(pictures from top: a termite queen a guard and Hamadou indicatingwhere he dug the queen out of the excavated nest).
A couple of weeks ago. Hamadou who works on the yard at the house wherewe lived excavated a termite mount in the back yard. This was because,he explained otherwise you get snakes which won't dig but which liketo live in the tunnels the termites construct. The termite mound wasabout the size and shape of a week's worth of dirty laundry maybe afoot high. He dug it out to a depth of about eighteen inches belowground level and left the dirt in a pile by the hole. There was moreto come.
Today he came to the door and showed us the queen. It was a grub twoinches long. He explained that he had dug her out of the dirt left bythe hole where the termites will busily reconstruct their home. If youdon't wait to find the queen this way you'll never find it at all andthe termites will just build another mound a few feet away from theoriginal location.
The notches on the back of the queen apparently are like rings in atree each indicating a year of growth. So this queen was a few yearsold. He said they get bigger.
Whatever they do to the ground makes it very hard he said and poked atit where he had broken in again. I poked at it too and it felt likeconcrete. The dog came by and stole a piece the size of a tennis balland ate it. Hamadou chased her and laughed. He indicated the largertermites he had uncovered in the process of digging out the queen andsaid they guard her.
I was pretty pleased with my French getting this whole explanation withrelative ease. Hamadou is from the northern part of the country as area lot of the people who work as guards apparently so French may not behis first language. This seems to make it easier; the much more fluidand idiomatic French of our coworkers is sometimes difficult to understand.
We have termites in the house too or something similar. Some of thewooden furniture has tiny holes with little mounds of sawdust next to them.
This blog is a newsletter for our family and friends and a record for us of our one year of volunteer service in Cameroon. We work with an NGO network named and with the Presbyterian Church. Ann is writing articles and Chris is programming and teaching. We plan to return home to San Francisco in October 2008.
"A journey into the mind of Watts," by Thomas Pynchon; and "The Nonstudent Left" and "The Motorcycle Gangs" by Hunter S. Thompson; from The California Dream
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Related article:
http://africayear.blogspot.com/2007/11/termites.html
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