Oh, dear! Andrea has reminded me of another story:
Of my many memories of my Peace Corps tour in Ethiopia, one that stands out is my night with the crawlers. Most of the time we were in Ethiopia we worked hard teaching in the secondary school system but there were vacations, and that's when we could plan explorations of other parts of the country. The previous summer I had joined an Italian neighbor on a practice rally from Addis Ababa to Dira Dawa, along an old track that the Italians had constructed during their occupation of Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941; during their retreat they had blown up the bridges and they had never been rebuilt, which enhanced the route for the rally folks. Mario had been a teenager in these years and had been a motorcycle messenger in the last year before Ethiopia was liberated. He was full of interesting stories.
Well, we had a great time tearing down the old road and nosing in and out of dry river beds, stopping off for refreshments at occasional villages along the way. One of the villages still had extensive orange orchards, and Mario explained that his grandparents had planted them when they had been resettled there, and had also started a small hotel. I filed that information away for future reference. We made it the rest of the way to Dira Dawa, a major railway stop between Addis Ababa and Djibouti. We delivered the car to its new owner and caught the train back to Addis.
The next vacation I invited a good friend (who I secretly lusted for) to accompany me in a rented car to Dira Dawa. She was very impressed with my off-road skills and eventually we pulled into the small plantation village for the night. The folks who ran the hotel were happy to rent us a room for the night, and after dinner we snuggled in for the night. The room was brightly lit with moonlight, and it wasn't long before we noticed shadowy shapes crawling up the walls, alongside our bed. What we found even more unsettling was after they reached the ceiling an occasional one would drop down. There was nothing to do but pull the sheet over our heads and giggle hysterically for the rest of the night as another roach-like creature sky-dived down.
Somehow we never were able to plan another trip together. I can't imagine why.