Lizards in Our Homes and Gardens
April Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Freestyle”
Cicak di rumah dan taman saya.
My Six Word Story translates as “Lizards in our home and garden”. I remember seeing a tiny lizard on my first morning in Malaysia in 1973. I had just arrived with a group of Peace Corps trainees. Standing outside the hotel in Kuala Lumpur where we had spent the night, someone looked up and exclaimed, “Lizards! There are lizards on the walls!” Wow. I was amazed. I had never seen a lizard on the walls in Iowa. What were they doing there? Were they dangerous? We were reassured that they were common and not dangerous.
In our first three months in Malaysia, we had language training in Bahasa, the Malay language. We learned the word “cicak” which means lizard.
The buildings in Malaysia back then were not air-conditioned, so the windows were usually open. There were no screens on the windows, so cicaks freely crawled in and out through the windows. We realized that there were advantages to having them living with us. They helped to keep the mosquitoes, ants, spiders, and other insects under control.
One morning a few years later when we were living in Jakarta, Indonesia, I was holding my young son. He looked up and pointed at something on the ceiling behind me…
