Last night I was awoken by footsteps outside our hut.
Typically i’d just roll over
and assume it was just the cute little grandma that lives just feet away,
but when I checked the time I realized it was just 1:30am
and there was no way she was up.
I laid there… eyes darting back and forth…
wondering what the heck was going on.
Being the team leader to an all girls team I am ultra aware of our surroundings.
I cannot tell you the number of men I have mean mugged
when they even think about looking in our direction.
Mama hen, if you will.
But, these footsteps weren’t just a passerby…I felt like we were being full blown surrounded.
I heard them next to my bed on the other side of the wall
and then walking around next to Carly’s bed…
then Sarah’s and Danielle’s, stopping at Gene’s…
then on to Jill’s… then Beth’s…
Then back to mine.
On and on and on again.
30 minutes passed and I felt paralyzed.
Afraid to even move to unzip my sleeping bag.
I had no idea what was going on but the last thing I planned on doing was walking outside.
A few hours before our friend Lelo–the owner of the homestead we are living on– sat us down and told us story after story crazy people breaking in and being dumb
and how he took care of such people.
We laughed and joked that we lived on the safest place in Swaziland…
but in this moment, I doubted everything I had thought just hours before.
Petrified was a better word for it all.
I had to go to the bathroom so bad from the excessive amount of coffee I drank at movie night,
but I swore up and down I would not be walking out to the outhouse when there was such rukus.
At this point my imagination ran so wild that I came to the conclusion that the intruder had already broken in to the other houses and we were the last ones standing.
I texted our neighbor checking in on him.
I saw a light over by Jill’s bed
and immediately made a dash from my sleeping bag to her bunk bed.
“dude do you hear that…”
“uhhh yeah… I’m not letting you go out there.
It kind of boosted my confidence that she thought that I wanted to…
maybe I seem hardcore.
I hop over her and peer out the window…
heart racing a hundred miles a minute.
As soon as I pulled the curtains back the noise stopped…
I stood there for atleast 5 minutes determined to get a sight of the culprit.
I look at her and she shrugs her shoulders and
I decide to dart back to my side of the room and wait it out.
As soon as I lay down we hear…
MOOOOOOOOOO.
A freaking herd of cows.
Are you freaking kidding me?
We died. Legit died laughing.
We were basically writing our wills for our families back home and nearly saying our goodbyes.
We thought this was the end.
Cows.
Don’t fret.
They ran over one of our fences…
Stayed ultra quiet for a good HOUR and freaked us all out…
and as soon as I got up and put on my confident pants they stopped…
and just to rub it in when I zip myself back in to my cozy sleeping bag…
they all moo at once.
Moral of the story to all you parents…
we are all safe and sound here and the team leader is a sissy.
Until next time.
