I quickly find my mobile phone next to me and switch on the light. It's ants. My pillow is one big nest of ants. There are not ten or a hundred, but hundreds. Everything is black with ants. I jump up and stand on my bed, still under the mosquito net, and shine the light over the rest of the bed: more ants, thousands to be exact! A bed of ants – I briefly consider that this would be a good title for my first novel, but I also realise that it's not a priority now. The ants are biting me everywhere. As I twirl and hop around, I try to free myself from the ants. In situations like this, instinct offers two possible reactions: Fight or flight. Modern as I am, I go for option three: take a picture first! Last year in Oman, when my hand looked like one big pincushion after falling into a prickly bush, I forgot to take a photo. After that, I told myself, no matter how big the problem, I’d take photos first and take action after.

While the ants are attacking my legs, I stand jumping and swearing to take photos of the bed I'm still standing on. Once that's done, I initiate my escape plan. I shine my light into the room and see that the white nylon of the mosquito net is also covered in ants. A curtain of ants... Sounds literary too, but a bed of ants sounds better. A mosquito net closes like two curtains overlapping each other over a length of half a metre. To get out, you have to pull them apart and slip through. Normally not a problem, but now it's guaranteed to result in a shower of ants. I check all four sides of the mosquito net with my light, choose the spot where I see the fewest ants and dash out as if I were fleeing through the flames of a burning house.

But the nightmare isn't over yet. Standing next to my bed, I can still feel the ants, but I ‘m not wearing my contact lenses. On the white sheet, I could clearly see them, but now I can't really see anything. As I stand still and perform some kind of folk dance that most closely resembles the Schuhplattler*, a traditional dance from the Austrian Alps in which the dancers rhythmically clap their thighs, knees and shoe soles, I bend down and shine my light on the wooden planks ]. The floor is just as covered with ants as the bed. The only room I can escape to is the bathroom. I rush in, bend down low and, with my myopic head 40 cm above the floor, see how the light from my mobile phone illuminates hundreds of ants there too.

Better get outside then. I rush out the door and see that even outside the house, there's an army of ants running around. Only at a distance of four metres from the front door I feel safe. I stand there in the pitch dark, still flustered and also a little grumpy, wiping the ants off my body and shaking them out of my hair. I decide to go to the main building, hoping that there's a night watchman. When I get there, the lights are on, but I don't see anyone. This is mainly because I don't have my contact lenses, because when I say ‘hello’ out loud, someone three metres away says ‘hello’ back. I tell my story, but the man only takes action when I show him the photos. See there? You need photos! The man starts looking for a key to another hut and walks with me to gather my things.

The ants are still there. The night watchman packs up my things doing his own type of folk dance and leads me to my new hut. Fifteen minutes after I woke up, I'm lying in a new bed. I only have some trouble falling back asleep. To unwind, I want to listen to a podcast. But my earbuds are still on the nightstand in the other hut. Annoying. I can pick them up in the morning, but maybe the cleaner may have been there by then and it could be a bit of a hassle to get them back. I jump out of bed and walk into the dark night for the second time.

The ants are retreating in thick black trails and the earbuds are where I hoped they would be. I go back quickly, but... where is my new hut again? I wasn't really paying attention when I followed the night watchman to the new lodge. All I remember is that it was quite a long walk. The narrow paths in the dense vegetation all look the same, especially in the dark. There are small handwritten signs on the ground with the names of the different houses, but the arrows don't correspond with the directions the paths take. Behind me, I hear the sound of monkeys. In the morning, we were warned to keep all windows and doors of your lodges closed, because there are baboons and they are crazy. If they get into your lodge, they will devastate everything. The noises are getting closer, they're fighting somewhere in the bushes, or they're hunting or something. They seem only metres away. The monkeys sound angry and excited. I'm not necessarily scared, but for the second time that night I sense another ‘fight or flight’ situation emerging. Like a toddler who needs to go to the loo in the middle of a maze, I run “bloody helling” along the jungle paths with my torch until I find the right hut at the very edge of the compound. That night, I couldn't find any real sleep.