We set out with about 100 of the grade ten students and were joined by additional chaperones such as the school nurse, the Swahili teacher, and the history teacher. The path we took was familiar to Jon and I as we have ridden our bikes through most of these paths. However, where we normally go right, we forked to the left. After about 30 minutes walking, we stopped at the first site. The geography teacher explained swamps, soil nutrients, and erosion with the little river we were sitting by. Soon, we were all leaping over said river to continue onto the trip. We stopped at the next site, where the teacher begins asking how many different types of soil are there? Shortly after, a girl ran away from the group, starting taking her shoes off and rolling up her pants and crying. She was hitting at her legs. The school nurse and I ran over to her to see what was going on. All I could understand was something about insects. I let the school nurse take over. But, not even twenty seconds after I had taken my place back with the group did I notice that something appeared to be biting me underneath my skirt and shirt! I then knew what she was crying about.
I contemplated just ignoring it, but it was so painful! I had a dilemma, the only way to see what was biting me was to either lift my skirt or lift my shirt in front of all my students. I tried killing whatever it was through my clothes, but the attacks were more frequent. I finally lifted by shirt and saw a small bug. I was worried they were ticks! I ran down to where Jon was standing with a bunch of students and I said, Jon, I think I have ticks! He said, crap, show me! In which I replied, I can’t they are under my clothes, I can’t lift my clothes in front of the students!
We rushed over to hide behind a bush. I lift my shirt and sure enough there were ants all over my body biting me! Every three seconds, I felt a new bite. The thing is these ants weren’t biting, they were burrowing into my skin. Jon could not keep up with getting them off of me. After some time, it seemed maybe I had it under control and we went back to join the group. Not even a minute later, I realized I was wrong. We rushed back to the bush and I took my skirt off at the risk of the students coming in just the right view of seeing me! I didn’t care. The skin-burrowing ants had it in for me. We picked all of them off my skirt and meanwhile continued to kill them under my shirt. They even got in my underwear and tried burrowing my butt! The students had all moved on to the next site and so we took our time to make sure they were all off me.
Eventually, we caught up to the group. I told the geography and Swahili teacher, along with the school nurse what happened to me. The school nurse and Swahili teacher literally fell over laughing. They fell to their knees, then to the ground where they held their stomachs and rolled all over the ground laughing at me. What were the chances that I was one of two people who got attacked by the burrowing ants?
Our last spot was near a little pond. Despite the burrowing ants, we were really glad we helped chaperone because we now know how to get to this little pond. It is beautiful there with the sound of running water. We are excited to go back and have a little picnic!
Students around the pond listening to their Geography teacher
Our school nurse, who wanted a funny picture with me. She’s only about 20 and has the most fashionable clothes at our school.
Gross!
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