What would it take?

During training we spent some time trying to decide what would make us ET (Early Termination, ie: throwing in the towel, getting the next flight back to the US).  Responses vary but generally it's a mix of being attacked by a wild animal while the floor falls out from below you in a latrine and then discovering that you have a parasite crawling out of your body.

The phone call would go like this:

"Hey, Country Director, I'm up to my waist in waste.  Also, there's a worm crawling out of my leg.  I'll be waiting at the cross roads just as soon as someone throws a rope down to me.  Book the flight."

It would probably sound a bit more hysterical.


But for me I know exactly what would make me ET instantly, because it ALMOST HAPPENED.

Laying in bed and being stung by a scorpion is a deal breaker for me.

FAT TAILED VENOMOUS SCORPION THAT TRIED TO MURDER ME

This is a scorpion that I found IN MY BED.  I was laying in bed, at about 11pm watching TV when I felt something sharp under my sheet.  No big deal, just a cockroach.  I'm sorry to report that this is also a thing that happens.  Cockroaches climb up the wall and lounge around in my bed.  I wasn't terribly worried, I just peeled back the sheets and flicked it out of my bed.  My mosquito net was tucked in so when I leaned over to pull the net out and let the roach drop to the floor I noticed something ZOOM by my hand.  I looked more closely and noticed a curled up body and CLAWS.  I jumped to the opposite corner of my bed and cowered for a minute.  I decided there was no way to deal with the scorpion without actually getting out of bed, and going to sleep with it inside my net wasn't an option.  I dove out of the net and the scorpion followed me out and I thought for about .034 seconds about trapping it in a jar before I stomped on it.  Because I was convinced that my bed was probably a scorpion hotel I pulled it away from the wall, removed all my sheets with a broom stick and threw everything into my living room.  Then I stood in the middle of my room and tried not to cry and decide if I needed to set all my bedding and mattress on fire or not.

Obviously I survived the ordeal, and I think that finding one scorpion in my bed is sufficiently rare that now I'll be extremely lucky (lucky!) to ever see another.  But, if it ever happens again I'm out.