A new home in the jungle

The padlock weighed heavy in the palm of my hand as I was trying to take in what I was seeing.
“Always lock the door” the man said and added, “Don’t lose the key”. He swiftly turned around and added while walking away, “see you tomorrow”.

I tried to collect my thoughts so I could question the man who had just dropped me off at the little house in the middle of the jungle, which was to be my home for the next few weeks. By the time my dry mouth formed a syllable I heard the engine of his vehicle roar to life outside and when I peeked out the door there was just a cloud of dust left.

Dazed, squinting in the bright sunlight I stood in the doorway not really knowing what I was waiting for, a small part of me hoped the man would come back for me but as revelation hit I turned to gaze into the empty sunlit living room. The green floor tiles were covered in dust that I stirred up as I ventured further into the house.
I stopped in front of the bedroom door and took a deep breath, as my chest heaved I felt the numbing weight on my shoulders from my heavy backpack. Suddenly feeling an urge to get this heavy load weighing me down, off, I pushed the withering bedroom door open.

The room was scorching hot even though I could see that two of the three windows of the room were open. It felt like a huge sauna, a few steps in I was already baking, the humidity caused my t-shirt to stick to my back and pearls of sweat started to form on my forehead.

A big blue double mattress in the middle of the room took up most of the space. Taking a step further in I accidently kicked a small green fan to my left, I bent over to plug it in and realized what I thought was small black rocks covering the floor, was dead bugs and rat poo. In the left corner of the room I saw two dead toads and after walking over the mattress to the back of the room I found three half dead cockroaches struggling in the heat. Trying to close the windows without stepping on any of them, one suddenly started to climb my foot.

Confounded I shook my foot until it fell off, I smashed the cockroach with a flip flop and then shoveled what was left of it up on to the sandal and threw them both out the window.
Now standing on the mattress with only one flip flop, with the windows still open and one cockroach less I looked towards the ceiling and saw that it was filled with holes. I slammed my backpack down on the mattress so the dust stirred and took a deep breath; this was going to be a few daunting weeks ahead, a new adventure for sure.