About a week ago, our kitchen began to mysteriously fill with small, triangular shaped, black winged bugs every evening. At its worst, we would kill 20 bugs on a morning trip around the kitchen, coiled magazine in hand. Our landlord visited one of those days, saw the problem, saw fruit on the counter and soundly proclaimed that this was not his problem.
After only a few days, I began to despair. It seems that the route to fixing a problem in China involves proving that the problem exists, finding the source of the problem yourself, and fighting long and hard for a solution. I had no desire to fight the good fight with twenty to thirty bugs appearing in the kitchen every morning.
Then, last night inspiration struck. The drain! The floor of our kitchen houses a drain - a drain which happens to lie very near the triangle bug hang-out. So we covered the drain with a glass bowl last night, and this morning came to find loads of little bugs flying about in our bowl. Wendy, our ayi, arrived impressed by our ingenuity. But when she left, I was impressed by hers. We both knew that convincing the landlord to fix the problem would take a long time. To save ourselves the trouble, she cleaned out the drain and covered it with cheesecloth. Presto! No more bugs!
Necessity and good teamwork are the mother of all invention.
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