So many entertaining things happen in my life in Swaziland. These are the moments I will want to remember because they make me laugh, and they show insight into my daily routine. These moments are often hard to photograph and usually last only a minute or two. I will start sharing them with you in this occasional series. 

When I first moved in to my permanent site, I regularly woke up to an ant problem from a stray crumb. I gradually increased my sweeping from only in the morning to many times throughout the day. I also regularly apply a powder called Blue Death to a few inches of floor on both sides of my door frame, which also helps to keep insects out.

Then every once in a while I would awaken to find ants devouring something on top of my kitchen counter, usually a baked good that didn’t fit into a Ziploc bag.

It happened again today, after happening two weeks ago as well.

Easily a thousand ants had found their way from outside (guess I need to Blue Death that hole on the outside of my house again), up my curtain, and into my cake pan. My favorite yellow cake is not salvageable and will be feeding the chickens.

The incident a few weeks ago was worse because of spread. The ants had found their way to my container of egg shells that I save for my garden. When the box is full, I crush the shells and store them in a glass jar while they await dispersal. But I digress. I did not want to waste the egg shells or crush them ants and all and deliver all those ants to my garden, so I painstakingly cleaned all the ants from about four dozen egg shells. Then I noticed the ants had also made their way onto my food shelf of my kitchen counter, so I had to take everything off to remove the ants.