Agony of families as bats cause havoc in homesteads

The putrid smell permeates the home of 73-year-old Elijah Ayida in Lodenyo village, Vihiga County.

Colonies of thousands of bats hang grotesquely from trees around the homestead. The loud, screeching sounds they make are ear-piercing. Once in a while, a few of the bats take off, then come back to hang upside-down on broken and precariously leaning tree branches overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the nocturnal mammals.

Seemingly inured to such discomfort, Ayida sat outside his house in the company of his ten-year-old granddaughter. Besides them, a few coffee beans were laid out to dry on a small piece of canvas.

"These bats are a nuisance that we grudgingly put up with. They came back a few weeks ago, having left this place in March," Ayida says.

Residents say the bats patronise some homesteads in Itando and Wizimbaro villages in Vihiga County, an expansive area sandwiched between Mbale and Chavakali towns along the Kisumu-Kakamega highway. The bats also occasionally set up roosts in Eregi, Kakamega County.

"Apart from the irritating noise, droppings from these bats are acidic and have made it impossible for me to grow anything. Crops on my farm dry up once the multicoloured droppings start falling," Ayida laments as he takes The Standard team around his farm where maize, banana plants, coffee trees and vegetables appear to have withered.

As we watched, pink, yellow and green bat droppings kept on falling all around us. The colouration of these droppings seems to depend on what the bats have eaten. The pink droppings have guava seeds in them.

"These droppings and urine can cause blindness if they get into your eyes, be careful," Ayida warned us and added, "The bats, in their thousands, constitute a serious nuisance during the day with their screeching noise. Every day around 6.30 pm, the colony comes alive and starts circling overhead as if they are warming up. Within a few minutes, they take off into the night to far-off places and come back the next morning between 3.30 am and 4 am without fail."

To demonstrate the sheer number of bats around his compound, Ayida picked up a stick and repeatedly hit a banana leaf. Within seconds, a dark cloud suddenly obscured the sun as thousands of bats simultaneously took into the air screeching. It was a scary sight.

Broken branches and leaning trees attest to the thousands of bats hanging on the tree branches. A similar scenario is replicated at the Catholic Church's St Augustine Parish in Eregi, more than 20 kilometres away from Lodenyo, where there are numerous broken tree branches and leaning trees.

"There are millions of bats around this compound. Their sheer weight causes trees to bend and snap. We have been forced to cut the tops of trees close to the houses in order to drive away the bats. Seemingly, they prefer the cypress around this compound," Father Anthony Tsikalata of the parish says.

"The bats normally live here for months, but they suddenly left on October 19 around 5.30 am. I saw them leave while I was taking my morning constitutional around the parish," Tsikalata recalled.

The parish priest says the bats are so numerous, they literally blot out the sun whenever they fly in or out.

Some of the more superstitious residents we spoke with at Eregi market believe the strange disease that attacked students at Eregi Girls recently could be linked to the bats.

"Bats are evil, they move around spreading evil, and it is that evil that attacked Eregi girls," Desterio Amwayi claimed.

However, the Medical Superintendent of Kakamega General Hospital, Dr Murila Barbara, confirmed that the girls suffered from hysteria.

Among the Luhya sub-tribes of western Kenya, bats are considered harbingers of death and bad tidings, just like owls.

Sabeti Lugalia, a 70-year-old grandmother says; "Bats bring bad omen. In Wizimbaro village where the bats have lived for decades, there are too many graves because of their bad omen."

Father Tsikalata debunks this belief; "The bats have never set up roosts at Eregi girls. If they were as evil as alleged, those of us at the parish would have been affected, but as you can see, we are fine. The only irritating thing about the bats is their numerous droppings, noise and destruction of trees."

Father Tsikalata says noise and smoke disturb bats immensely. "The bats are scared of smoke. When you clap your hands or make any loud tapping sounds, they get agitated. During the day, they are a nuisance but at night, they take off and leave this place very quiet. We do not know where they go at night, but they come back in the morning," he said.

Scientists say bats use a navigation system called echolocation, which uses reflected sound to locate objects. When other sounds interfere with this, they get disturbed.

According to researchers, there are about 1,400 species of bats across the world, and while locals associate bats with witchcraft and bad omens, scientists say bats are instrumental in pollinating bananas, avocados and mangoes, among other species of fruits. Besides, they feed on mosquitoes and moths, hence reducing their numbers.

On the downside, scientists warn that 'histoplasma capsulatum', a fungus found in the soil in places where bat droppings accumulate, causes a disease known as histoplasmosis whose symptoms include chills, fever, headache, and muscle aches.

According to scientists, the more serious forms of this disease include acute respiratory distress syndrome and central nervous system breakdown that can lead to brain swelling, impaired thinking and symptoms similar to stroke, which include trouble walking, loss of balance, dizziness, among others.

Ingrained cultural beliefs render bats an endangered species. A report by the Society For Conservation Biology says: "Roosts on private land are endangered as they are easily disturbed, modified, destroyed or even razed down for other uses not conducive to bat conservation."

The report further says, "The situation is aggravated by the lack of laws protecting bats and roost sites in Kenya, and environmental impact assessments are rarely conducted to assess effects of infrastructure development on bats. Furthermore, like in other parts of Africa, Kenyans in general have negative attitudes towards bats, which leads to their persecution and destruction of their roost sites."

achagema@standardmedia.co.ke