World India Kerala Alleppey

V's 2009 wanderings... V's 2009 wanderings

The Battle for Soap-remacy Jul 9, 2009

Baffled. That was the only word for it. I was completely and utterly baffled. It was 10pm on my first day at Keraleeyam, and I had been reading in my little thatched cottage, perfectly situated by the water, with a little verandah overlooking the goings-on on the river, snuggled cosily within Kerala’s famous backwaters. I had only just brushed my teeth about an hour earlier. Washed my face. And my hands. With soap. So where was the confounded thing? True, the wind had picked up, but how could it blow a bar of soap away, from the basin, and over the thatched walls out of the open-air bathroom altogether?

A distant memory started to collect at the back of my mind. I really hoped it wouldn’t. And I really hoped it wasn’t… Cautiously I took another little bar out of its box. Washed my hands, put it on the basin. Went back to reading my book, my ears on the strange night noises around me, straining to catch something.

The next morning I went out, and there it was, in the basin itself, little teeth marks all over it. Drats, I thought to myself. Well, more like (d)rats, of course. For my mind had confronted the inevitable reality. Not only had I seen one darting along the river before diving in the night before, but a memory had resurfaced, from my time spent in the Peruvian Amazon, three years before.

I’d gone to volunteer at a sustainable living project run by an English biologist, Laurel, and her Peruvian boat captain husband, Pico, a solid compact brick of a man, with the strength of an ox. Somehow a combination of curiosity and fate had led Laurel to living 80-odd kilometres upriver from the nearest town, Puerto Maldonado, which itself was the end of the line, a dusty old town with the feel somehow, I imagined, of the old West, butting up against the dense jungles of the Amazon.

Upon arrival Laurel had shown me around, to the guest cabana (containing four bedrooms), the library (complete with hammock), the kitchen and larder (with big metal bins and cages to protect the food), and the relatively open bathroom. “Don’t leave any toiletries open in here, the rats will get them”. Very matter-of-fact. Right. I was only just finding my feet in Peru as it was, this being my first time in South America, and now I had to deal with rats eating my toothpaste and face cream?

A little perturbed, the tour continued. I met their son, nicknamed Picito, who was two, but very self-assured, and quite a perfect blend of his parents, a little blond Pico. And, more importantly, I met the cat, Campiona, Spanish for ‘champion‘. Apparently she was quite a keen hunter. Excellent.

Somewhat exhausted from the trip to get there - an eight-hour trip in a local ‘ferry’ boat, transporting goods and the farmers who lived along the river - I went to my room. I’d picked the one on the far end of the four, the furthest away from the rest of the place, which jutted out into the jungle, with three sides of half-wood, half-fly screen, nature everywhere you turned. “The solar panel is busted in the guest quarters”, Laurel had mentioned, almost as an afterthought. “Sorry, but you’ll have to use candles and flashlights. But be sure to blow the candles out.” Not a problem, I thought to myself. We’d all be getting up early to do our three hours of project work, before the heat and humidity really set in, making things unbearably steamy, so it‘d be early-to-bed.

Oddly that night I came down with a violent stomach flu. No-one else had it, but it was incredibly unpleasant. Relieved of duties for that first day, I lay in the hammock or on my bed, sleeping. I really wouldn’t have noticed anything, feeling too weak, completely unable to eat. The next day I felt a little better, and went to have a shower. Cold, of course. Showers were certainly not a daily occurrence - we all had to pump the water up out of the ground each night, and it was tiring enough for everyone, at the end of a long and humid day, to pump what we needed to eat and drink, let alone enough to all bathe daily. So I had a quick shower, and left my soap there, in its little box, on the bathroom shelf, thinking nothing of it.

The following day, when I went to use it to wash off the rather toxic blend of DEET, sunscreen and sweat, I noticed it had been opened. Or, more accurately, it had been nibbled… ugh. So this was what they like to dine on the most, their gourmet favourite, as it were: plain old ordinary soap. In the middle of the jungle with all its glorious biodiversity, how very lacking in imagination!

Lesson learned, I sealed it away more carefully than ever, went back to my room to do a bit of reading. I’d set my room up rather nicely, I thought, with the few things I had. On my writing desk, which faced out onto the jungle and delicious-looking papaya trees, I had placed a big notepad to write down ideas or thoughts, as the only method of communication out here was shortwave radio 30 minutes a day. There was certainly no phone or internet connection. With that was my little Spanish-English dictionary; handy, as Pico spoke no English, and I was struggling to remember any of my eight-week Spanish course from six years back. And my current reading material, A Passage To India, by E. M. Forster.

Of course. Because what else would you read in South America, in the middle of the jungle? Actually, this is a quirk of mine, I guess. I seem to be fond of reading novels set in places far away from where I am, rather than reading novels based where I am currently travelling. For some reason I feel it has a tendency to affect my own experience of the place in question. I later went on during the course of the following two weeks, from the comfort of my hammock, to explore the worlds of Jane Austen’s Emma, Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady and, as a logical conclusion to this series, Voltaire’s Candide.

So, imagine my surprise when, a day or so later, I returned to my dictionary to find the spine nibbled? Not only that, but E.M. Forster had apparently also been to the rat’s liking - at least as an amuse bouche. He hadn’t eaten that much. But just enough to raise my ire, make me swear, and then, thankfully, to laugh a little. Perhaps I laughed later. At dinner it transpired it wasn’t just me. But Johnny, our resident Irish jester (quite literally), had found the brim of his leather akubra nibbled away, and then Tarn, a Canadian-Sikh philosophy student, found a hole eaten out of one of the fingers of his thermal gloves. Strangely enough, the rat had not gone for the Gandhi auto-biography Tarn was reading at the time. Clothing must clearly taste better than books. But nothing, however, is as good as soap.

I suddenly realised the purpose of the metal trunk in my room… Aha! I stashed my things in it, as much as I could. I hoped my backpack was too beaten up from travelling to be tempting, too covered in dirt and sweat and spilt sunblock and mosquito repellent to be remotely appetising. I was lucky, and for the next two weeks lost nothing else to the rat. However, we were all just slightly perturbed that this thing was coming into our rooms while we were asleep, and so took to dragging poor Campiona into our rooms at night, in a vain attempt to get her to catch the darn thing. She didn’t. But she also wasn’t shy later on about catching something in front of us all in the library one night, and munching = well, crunching - away on it in the corner while we all tried to play cards.

I decided that the weird and vivid dreams I was having in the jungle, coupled with our little nocturnal visitor, was enough adventure for me. The jungle taps into some weird primal part of your psyche, seems to dredge up deeply concealed parts of your nature and your thoughts, your past, your imaginings. I was occasionally freaked out at night, dashing like a child afraid of the dark along the shadowy unlit walkway back to the main part of the complex, to use the toilet around the midnight hour. Serves me right for reading until all hours by headlamp. There were pumas. There were jaguars. There were snakes. There were caimans. There were piranhas. And there were bamboo rats. Actually, I grew to like the bamboo rats. They made a funny sound I came to find quite comforting at night, as if they were slowly sliding out of the trees, with a musically-descending series of croaks. And Picito loved them. One of the favourite games we invented for him was spot the bamboo rat at night with the flashlight. "Bamboo rat!" Kept him amused for hours.

Johnny was the bravest. He decided to stay overnight for a day or two in the “casita”, or little house, which was built out on its own, near a river, about a half hour’s walk from Picaflor. It had sounded like a great idea to me when I’d first arrived, to go out there for a day or so, peace and quiet, on my own… Now, as I accompanied him out there towards the end of my two-weeks, both of us armed with the requisite machetes (for fighting off both jungle and predator?), deciding I should at least explore the property a bit more, I thought he was both brave and slightly mad. But if anyone could do it and have a positive experience, it was Johnny.

He came back the following morning, just after breakfast, looking ever so slightly shaken. Or tired. Or miffed. Perhaps a combination of the three. He hadn’t had any sleep, having had to endure a night-long fight for supremacy between a mouse and a rat, which had both decided to take up residence in the casita. He ceded, they won.

Which brings me to where I currently was. Standing, hands on hips, soap-less. Hopeless even. Again. So, the following night, I locked it away in the cupboard outside, along with my clothes and other toiletries. No doubt the rat could smell the soap, but couldn’t get to it. Ha! But it was a rather inconvenient situation for me - I either had to take the key to unlock the cupboard with me each time at night, or settle on using my large bottle of shampoo/body wash. It didn’t seem remotely interested in that. Or perhaps simply couldn’t flip open the top. Thankfully there were limits to its cunning.

I put my thinking-cap back on. I had gained somewhat of a reputation among my various travel companions of bearing a slight resemblance to MacGyver. Not looks, I’ll have you know, for that would be rather problematic for a girl. More along the lines of resourcefulness. I was already madly proud of my improvised shower, which had really been rather straight-forward: simply slinging the handheld shower nozzle up around one of the wooden supports and securing it using a climbing loop/clip, which I'd thrown in at the last minute with the usual "just in case".

My head-protecting doorway solution was a little less elegant in execution, but far more vital. The doorway leading out to the bathroom was a mere 149cms high, not even 5 foot, no exaggeration (or the opposite of that, which would seem more appropriate in this instance), and contained a step, adding to the degree of difficulty. I had clocked my noggin twice in as many days. The first time produced a bump and prompted me to affix a white napkin to the top of the frame, as a sort of visual reminder to duck. Now!

This worked quite well for a day or so. The second time almost felled me. My teeth rattled in my skull and I was rather shaken. I would have cursed and sworn at the door jam was too stunned to do so. After catching my breath and regaining a modicum of composure, I pulled out two pieces of rope I’d thrown into my backpack almost as an afterthought. ‘You never know’, I’d said to myself, I’d really only envisaged using them to hitch up my mosquito net, if required. But now... I looked around for something soft and found a spare pillow in the cupboard outside. I threaded the two pieces of rope through gaps in the thatching above the door, and tied the pillow to the top of it. Sure, it looked funny, and the staff thought it was hysterical. But they understood. And my head was grateful ever after.

Now I turned this ‘genius’ to my rat-inflicted soap issue. Hmmm, I had another piece of string in my bag. Not so original, but how about soap-on-a-string? There were a couple of nails in the beam across the showering area, near the hand basin, I could hang the soap from that! Ha, take that, you confounded rat! You dastardly soap-stealing fiend! I pulled out my beloved pocket knife, a gift from my New York gang. I was grateful to them every time I used it, which was often. But this time I used part of it I never had before - some strange pointy thing with a hole near the top, like an odd kind of clumsy needle. I know, I’m ever so technical. I bore a hole through the centre of the soap and threaded the rope through. Rather pleased with myself, I hung it from the nail. It hang down about 40 cms (1’4”). ‘That should the trick!’, I thought merrily.

Enjoyed my day, loved my new soap invention every time I washed my hands, had a great dinner, and came back, to my cottage. Stopped sharply in my tracks, aghast. There was a little rat-type calling card on top of the mosquito net above my bed... Oh god. Nothing was missing from the bedside table, but this was getting personal. I immediately went into the bathroom. The empty packet of soap was chewed and lying in the basin. Worse than that, the soap-on-a-string was gone. What the? Well, I inspected further, and it was not exactly gone. More like flung up over the beam, into the corner under the pitched roof, and nibbled on. My only solace was the fact the little bugger hadn’t been able to remove the soap completely from the string. Miffed, I pulled it back down so it was hanging again. “Oh well, at least it’s clean”, joked my sister on the phone later that night, though I knew she was grossed out. And during the call I swear I saw a dark, tailed rear-end retreating back through the wall.

I slept badly that night, and was relieved when it started raining heavily, lulling me to sleep and covering up all manner of night noises. When I got up I went to put on my sunglasses to go to breakfast. The cord I’d attached to the arms of them, so that they couldn’t fall in the river (daggy, but practical), dropped down on one side. It was always doing this, as I’d yet to find a way to fix the problem. I took them off and went to loop the rubber ring back around the arm. But it simply wasn’t there. Gone completely, vanished into thin air. I figured I must have tugged at it, or it got caught in my hair and had fallen on the ground somewhere. What a nuisance, I thought to myself.

I went out to the bathroom to find the soap flung back up in the corner. Shit. I thought of taking a photo but was a bit grossed-out. There were calling cards all over the tiles. I went to reception and asked them to please clean my room immediately. I ate my breakfast and went for my ayurvedic treatment, where I managed to relax. I decided against leaving the soap on a string as a temptation, so gingerly took it down and threw it in the bin. My memories of Picaflor flooding back, I realised I'd been an idiot to leave out my rucksack and day pack, and two pairs of shoes... I frantically ran around the room and gingerly checked them all, relief flooding over me as a I realised they were all still quite whole and hole-free! I packed everything I owned away, into the cupboard or the drawer in the bedside table, with a few things under the mosquito net on the other side of the bed.

I then spent a pleasant afternoon chatting with three recently-arrived British ladies in the gazebo, had dinner and went to bed. Well, not straight to bed. When I went back to my little cottage, I found it had visited while I was at dinner. The telltale signs were scattered around the place. At least I hadn’t left anything out to be chewed. I made a lot of noise before going out to the bathroom - the last thing I wanted to do was see the damn thing. I was managing to cope, just as long as I didn’t have to face it. Coast clear. Washed my face, cleaned my teeth, locked everything back in the cupboard. Ended up reading a little longer than I’d anticipated, and had to go to the bathroom again. Darn.

And there it was. Tail hanging down over the support beam, snooping around where the soap-on-a-string had been. Argh! I clapped loudly. It turned and looked. It scurried, but not fast enough for my liking, into the corner, where the soap had previously been flung. And it looked back at me. No way. This thing was clearly feeling quite at home! This would not be tolerated. I went back inside and slammed the door a couple of times, and peered back around. Saw it scurry down the wall, across the shower area, and out the hole where the drain was.

Morning came around, and I went to reception to ask them to please lay more traps. I asked George to come with me and showed him where I’d seen it. And I asked if I could please move to the other free cottage, as I sensed the rat really was quite at home in this one, and next to it, outside the bathroom, was a large pile of wood, all covered with a tarp, likely making a lovely warm and cosy rat home. And I feared I’d confounded the problem by turning my bathroom into somewhat of an adventure playground for the wretched thing, what with soaps-on-strings and a game of hide-and-seek. All that had been missing was a little wheel.

So, halfway through my stay at Keraleeyam, I moved. My new cottage was closer to the river, and had the wonderful addition of a canvas deck chair. Not to mention the fact that, even though the door to the bathroom was even lower (142cm) in this cottage, the step to get into was higher (29cm), which lessened my chances of cracking my head. I settled in, unpacked my things again, and noticed the tiniest frogs I’ve ever seen, smaller than my little fingernail, hoping around the shower area. They made me smile and entertained me immensely, struggling against the laws of physics as they tried to jump along the wet tiles. Over the next few days they were joined by number of little vermillion-tailed lizards (minnows?), a gecko or two (a personal favourite), and I spotted an iguana, or perhaps it was a chameleon, on the roof of the cottage next to mine, thinking at first that it was a curled up orange and yellow leaf.

The first night was glorious, and the morning after was noticeably and wonderfully rat-free. The second evening, on my porch, I noticed the little bugger scampering along the river bank. I yelled at it, and it at least had the decency to duck back down and continue scrambling along the river, past my cottage. That night, after dinner, I could tell it had been through my room, but finding nothing either there nor in my bathroom, seemed to have moved on. The following morning one of the staff came by and addressed me with: “Rat not problem anymore”, but it sounded like a question. I said I still thought it was hanging around, and then he told me the trap had got it. Hurrah!

Of course, over the next few days it became obvious that another had simply taken its place, but this one didn’t seem as intrusive. An American-Paraguayan couple who recently arrived decided to move from the AC cottage room next to mine into my former thatched cottage. At breakfast we were talking about all the little visitors, and they said something about nibbled soap. I told them to lock it away, and was sorry I had forgotten to say so the night before. They had found one bar nibbled, and one bar completely vanished, but seemed to be taking it in their stride. Mitchell, at 6'2" (185cm?) had clocked his head sharply a number of times, and I was proud to say the staff looked at him, held their finger up motioning to him to wait, and returned with two pieces of string and a pillow... At least I had something to contribute.

I didn’t lose anything else to the rat, and I certainly didn’t lose any more sleep; at least, I only lost sleep over metaphorical rats in human form. But that’s another story. The ayurvedic treatment was working wonders. I was relaxing. I was cleansing. I was letting go.

Sitting in my favourite spot, lying back in my canvas deckchair, I looked out across the river, watching the constant parade of houseboats, canoe-taxis, river ferries and fishermen, listening to their whistles and calls, their conversations, their light-hearted teasing, their ready laughter. I was happy to share my little world on the river with everyone and everything, though the crows were a nuisance, especially when they stole my breakfast whenever my back was turned. I could even handle the rat, if it really had to come through occasionally. Though perhaps I could have done without the mosquitoes and nippy little red ants - and that one final crack of my head on the bathroom door jam on the penultimate day of my stay.

The sounds of a three-day service for a beloved late guru drifted across the water from the village temple. Part-mourning, part-celebration, the sounds of prayer and music filled the evening air as the light gently dimmed and the birds kicked it up another notch until it became dark and the river grew quiet. I breathed in deeply and smiled.