Nightmare on Frans Street

EEEEK EEEEK EEEEK!!! (pretend it’s old-style horror movie sound effects)

If my life was a movie, this would be one of the horror scenes. Where right as I’m walking into my house-to-be, I’m happy and smiling and everything seems fine, then out of nowhere, the moment I step inside…they cue the old-style horror music they usually play when one of the characters is surprised by the killer or stumbles upon dead bodies. The camera then does a close up on my face as my eyes widen dramatically and my face shows an expression of sheer terror as I bear witness to some unimaginable horror. Then the camera flies around the room as if in a panic zooming in and out at the scenes before me, then back to my facial expression, then back around the room, and finally back to my face. The music ends loudly and abruptly, the screen suddenly blacks out…AND CUT, End Scene!

Let me preface this all by saying that I wasn’t necessarily thrilled about the idea of living with a roommate from the beginning. When I found out that I was the ONLY volunteer from our group that would be living with another PCV as a roommate, I thought it was extremely ironic. My past is full of bad roommate experiences. They were all great people, but we just had very different expectations and ideas about respectfully living in shared spaces. Plus, Peace Corps never said anything about living with another person, let alone a volunteer. So I had been planning on, was even looking forward to, having my own place where I could go home to at night after work, mentally recharge, and reflect on my experiences and on life in general. I had already decided that my home was to be my sanctuary here in Namibia, where I would escape all of my problems and worries.

Apparently I was sorely mistaken, and my new roommate, Freddy Krueger, I mean Chris, took those dreams of a warm and happy home, chased them down a dark and scary corridor, cornered them, paralyzing them with fear as they realized there was no hope of escape, and then mercilessly and brutally tore into them, clawing them to pieces until they had ended, and all that was left was a bloody, unrecognizable shell of a dream.

This was how I felt when I entered my new “home” (if I could even call it that). Upon entering the dungeon (all the curtains were drawn and it was extremely dark as if a vampire was living there), I noticed the place was crawling with spiders and covered in spider webs. There was a layer of filth on the floor and garbage and other crap lying all around, and this was just the sitting room. In the kitchen there were cockroaches and ants to go with the spiders, and countless dead bugs stuck to the light, trash and messes galore, some mystery goo on the walls, counters, and cabinets, and hints of black mold here and there to add that special touch. I tell you, if I was starving and a piece of food touched any part of that kitchen, I would leave it, walk outside, and wait to die of starvation, it was that disgusting.

In my bedroom-to-be we had the typical spiders with accompanying webs, dust, some new type of dead bugs, and my personal favorite, lines of dried bat urine all over the walls and rather large piles of bat dropping that fell through the cracks in the ceiling. The shower was a collage of various browns, greens, yellows, reds, and black, and the drain was nicely clogged with plenty of human hairs. And the crown jewel, the toilet, was the most disgusting thing I had ever laid eyes on. I couldn’t tell what its original color was, it was hidden somewhere deep below the thriving bacteria colonies, the algae, the pee splatters, and the poop stains.

I was almost certain that I was in Hell, that I had fallen asleep on the drive up and the car got into some horrible accident, and here I was experiencing the absolute worst punishment that could be devised for me... EVER!!!

I finally calmed myself a bit. I figured I had seen the worst of it all and there couldn’t possibly be anymore surprises. I decided I would just get ready for bed, go to sleep, and hope that the following day would be better. I prepared my cot, which was right next to all the dead bugs and spiders. Then I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. As I placed my toothbrush under the faucet and turned on the water, brown muddy water engulfed my nice clean toothbrush. That was the straw that broke the camels back. I almost lost it completely, and was on the verge of either becoming catatonic or crying/laughing hysterically. I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t live in this hell hole for two years (or eternity if my hell theory was correct).

WILL THIS NIGHTMARE EVER END?!?!?!?!