Tuesday, May18, 2010
There has been this smell in my house for almost a week. At first I’d just get a whiff every now and again but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. It is getting worse by the day and I still don’t know what it is. Then this morning I walk by the fridge and smell it. It’s not coming from inside the fridge but from behind it.
It dawns on me -it’s probably something that has died inside the back of the fridge, I really hope it’s not a rat. I go home at lunch and it is getting much worse, it’s so bad that even thinking about it makes my stomach curl. The more I think about the more it has to be something rotting and it’s most definitely a rat. I have images of the decomposing body I’ll find when I open up the back of it and I feel sick. I just cannot deal.
I leave with Wendy to go to the debate team where she suggests I offer 5 kina to whomever will get rid of it for me. The students look at me like I’m crazy (so maybe 5 kina isn’t enough? I don’t know, what’s the going rate for dead rotting rat body removal?) I still think I’m gonna be sick.
We have a speaker giving facts on HIV in PNG for the debate team (the debate team debates HIV related issues). In 2008 there were nearly 25,000 people who tested positive for HIV and it has been increasing since then, that’s out of a population of about 6 million.
Back to the rat – the meeting ends about 15 minutes early so Wendy tells everyone to come help me dispose of my dead rat. (I love Wendy!) We pack 6 of the guys into the POS and head to my house. The smell has gotten worse! They pull the fridge out and unscrew the back cover. There is no rat, no decomposing, rotting body of any kind in fact. Just ‘viscous,’ rotting water from when I didn’t have electricity for 4 days. One of the guys says it’s not that bad, he deals with a lot worse in chemistry (what are they working with in those labs???)
So once again I am the girl who cried rat…
@ the edge 