The straight row of becak (pedicabs) reminded me of a 1959 Grand Prix where drivers like Stirling Moss sprinted across the track so to get a flying start.
Becak driver Abdul looked dejected as business was not so good, his projected forecast not quite in line with sales revenue.
The area was dirty, litter everywhere and of course the cockroaches were scurrying around. Pickings were good today, which got us onto the subject of cleanliness and the ongoing war with bugs and insects. I told Abdul about a German pair of cockroaches that, through female cloning and masses of pom pom, managed through offspring to produce 400,000 roaches in just one year.
He shrugged his shoulders and then, from his lying position across the becak, swatted one, his swipe about a week behind the speed of the cockroach. I explained that, out of the starting blocks, a cockroach has been timed as moving at a 54 thousandth of a second, which is quicker than the human blink.
"No wonder I missed, Pak," Abdul replied, but then when I told him that a decapitated cockroach had bodily climbed out of a trash can and laid its eggs before finally giving up the ghost, he began to realize the extermination difficulties.
The roachologists, or whatever they call themselves, say this little resilient well-engineered scavenger has been on the planet for 243 million years, which means they survived the Ice Age and avoided whatever catastrophe killed off the dinosaurs.
Abdul in his travels has not been further than Binjay, but when I told him that the cockroach had circumnavigated the world, which puts them in a class with Juan Sebastian del Cano and Sir Francis Drake, he said "What's the answer, Pak? I mean these creatures are unassailable, indestructible and breed like rabbits".
Cleanliness, I said, "Keep the place clean and the cockroaches will go elsewhere. I left Abdul wiping down the becak with an old Golkar T-shirt and hoped he would pass the message down the line. I wonder if he has a flamethrower in the house.
David Wallis
Medan
