The Bat Cave

So, some stories just have to be told over and over again. My best friend from home had a really embarrassing brain fart while we were watching the movie Zoolander sometime during our freshman year of high school and that has to be one of the most told stories in the history of the world. She hates it. But it really was hilarious.

But in Africa, the stories are all crazy, and everyday life is ridiculously outlandish. As well as trying to convey the actual real things that we have to deal with here (grinding poverty, caffeine withdrawal, blinding chauvinism and insane amounts of flogging at school) there are some stories that are just hysterical. I promise to try and tell these too.

Let us begin with the bat in the latrine.

So, at my house, I have what’s called a VIP latrine. It’s an actual toilet in an actual room attached to my house. I have to pour water in it to make things go away, but compared to many other people’s sites, it’s pretty posh. Steph, my absolute best friend here whom you’ve all heard about in excess, does not have such lavish accommodations. She has a pit latrine, which is exactly what it sounds like, a hole in the ground that you squat over. It’s really an art trying to learn how to master that stance. Your calves hurt after a while and the hole isn’t overly large, so aiming is a skill one must acquire.

While we were at site visit in July, I went to stay with Steph. Her principal had just come to visit and I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I went into her latrine and moved aside the cover to the hole and began moving over it. I saw a flutter of movement and shrieked as a bat flew out of the latrine and into my face, escaping out the small window at the back. I turned and ran out of the latrine, slipping in the spot that she uses as a shower just before the door. I burst out into the yard, yelling, with my knees all scratched from falling, while Steph and her principal looked at me, startled.

At the same time, they both started asking frantic questions as to what brought on my sudden manic episode.

Steph’s principal, a typical superstitious Sierra Leonean, asks “A snake?! Was it a snake??”

And Steph, who has intense arachnophobia, turned pale and goes, “Spider?! Was it a spider??”               

Panting, I gasp “Bat! There was a bat!”

Still shaken at this, I looked up at the two of them, who were trying their hardest not to laugh and failing miserably as snorts of mirth escaped out of their every orifice until they were literally guffawing at my apparent terror. I eventually joined them and realized that I still hadn’t successfully used the latrine. So, I left them talking home improvements and picked up a rock and walked back into the latrine.

I tossed the rock down into the hole, and steeled myself for the sudden onslaught of flapping wings and flurries of motion, but there was nothing. Assuming that maybe my bat was a lone gunman, I pulled my shorts down and assumed the position. As soon as I started going, my bat’s friend who had chosen to ignore my rock warning made an appearance, and got to about third base, as he hit my butt in his haste to escape my stream.

I started yelling and fell forward as the bat tried to figure out what he had hit, get his bearings and find the window, which took approximately 3 seconds as scraped my knees further, trying to get the hell away from this bat cave. I reached the door, spewing profanities as I remembered that my shorts were still down. I yanked them up as I ran out to Steph, her and her principal not even trying to hold their laughter in now.

When we got back to training a few days later, our director, Tondi, asked about our visits. Steph instantly rocketed out of her seat and proceeded to tell everyone this story. She began extremely seriously, phrasing it as a cautionary tale of the dangers of latrines, and ended in a voice several octaves higher because she needed to make herself heard over the roars of laughter from the other volunteers. Even Tondi, who is a seven-foot bear of a man from Niger with the manliest voice I’ve ever heard, didn’t try and muffle his booming James Earl Jones laugh.

 I’ve not yet lived this story down.

Whenever I visit Steph now, I always eye her latrine with trepidation and a modicum of fear as well. Her principal still remembers me fondly and greets me by name whenever I see him, a twinkle in his eye that I'm going to assume is his recollection of the incident.

I’ve not met a bat in the cave again, but I whenever I go to Steph’s now, I have to mentally prepare myself for a sudden furry colonoscopy.