Rats!

When you embark on a trip of this nature, you don't expect an easy ride and we had prepared ourselves for many things. Cholera has been rife in the city and the usual suspects, malaria, tummy upsets, heatstroke, emotional overload were all possible contenders to make the journey a challenging one. However, we were to face our biggest test to date in the form of some furry friends who, as it happened had squatters rights when it came to the sleeping arrangements within our tarpaulin home. We had been informed with a casual  "Watch out for the rats", but we were certainly not schooled in the night time partying habits of rats who have taken residence in Port Au Prince. Tonight was going to be our chance for fast track education.

Inside the tarpaulin structure were several smaller tents and we were being spoilt with mattresses and even a fan to help us through the night. This was the Ritz Carlton of the tenting world in Port Au Prince terms, so we bedded down for the night extremely thankfully and with a hope of some decent rest.

As it transpired, our tent was situated right next to the main road, so there was a nice roar of traffic hurtling past for the first several hours. Not too much of an issue, I thought ...We'll get used to it. Around 2 am the traffic seemed to be dying down and I was making headway towards that wonderful dreamlike state when suddenly Flor sat bolt upright with a shriek! A rat!!! Thankfully not inside the tent, but she had felt it brushing past her body from the outside. We froze and listened for more rat evidence. There it was..a definite squeaking and rustling in the corner. In panic we furtively felt all around the tent- were there any holes? Were they coming in? ( And by now we knew for sure we were dealing with "they" and not "it" because the rustling was coming from several places).

What to do? Time to look at it rationally. They weren't in the tent at least and at the present time there was nothing we could do to make them go away save for banging the tent, shouting and waking everyone else up. So there was nothing for it, but to show some good old fashioned stiff upper lip, lie back down and try to get to sleep. Flor, being slightly more dramatic in nature, took a while to take this idea on board. But in the end she conceded that it wasn't possible to get back on the plane and go home right now and that would hardly be in keeping with us achieving our objectives... so instead we would embrace Port Au Prince, rats and all!

Fortunately, we had not actually seen the rats at this point, or our story most likely might have had a completely different outcome. It was only a couple of days later during a sessions when the boys were being given a talking to about an incident that had occurred, did we spy one brazenly making its way across the floor. Like the cat who had got the cream - or at least, the rat who had finished up any remainder of last night's dinner! This was no common old garden rodent as I had experienced on the odd occasion back home. This was no "all the gear, no idea" kind of rat. This was one hardcore, steroid taking, muscle pumping rat who looked like he had been working out down the gym 23 hours a day. Think rat/large rabbit/black curly haired spaniel (why they have curly hair is anyone's guess?)

"Leave them alone, they're family!" Quipped a guy from the Dominican Republic, who was quite enjoying our daily tales of night time rat antics. On reflection, this was actually good advice, as well as being strangely comforting. So leave them alone we did...and I might be delusional, but we even started to think just a little bit fondly of them by the time we left!


Fact:
Pests are a serious problem for the nearly one million people who are living in the tent cities. Overcrowding, poor sanitation and piles of garbage are the perfect conditions for all kinds of flies and rodents which spread disease like wildfire. More work needs to be done to ascertain how to keep major epidemics at bay and offer easy to maintain solutions, such as storing food aid off the ground and improving rubbish collection (MPNA)