Sally, Sute and the Scorpion

Once upon a time, right after the rains in The Gambia had begun....
Dinner had just gotten done cooking and I came into my house with my 2 bowls.  The rice didn't have a red sauce, so I was going to eat with my hand. I walked to my back door, which latches at the top and in the middle. I reached up to undo the top latch without looking first.  I glaced up to find a 6" scorpion inches from my hand.  I leapt across the house and crouched in my plastic lawn chair keeping an eye on the scorpion and trying to formulate a plan.  I had never seen a scorpion before this point and had never seen one killed or shooed out of a house, so I had no idea what to do.  During my long staring session with the scorpion, Dad called, so he got to experience some of this excitement firsthand.  At some point during the call, the scorpion dropped from the wall down to the floor.  That thing was so scary looking.  After the phonecall was over, I was ready to take care of the situation, so I went out to find someone to help me.  I decided my host brother Sute was the perfect candidate.  He speaks enough english that I thought I could freak out a little and speak english about what I needed and this would still get taken care of. 
I went into Sute's room and told him I had a scorpion in my house and I didn't know what to do.  He asked me what color it was. 
"Black"
"Ooh- those are dangerous"
"Do scorpions come in other colors? What colors are the most dangerous?"
"All of them are black" (Come to find out later, there are white ones that are even worse than the kind I had in my house)
Sute came into my house and grabbed my broom and held the scorpion down.  He cut off the tail with his shoe and kind of smushed the scorpion.  The scorpion grabbed the broom and then Sute launched the scorpion over my bathroom fence.  Sute is such a hero!
I thought my ordeal was over here.  I finally ate my dinner, hung out with the family for a minute and went to bed.  In the morning I got up, walked out and took my bowl out to my family.  On the way I noticed that someone had hung the scorpion on the clothesline.  Yikes! I handed my bowl to one of my mothers, turned around and ran smack into the scorpion with my face.  That was not even the only time that day that this happened.  Ugh!  Thankfully me running into it repeatedly prompted it to be taken down and thrown out of the compound.
Thankfully that has been my only scorpion encounter thus far and now I feel equipped to handle an encounter if one does happen in the future.  Big thanks to Sute- he's such a hero.

This is the scorpion hanging on the clothesline in the morning.  If you look closely, you can even see that he's hairy!  He used to have a tail too.