next day, we still needed pants and sweatshirts. Ahh memories...
These past few days have been blistering. When we wake up, it's hot. Even before the sun breaks though the clouds, it's hot. We keep the windows and door closed in our room the entire day, yet it's still hot! Times like these, I wish I wasn't staying in such a modestly dressed village. I would absolutely strip down to my recently purchased boxer briefs and walk between the shaded areas of our house. Maybe consider a dip in the in-house well. (It's like a hot tub with really high walls.)
But, the 111 degree, moderately humid weather is tolerable. We've been keeping up with our fluid intake (as my dad likes to call it) and taking lots of siestas.
The issue? Our new visitors.
Every cushion, mat, pillow now needs to be checked for scorpions. We've already found four. No biggie, we're not too afraid of these guys.
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| Yo scorpion, imma find you. |
Just tonight, the women taking care of the house called us over. They found some bug (called something in Berber - I smile and nodded when they told me) that flies and latches onto flesh, giving a lethal injection of poison to its unlucky prey. Oh, and it walks around like a crab. Great, now we have a possessed spidery crab... thing that's going to kill us. One more thing, the women said a 16 year old girl in the mountains here died last year from its bite. Hichem and I are now super paranoid. (He freaked out after seeing the shadow of a blanket on the clothesline... heheh got him.) We still are not exactly sure what this mystery bug is. We're thinking its a Running Crab Spider, but its information doesn't match the grotesque stories.
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| To those with expertise in North African taxonomy - what the heck is this? |
...And there's another one somewhere in our house. Fantastic. Im looking forward to an easy sleep tonight.
Your half-terrified friend,
Brent
Brent, it's Ben, from class. Amazing blog, looks like you're on quite an adventure. The colors of Morocco seem quite intoxicating. If you can, you should read the portion of Keith Richards' autobiography Life where he talks about Morocco. What stories!
ReplyDeleteHello to Hichem, too! So I've just spent the past hour or so trying to identify this spider and have not found anything that matches. Camel spiders are common in that area, as are desert wolf spiders. I'm thinking this could be some type of scorpion maybe, but i can't tell from the image. it also kinda looks like a sub-species of the brown recluse. anyway, i guess its best to stay away. or kill one and present it to me as a trophy from your travels, and i will make a cool beltbuckel or perhaps some type of lapel pin.
keep the blog going and i'll keep reading. I'm in montana right now having my own adventure, although its been mostly just hitting the books/old dusty research reports.
happy thoughts,
Ben
Hope the heat broke there like it did here. Otherwise, come on over to Tiznit - it's definitely cooler! And I have yet to see a scorpion this summer. :-) As for the spider, Camel Spiders are abundant, but they aren't venomous (just give really bad bites). I would guess some sort of sand spider or desert wolf spider like your friend said. Hope you're still enjoying yourself.
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