If there’s an award somewhere for “most roaches in bathroom at one time,” I’m sure that I would win. After living in my new apartment in Bangkok, Thailand for just a week, I opened my bathroom door after a long day and immediately shut it after the largest roach I’d ever seen scuttled across my bath mat like it owned the place. I hurried across the street to the 7-11 to buy roach spray, and as I returned and peeked into my bathroom armed with bug poison, I came to the worst conclusion when trying to kill a bug: it had disappeared. Hours passed, and after the scummy creature had finally shown himself again, I fumigated the roach and trapped it under the heaviest bowl I could find in my kitchen. I breathed a sigh of relief and closed the door to continue getting ready for bed. Moments later, I opened the door to shower and my eyes grew wide as a second, slightly smaller roach crept across the tile.
I was ready.
I grabbed the roach poison, but as I began to spray the second creature, a third roach emerged from behind my toilet and began to thrash in a frenzied dance with his accomplice closer and closer to the door.
I slammed the door. Breathing deeply, I thought through my battle plan. I realized that I hadn't expected one of the new challenges of moving overseas to be large bugs, but as I weighed the option of never using my bathroom again, I decided to prove my bravery against the roaches and earn my right to live in what some consider a tropical paradise (or nightmare, depending on how many large bugs you encounter.) After I spent some time deliberating my options and preparing myself, I opened my bathroom door.
Bugs crawled across my field of vision as I took in the battlefield on my bathroom floor. My reflexes couldn’t move fast enough as I slammed my bathroom door shut with shaky hands and stood paralyzed in my kitchen. At least ten more roaches were crawling around on my bathroom floor, and by this point, I could hear faint scratching noises coming from the other side of the door. I didn’t spend enough time meeting the vermin to figure out how they got there.
After messaging my teammates and apartment leasing office, it was determined that one of my neighbors must have sprayed their pipes for roaches. Seeking refuge away from the poison, they all climbed into my bathroom to die. After two days of sealing my bathroom door tightly shut, dreaming of large insects, and feeling phantom legs crawling on me at odd times, I braved the mess and swept the dead roaches in a pile to count the casualties: 29 roaches and one gecko.
Through this experience, I’ve learned that God gives all kinds of bravery, including the kind that’s required to gaze into the eyes of 29 cockroaches and say, “My God is greater than you.”