One of our pilots over here just informed me that while they were back in the States on their home assignment they had the following exchange with a stranger:

Stranger: “You guys work in Papua New Guinea? I read a blog from a missionary over there sometimes! He’s with your organization, but I don’t remember his name…”

Pilot: “I know a lot of missionaries. Can you describe him for me?”

Stranger: “He’s funny. And one time he pooped his pants.”

Pilot: “Oh yeah, that’s Seth Callahan!”

I’m no marketing genius, but I’m thinking that I may not be creating the right kind of name recognition. I figure it’s probably safe to assume that if self-defecation is the defining attribute of one’s existence, then one’s hope of passing on an inspirational legacy is probably not looking so hot.

In other news, we are out at our mission center right now, taking a break from jungle living. The last three months in the bush felt more like six, and our teammates are all abandoning us and going on their home assignments soon, so we thought now would be a good time to get recharged for our next stint in the swamp.

Jungle living can kind of wear on you after a while. Sometimes it’s the insanely difficult language barrier that gets to you. Sometimes it’s having people with huge oozing tropical ulcers or a seizing, dying child brought to you. Sometimes it’s trying to help a young tribal church sort through how to deal with accusations of witchcraft, or attempted murder, or houses getting burned. And sometimes it’s just the fact that your house is constantly covered in poop.*

That last one has been especially irksome to Rochelle lately. I don’t know how the various species that occupy our home managed to organize such a strong offensive assault, but I do know that, though their side has taken more casualties, we are in no way winning this war.

Our front porch is a perpetual landmine field, thanks to our useless cats. After one of them had kittens, it somehow came into vogue to start performing a full gamut of disgusting acts on our veranda. Each morning has been a magical wonderland of surprises, with frog legs, lizard heads, hairballs, kitten turds, and blood smears strewn across our path.

The back of our house is similarly plagued by a different sort of organic refuse, in the form of bat guano. Apparently, a small clan of tiny bats have taken up residence under the bamboo siding of the boys’ back bedroom wall. Now, when we have tropical storms from the east, we are blessed with a small trickle of brown sludge dribbling down around the boys’ windowsill.

Inside the house, we have pretty much broken up the cockroaches’ tyrannical regime, and their reign of terror has subsided into rogue bands of insurgents that are holed up in our pantry and cupboards. While they bide their time and regrow their numbers, they seem to be contenting themselves with their regular vandalism of our oven mitts and mixing bowls.

Lest we have a moment of tranquility in our domestic space, however, the vacuum that was created by our near-extermination of the roaches has since been thoroughly filled by a horde of rats in our ceiling.

We are able to especially appreciate the presence of these rodents due to a unique feature in our home called sizolation. Sizolation is something that looks like huge swaths of aluminum foil and is commonly used in the tropics to try to block the heat from one’s roofing iron from heating up the rest of the house.

The idea is that the sizolation gets hung a few inches below the roofing iron and creates a thin, insulating barrier. This is supposed to cause the hot air that is trapped between the sizolation and the roofing iron to travel up and out the peak of the house without entering into the living space.

Whether or not it actually does any of that, I don’t really know. What I DO KNOW is that filthy rodents treat sizolation like it’s a trampoline park. Throughout the day we routinely witness their little (and sometimes quite large) shapes pitter-pattering above our heads.

I’ve read that rats are very social creatures, and my personal experience of late leads me to concur with that notion. The rats we have living with us sound as though they are part of a raucous, drunken fraternity, unabashedly chattering and squealing as they engage in their various debauched revelries.

I know that some of their interactions are of a more carnal nature, because we discovered a few of the fruits of their exploits, dead, in the boys’ bedroom. If there’s anything grosser than finding two dead baby rats amongst your kids’ toys, it’s being able to smell a third one rotting somewhere nearby but be unable to locate it.**

At night, they leave their sheltered aerial menagerie and descend upon our kitchen like a roving band of gnawing marauders, spreading their droppings like New Year’s Eve confetti.

I used to think that hard tack biscuits were about the lamest food option out there, but now I know better. Regular hard tack biscuits are actually a much preferable option than hard tack biscuits with rat spit and rat poop on them.

We’ve been able to trap around 9 of them with a homemade bucket trap, but there still appeared to be a plurality of them in residence when we left.

So, in short summary, we are very thankful for this opportunity to get away from the ecosystem that is our jungle home and bask in a bit of pest-free housing for a couple of weeks!

*To be clear, this has NOTHING to do with me.

**Rochelle resorted to spraying the boys’ room down with fruity body spray in an attempt to mask the odor of decay, as the boys were claiming that the stench was preventing them from falling asleep. We are the definition of “high class.”