You're good with Insects.. right?

After our village tour, we found Ne-ne waiting for us in the kitchen.

‘Eat?’ she asked, and we nodded, each pulling out a seat, tentatively.

Ne-ne shuffled between the pots on the stove, placing two large bowls of sticky white rice and green-beans in front of us with two spoons.

Haz and I ate, unsure as to why Ne-ne and Rachel weren’t eating with us. Perhaps they’ve already had their dinner, we wondered.

‘So you are vegetarian?’ said Ne-ne.

‘I am, Chloe isn’t,’ said Haz, and Ne-ne nodded, seeming to drink in the information thoughtfully.

‘You cannot eat fish?’

‘No, I can eat fish!’ said Haz, ‘Yes, fish is fine.’

Ne-ne nodded again, and we chewed, quietly. The meal was delicious, with the beans fried in garlic, salt and other spices. I did however, begin to worry that I would be spending the rest of this month living as a vegetarian – as if there weren’t going to be enough dietary shocks.

‘Your Va-va will be home later,’ said Ne-ne. ‘He is at the farm.’

‘Ah, ok.’

After we had scraped up the last of our meal, Ne-ne giggled, ‘You go have grog now.’

‘Grog,’ another term for the kava drink, was to happen at the chief’s house at seven; in the evening ceremony to welcome us, the kids played with my hair and asked us lots of questions about England. On our way back from the event, we had to use Haz’ phone-torch to find our way over the rocky earth; frogs leapt at our feet and the small night-lamps on the roofs on the houses were littered with lizards. But I didn't mind either of those. Back in the house, we found Va-va, returned from the farm.

‘Hello,’ he said, standing tall in the living room with a sulu wrapped around his waist. He held out one large hand for each of us and we shook it, ‘I am your Va-va,’ he said, ‘It means papa.’

‘Hi Va-va,’ we smiled.

‘You must be tired,’ he said, and we had to agree. We also realised how desperately we needed a shower. ‘Go have some rest. I see you in the morning.’

‘Ok,’ we said, and took to our room through a door on the left.

That was when I saw it.

‘Oh no.’ I whispered.

‘What?’ said Haz.

I pointed to the top corner at the far end of the room. ‘There’s a spider.’

It was big. Really big. Like the fake glittery ones you stick up around your house for Halloween, and I’m the kind of person who notices the tiny ones as though I have a Mad-Eye Moody’s optical range. It had an actual triangular body, with actual hairy legs spread-eagled on the wall, like some kid had drawn it on as a joke. Except this was not funny. Already, I was trying to suss what methods of persuasion I could use to have someone – anyone – get rid of it.

Harriet, who glanced up at the spider, said: ‘Oh yeah,’ then meandered over to her things. ‘Right, me first in the shower then?’

‘Wait!’ I said, practically wetting my sulu. ‘Can’t you help me get rid of it?’

‘It’s all part of the experience,’ she shrugged, then she picked up her soap and abandoned me.

I did not move. She was gone a good twenty minutes, but neither my feet nor my eyes stirred from that spot. After a few minutes, petrified the way I was, I heard a rustling behind me. With the door ajar left by Harriet's exit, I'd had no idea that Va-va and Ne-ne were lying wrapped up in blankets on the living room floor where they would have been sleeping had I not provided them with such queer entertainment, cowering in the doorway.

Va-va muttered something to Rachel which brought her tip-toeing towards me.

‘What are you looking at?’ she said.

My insides clenched with shame, but I pointed to the spider anyway.

‘You afraid of spiders?’ she giggled, and I nodded. ‘Ok.’ Then she walked over to the corner, reached up – slower than my nan’s computer cursor – and it scarpered into a crack in the ceiling. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘there you go.’

If that had been me in England, prevailing on my brother’s attempts, I would have whisked up a pillow and pounded his head with it screaming: ‘You lost it! You LOST IT!’ But of course, I did nothing of the sort.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and smiled pleasantly, faking a sigh of relief. ‘Vinaka, Rachel. Sorry about that.’

‘It’s ok,’ she said, and left, back through the living room.

When Haz re-entered with a towel on her head, I scowled at her.

‘Your turn,’ she said.

I collected my towel and toiletries, tiptoed through the house, stepped through the side door and into an outdoor cubicle, green, like the rest of the house. The bathroom consisted of a dried, rusty shower-head (that did not work), a tap, and a bucket on a tiled floor with a drain in the center. It was lit by an eerie green light and I would have hung my towel on the back of the door had I not then seen a cockroach the size of my finger with antennae equally long on the hinge of the door beneath the lamp. Around the cockroach, a swarm of ants, minding their own business, scuttled up the wall in that odd, busy line formation, dividing into two paths, rejoining above its antennae like a roundabout. I was shooketh.

Rather than put my towel anywhere near that, I hung it over the shower-head. Then I splashed the cold murky water from the bucket all over my quivering body, with the door wide open so as not to disturb the Safari exhibition above me. Apparently I would rather suffer the shame of nakedness in a modest culture than risk having that thing move.

That night, despite the heat, I slept with the blanket over my head to ensure that no wildlife should drop anywhere near the vicinity of my face. It was the most harrowing first night an arachnophobic could have endured – but at least there were only 21 more to go… right?