Things that go bump in the night...

Bump. Bang. Crunch-crunch. Those are sounds that often wake me as I lay in my small tin-roofed house. I’m not really a light sleeper, so when I’m awakened in the night, it has to be a fairly significant noise to scare the sleep out of me.

So what sort of things might be landing on my roof, or scratching on my ceiling, that go “bump in the night”? Mangoes are the common offender, and since I have a lovely spreading mango tree next to my house, the fruit rain down on my roof quite ferociously during wind storms. I remember the first wind storm that woke me, the noise was so loud and completely filling my room that I jumped out of bed so fast I almost lost my balance – I was certain my home was under invasion by vandalizing thieves or worse! Thankfully once I figured out it was just a wind storm, my pulse slowly returned to normal, and after double-checking the locks on my doors, I went back to bed.

I can now recognize the thumping sound of mangoes dropping on my tin roof, but there are still those “crunching” noises that concern me because I haven’t quite identified them yet. That’s the sound that comes from my ceiling, like a very large cat or bat walking overhead; it’s definitely larger than a lizard or a rat (perhaps a bush rat, a very large rat). Something large lives in my ceiling, I’m not sure what, but so long as it stay on THAT side of my ceiling and doesn’t die up there (that would smell very bad) I guess it can’t do too much harm.

There are many other noises that keep me from falling asleep, but they aren’t usually loud enough to wake me once I am sleeping. These noises include:

• Rhythmic pounding of yams at midnight (why is anyone pounding yams at midnight?!);


• The irritatingly repetitive songs of P-Square (popular African rapper) booming over the new sound-system of the neighborhood bar;


• The kids over the wall who never seem to sleep, but just scream and holler all night;


• The sleep-deprived rooster that crows all night (as opposed to when the sun is rising…);


• Random neighborhood house-parties lasting until 6am – I was tempted to give up on sleeping and just go join the party, but decided that I was too tired.


• And finally, my favorite, the melodic 5am call to prayer from the surrounding mosques. Thankfully I don’t have any loudspeakers pointed directly at my house, so the sound isn’t as overwhelming as some, but it’s just more of a daily (5 times a day) reminder that I am living in Parakou, Benin.

Good night, sleep tight, and hope the bed bugs (or roof rats) don’t bite!