Weeee Want to suck your Bloood!

Disclaimer: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps. In any case the U.S. government can not be held responsible for the mosquitos in Romania and they gave me a mosquito net, and I left it in Ploiesti. And there are no vampires in Romania. That was a joke.

A few words about Romanian mosquito bites. They're not like the mosquito bites I'm used to in the U.S. - or at least not until day 3. These demonic mosquito bites swell up to between the size of a quarter and a 50cent peice (I'm glad that means something to someone reading this) and they feel like a bruise if you poke them. And they ITCH like hell! But, like a spider bite at home as soon as you give in to their desire for sweet scratching - they burn. They also don't go away. After a few weeks of alternately giving in and scratching them, and plying them with hydrocortizone cream they turn to dark brown spots on the skin and feel like nothing but look like bruises. I have 12 serious mosquito bites (itchy ones) right now - and two weeks ago I also counted 12 which had just turned into brown spots.

The problem with the mosquitos right now is it's hot! It's like 89 degrees everyday - so I want to open the window - but the the windows have no screens. If I leave the window open invariably we have a thunderstorm eventually (like every night) and then the mosquitos come out to play! If I have the window closed - I try to sleep and wake up multiple times due to hot sweatiness - AND mosquitos buzzing in my ear. The situation isn't helped by the fact that the window - when you close it doesn't stay closed.

Now Peace Corps did issue me a mosquito net when I left Ploiesti - we all laughed and thought it was a joke. We're in Romania we said, not Nicaragua! What do we need mosquito nets for? It was this line of thinking that caused me to leave my mosquito net at my old gazdas house to come back for it at my earliest convience do to the fact that it wouldn't fit in my luggage. However - that said I don't even think the mosquito net would do me much good right now. I mean - I'm going to need it in my apartment in July even if i had it - cutting it up and making a window screen out of it now wouldn't be the best idea.

Over the weekend I finally bought more little pouches of mosquito repllent that go in the aparazat zanzare (picture a plug-in air freshener) but as I was sitting in my room reading with the window closed and the door closed it occured to me if they weere already in the room they had nowhere to be repelled to. But I didn't care. I was itchy enough to sleep with the window closed and deal with the heat but I still killed 6 of those little buggers. Granted in the early morning while it was light out enough to find them in the room and they were all filled with blood so I can assume they'd already bitten me.

However Saturday night was the first night I wasn't awakened by them buzzing in my ears in the middle of the night taunting me - begging me to hunt them down and kill them. At first I wondered if I should feel bad about killing them - especially when they'd already bitten me - I mean damage done, right? But I couldn't let them live to lay thier eggs and breed more little monsters. This is kill or be killed and I can't let them live to continue to prey on me. I did draw the line though at killing the other harmless nonmosquito bugs that fly in through the window. They haven't done anything to harm me. When I started to wonder if the harmless flies were giving aid and comfort to the mosquitos hidden in the room I wondered if I was losing it. That, followed by the war trama of flinching at the imaginary buzzing of the mosquito qhosts.

But I have had some suceess and being that I haven't been woken up by them for two consectutive nights now - we're going to try to night to repell them back out the open window. That's right I'm sleeping with the window open! No more waking up with hair so wet you'd think I'd just taken a shower. I have mosquito repellant and a prayer. And if that doesn't work...more hydrocortizone cream.

Just be warned. If there are vampires in Romania I'm willing to bet they don't disquise themselves as bats. They go has mosquitos.