My Incidents with Malawian Animals: Part 1

Throughout my stay in Malawi I had several "encounters" with animals. I like animals. I like bugs. I am not opposed to being in the same environment with them. Every second weekend we took a mini bus out of the city of Blantyre to a new destination where I had a strange encounter with one.

ENCOUNTER 1: Our first weekend away we set off for Mulanje, one of the major mountains in Malawi. The Plateau takes 5-6 hours of hiking to reach, climbing 2000 metres. There are several huts on top that one can spend several days hiking around and lodging at. Ours was a log cabin that I noted did not have mosquito nets. Malawi is a malaria zone. It was too high (and cold) for mosquitoes we were told. The cabin was composed of several dorm style rooms and I chose a bottom bunk to hunker down for the night. I dozed off quickly into dreamland.

At some point in the middle of the night I was startled awake from a dream. It is important to note that I was dreaming. I even specifically remember what I was dreaming about when I suddenly was lying awake feeling something rather large gnawing at the side of my eye. As my mind quickly cleared, I automatically reasoned there must be either a giant cockroach or a rodent on my face. Without a seconds thought, I swatted away whatever was there and bolted out of bed. I felt my face. I could feel that it had been eating the sleep crusted near my eye. I felt around in the dark for our carefully placed flashlight and flicked it on. I scanned the floor, the bed, the room...nothing.

Nigel was roused from sleep and in that voice he often uses at these hours (that "you are the weirdest person I could have married" voice) he croaked, "What on earth are you doing?" There was something big gnawing on the side of my face! "You were just dreaming, go back to sleep". This is where my clear recollection of what I had been dreaming about backed me up.

Despite my scan of the room there was nothing I could find and the only thing to do was go back to sleep. I would ask our guide in the morning what sort of animals lived around the area. I settled back into bed content in my belief that my startled reaction would have scared whatever it was away and the chances it would come back were slim.

The next morning I asked our guide what might have been eating my face. He laughed and told me it was most likely a rat. It turns out Nigel had trouble sleeping after the whole episode while I fell back to sleep like a baby.