Bats are ubiquitous in Africa. In many houses they live under the roof and are considered a nuisance because of their noise and smelly droppings. But what many people here don't know is that bat droppings are a highly efficient fertiliser, almost ten times as powerful as cow dung! Many Africans struggle with poor harvests every year and desperately need fertiliser for their depleted fields, but don't know that the solution to their problem lives right under their roof.
So often in our lives it is the case that God has already given us the solution to our problems; we are just blind to it because we insist everything has to go the way we want it to.
But the many different species of bats have other uses for us humans: a single bat kills five hundred mosquitoes in one night! Other bats are important pollinators - some tree species even depend entirely on bats to pollinate them, or to disperse their seeds. We should not lightly condemn and despise animal species (or even other humans) just because we cannot see their benefits at first glance.
