The Foreign Service Journal, September 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2016 55 times, offers the flowers and incense, and prays. At dinner, the ladies bubbled on and on about their day, and particularly about their visit to what they called the “exotic gold temple.” “How nice,” one opined firmly. “They must have gotten light- ing candles from Catholicism.” With exquisite timing, a pinky-sized gecko let go of the ceil- ing. Plop. It landed in one woman’s soup bowl, splashing dollops of the liquid onto the tablecloth. The Art of Geckos Years later, as my husband, Dan, our children and I moved from tropical post to tropical post, geckos became our house familiars. And grist for my artist’s mill: Exagger- ated, three or four feet long, their brightly painted bodies and bulging eyes, widely splayed toes, curled tails and big bellies sprawled across the ceiling, down a wall, around a corner. The high ceiling of the downstairs reception room in the American consul’s residence in Cebu, the second-largest city in the Philippines, was the best “canvas.” Soon after we moved in, I climbed a ladder, used crayons to draw the outlines, chose several colors and painted in the shapes. Blue, orange-brown, deep rose? Or was there a red in there? Five geckos graced one corner of the ceiling, twisted together on different planes. Several nights later, we hosted our first official party. “Le tout Cebu” came, curious about the new consul and his wife. The guests arrived, enjoyed drinks and pika-pika (nibbles), and greeted each other as they continued the day’s gossip and began looking around to see how we had changed the house. In time, the creatures on the ceiling caught a guest’s eye. Then another snuck a puzzled look. Others suppressed a smile. No one ever said anything to me about the ceiling—then. But when I returned to Cebu years later to visit friends, the first thing everyone always said was: “You had those great geckos on your ceiling.” The big toktu, on the other hand, were more likely to live on the outside wall by a security light. They were not nearly as cute as their indoor cousins, but they had loud voices! Their distinc- tive call started with a rumbling “tok tok tok” until it built up to a distinctive “toktuuuuu.” Repeat and keep repeating. In the Philippines, we were told: “Count the repeats. Seven and 13 are good luck.” Just three calls were bad luck. Once you know, you always count. Toktu don’t just live by the lights outside. Some of them must be amphibious and love toilet diving. I discovered that the hard way, soon after we arrived in Rangoon. When I got up in the middle of the night to do the needful, I started to sit down without looking. Whoosh! Something ran out from under me. I jumped, having met my first toktu, up close and far too personal. Snakes Alive Snakes, of course, don’t make a distinctive sound. They just slither. Some spit. As the daughter of a doctor of worms and parasites, not to mention bugs, I never thought I would teach my kids to be afraid of such critters. After all, I grew up watching snails leave slime trails up my arms and being shown my own intestinal worms in glass tubes. But in northern Nigeria, with a 5-year-old, a 3-year-old and a toddler who were all much too curious for their own good, Dan and I realized we had to scare the bejeezus out of them about snakes. After six months in a second floor walk-up on the main street of Kaduna (with stuck kitchen drawers we couldn’t open until the dry season, only to then find them so overflowing with An artist's representation of an Indonesian gecko. COURTESYOFMARGARETSULLIVAN