The Spider Incident

The following is a glimpse into what I’m growing accustomed to while living in Ghana. A wise PCV once told me to take every challenge, bad experience or bad day and give it 13 days (why 13? I didn’t ask). If at the end of those 13 days you are still upset, frustrated, depressed, angry, or fearful, go home. She said she hasn’t made it past 3 days of feeling ready to go home, I’ve had to give it 2 days so far. Every day brings new challenges, joys, and experiences. The subsequent journal is a tale of a traumatic experience I endured.

Most of you know I’m phobic of spiders. I’ve gone through a small amount of desensitization so that I can be in the remote area of a spider without completely breaking down and it has helped me quite a bit. I’ve killed spiders here! I’ve killed big ones! Hold your applause until after I tell the tale of my latest encounter.

It was a normal morning here in our host village, Kris had left for the day to get to another town to teach and I was taking my time getting ready, as I didn’t have to be in town until 0800. I fetched a bucket full of water out of our large water barrel and headed into the bathing room in the house (which is a 4-sided concrete room with semi-tiled flooring and a wooden door for an entrance, there’s also a window for light opposite the door), I was wearing my “2-yard” which is just as it sounds, two yards of Ghanaian fabric used as a towel, and my shower sandals (flip flops). I sat down my bucket, turned around to shut the door and there it was, a huge spider, just below the nail to which I would typically hang my 2 yard. Its body was the size of a half dollar and oddly shaped and its legs were about as long as half of one of my fingers.

I tired to keep my cool, which didn’t last long, as I contemplated whether or not I could kill this giant. After arguing each point to myself for about a minute I decided that I could kill the spider. Then I wracked my brain with ideas as to how I was going to kill it. I came up with squishing it with one of my shower sandals. Then I started to doubt my plan, what if I missed and it came at me, then I’m at it’s mercy, one-shoed, I’d potentially have to step on it with my bare foot! That would not be okay, on second thought, because if I killed it in that manner, I’d have to get very close to it with my hand to squish it! So plan fail.

My only other option was to go get my host mother, Momma Rose. So, off I ran, scantily clad, to my mother’s store. Next I faced a slight language barrier as I found it hard to talk slowly in my panicked sate, and no I didn’t know the Twi word for spider. I managed to take four fingers on each hand and mock the image of a spider, to which she finally understood and laughed. She said, “let’s go,” and I followed her up the path to our home. She went into the shower room and looked in the direction I told her it had last been. She said, “it is not here, it must have left.” Right (I’m thinking to myself), but I believed her enough to take a second look. Yep, there it was, unmoved and scary as ever. I told her, no no, it’s still here, kill it please. She came back into the shower room (so now I’m trapped in there with her and the spider). At this point I’m hysterical and crying, yes crying, she looks at me unsure what to do with her adult American “daughter” crying in her 2-yard over a spider, she then shooed it out. She said, “it is now gone” and “is it okay?” I responded with a pitiful “yes” as she closed the door. I was left alone mortified as I could hear her laughing and talking to herself as she walked back down to the store. It took me as long as a bucket bath takes to stop crying and to feel somewhat okay.

Later I called Kris on my walk into town to tell him about the incident. I started crying again in reliving my feeling of terror and vulnerability. Freaking spiders, I hate them; they scare me senseless and make me cry. Kris has been extra vigilant since the described incident, killing (not just shooing them out of eyesight) anything with 8 legs. I’ve also been killing them myself, much more in my element with multiple weapons (i.e. shoes) to kill them with and wearing much more protective clothing. I’ve even spit my toothpaste out on one on purpose while brushing outside. I hope this incident is a rarity, I hope the big spiders just leave me alone and that my future cat at site would rather eat spiders than any other thing I could feed it. I am typing this in my safe zone, which is in our bed enclosed in a mosquito net. I fear malaria, which is a real threat here, but it doesn’t scare me to tears like spiders do, so for now I shall rename it my spider net.