On bugs

I think that a lot of Americans (myself included) convince ourselves that we can avoid bugs. Many people go to great lengths (mostly chemical) to keep spiders, flies, and every other crawly little thing out of their homes. Some people, and some city governments, apply chemicals to reduce bug populations out-of-doors.

We also convince ourselves that we can avoid bugs inside our bodies; in other words, we think we can avoid eating them. In fact, we have so strongly convinced ourselves of this that we find it worth remarking upon if, on a walk or bike ride, a bug enters our mouths. We might exclaim, surprised, "I swallowed a bug!"

Well, here in Morocco, I am having to make peace with bugs. I am under no such delusion that I do not eat bugs. In the U.S., if I bought food with bugs in it, I returned it. Here, I have picked through a whole bag of rice to make sure I wasn't boiling (very many) bugs with my rice. I have spent an hour picking through white beans. Only once did I throw out something because it was bug infested; I had purchased a kilo of dried chickpeas, and every single chickpea had a little bug in it.

I had to zoom way in to get a picture of this little guy.

In my home, too, I am working on making peace with the bugs. I have no problem with the teeny tiny spiderlike bugs that, for some reason my human brain cannot comprehend, love living in our shower. I usually don't even bother anymore trying to kill silverfish, and those guys creep me out more than earwigs do.

I would rather they found some other apartment to live in, but I am also, for the most part, okay with the colony of ants that check out our kitchen daily to see if we have left any molecules of sweet foods for them. I would much rather put up with the ants than with the alternative of someone coming in and spraying copious amounts of a chemical in my apartment, which is what I'm 100% sure would happen if I complain too much about the ants.

It took me a long time to figure out that these were living things.

A couple of months ago, when T brought home a house plant that was completely infested with mealy bugs, I'll admit I was irritated. They are very disturbing. But rather than immediately banishing the houseplant to the outdoors, as I probably would have done in the U.S., I spent hours that day picking off the bugs and their millions of eggs. And eventually I became okay with the fact that I had probably missed some.

Even cockroaches don't bother me as much as they used to (this relates to the decrease in my standard of cleanliness which I think is a coping mechanism). After a nice vegan meal in Essaouira with our friends Brian and Sara, T instructed Brian to shake a cockroach off of his hat. As I watched a second cockroach climbing on the wall behind Brian, I noted with surprise that I didn't really feel much of anything. I wasn't surprised. I wasn't disgusted. I wasn't regretful. I thought, It's a food establishment. Just as it attracts cats and dogs, it attracts other food loving creatures, including cockroaches.

My advice to everyone: try to make peace with the bugs. Your life will be easier, and you will be happier. The bugs will be, too.