Feeding the five thousand... a story of insects

I didn't post anything yesterday - it was a busy day and since I had no internet connection in my room I had to wait to use the library. The seminarians had a talk there last night so while I was waiting for it to finish I ended up being bitten so much by mosquitos that I surrendered - I felt like I was feeding the five thousand.
Panama is not normally too bad for mosquitos. They have a really good fumigation programme in the city but last night proved for me that it is not as extensive as is sometimes claimed.
Of course, like practically all of Central and South America, it is pretty fair to say that almost every inch of this country is alive. There are so many different insects, flying and crawling things that it must be quite a list when they are all put together.
When I arrived here last Sunday night, as I was getting ready for bed a large (about the size of the old 10p coin) cockroach ran across the floor. Luckily I was wearing shoes so I stood on it - not a great idea: when a cockroach is crushed it gives off a rotten smell so I was stuck with that until the morning. I suppose you could regard that as the revenge of the cockroach - but the revenge bit doesn't end there!!! When I went down on Monday morning to concelebrate at Mass I took an alb from the press - lovely and clean and all that. However, what I hadn't noticed when I took it out of the press was that somewhere, concealed in its folds, a cockroach was hiding - I didn't notice him until he ran down my face during the gospel reading: I can tell you, that's one way to make sure you are awake in the morning!!!
In the afternoon I came across a centipede that was about four inches long and as thick as my index finger - really a very beautiful looking thing although you wouldn't want to find it in your bed - they can give quite a nasty bite!
This evening when we went for our supper the table was just covered in ants. Someone had obviously been having coffee or something and had spilled sugar. It only takes a couple of minutes for ants to find sugar - no matter how far away from them it seems to be.
In Europe we tend to get very upset about these insects and creepy crawlies but people here are much more sanguine about them - they are just part of life. Anway, there are so many of them that if you were to be bothered by them at all you couldn't do anything and, the reality is, they are generally perfectly harmless.
Anyway, that's enough for tonight. I will be going tomorrow to spend the weekend at the Augustinian parish in Panama City so that will be a nice chance to catch up with the friars - it will also be a nice chance to have a shower with hot water. The seminary does have a solar water heating system but really it's not very effective and the water is more "not cold" than "hot".