📸 Photo

relief. I shoved the palm fronds aside and just sat there stunned, staring. The earth around me was alive and teeming. The mosquito nets were red all over as was the trunk of the tree above me and my pack, all covered with swarming insects. My shoes crawled with them. The ground about me for a radius of at least ten feet teemed with an army, not of ants, but of termites, millions of them. My entire body was covered with clusters of them. I was in shock but soon realised what had happened; the termites had made short order of the nets and poncho, simply eating their way through the nylon, leaving gaping holes through which they had swarmed.

Horrified, I leapt to my feet, oblivious of the pain, and fled, crunching insects under my feet. I stopped about twenty yards from the spot where I had been lying and destroyed the last of the creatures that still clung to me. My body was like a sieve, drops of blood seeping through the pores of every patch of bare skin. The tree I had been lying under was a horrifying sight, and the reddish-brown termites were eating into all my belongings. I took a few steps closer to them, stopped to get my nerve up, ran into their midst, threw my pack as far as I could, and dashed away. The pack already had quite a few holes in it. I shook it off and killed the termites that clung to it, repeating the motion a few times. I ran back and pitched from among the swarming insects one shoe, and then the other, followed by the