We lived in Barrancabermeja, Colombia, when I was about 6-1/2 I believe, because my sister was around 2. That would have made it late 1953. It was a very strange place and I knew it even then. It was so hot and humid. The windows had no glass, just screens. Sometimes at night snakes and insects would crawl onto the window. My dad slept with a World War II machete under his bed to kill snakes (learning later how terrified he was of them, I really admire his fortitude). My mother would make bread from scratch and I remember watching her chase the flour across the counter because it was so full of bugs, they would be mixed in with the flour and covered in it, so the flour would just scamper away. We lived in an oil camp for safety. I remember a neighbor down the street had a black panther in a cage outside his house. One day the panther was gone never to be seen again.
We had 2 maids in Colombia. I remember hearing them arguing and chattering in Spanish all day long, I imagine they were teenagers. They taught me a lot and I spent a lot of time with them, until one of the got fired (I never knew why). I remember them killing a rabbit and hearing it scream.
I remember my dad coming out and chopping up a snake under the carport which extended from our house to the maids' house. Then he put it in the back of our pickup and we (he and I) drove it to a dumpsite. I looked out the back window and I could see the pieces jumping around so I told my dad "it's alive, it's alive, and it's coming towards us". Of course, I was joking but he was not amused. He was so afraid of snakes. I usually was looking for them until my dad told me they were poisonous.