*crickets*

One of my screensaver pictures froze for a minute as I tried to go back to my rambling about the internet. It was a photo of my tent, with the flaps open, in Rumbek, in Southern Sudan, as I was on my way out of the country. I took that photo out of sheer relief at being in a place with 24-hour electricity and an en-suite bathroom. My suitcases are on the floor, and there is a round-frame mosquito net hanging from the ceiling.

I really prefer mosquito nets that come sewn in rectangles. Beds, after all, are rectangular, and when you have a circular mosquito net, it's always stretched at an angle to reach the edges of the bed and your face is pressed up against the netting because it comes so low by that point. A rectangular mosquito net can just fall straight around the edges of the bed. But I think the circular ones use less fabric, and thus are cheaper.

Looking at that picture, though, I suddenly remembered how at night, lying in the dark all cozy in that tent, I kept hearing these strange noises. Clicking noises, almost. I finally turned on the light (24-hour electricity!) to investigate, and found the tent full of crickets, hopping vigorously to and fro. Toing and froing, they were. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. I know not where they came from or what they were doing, but my tent was full of crickets hopping in the dark.