the ants go marching

Our curiosity in safari ants in has increased exponentially here in africa, as they daily invade the only path from our house/the hospital to the Church/ fathers house. The other night after dinner we were heading to the hospital to get vital signs. We threw on our skirts over our pants and started walking. I wasn't careful enough to make sure that my skirt was not dragging and apparently I walked right through the line of ants and they attached themselves to me. By the time I arrived at the hospital (a 2 min walk) I noticed a slight biting on my legs. When I looked down I saw ants all over my shoes. I started lifting up my skirt (luckily I still had my pants on) and started seeing the ants crawling up my legs. I did the "ants in my pants dance" and quickly took off my skirt. Meanwhile the other nurses working and several patients gathered and were laughing at the commotion that I was making. One ant had even made it to my waist. That was enough. I quickly ran home and got out of my clothes on our porch and sprayed them them bug killer. Feeling pretty creep-crawly I scrubbed extra hard in the shower. The next day when washing my clothes I had to pull off over 25 dead ants that had attached to my skirt. I told father and he laughed telling me everyone knows the "ant dance," stepping through the ant path is the only way to know to never do it again!
These ants are really quite amazing (pics to come soon). There are thousands of them that make a line (usually across our path), one distinct line but when you look closely the ants are going different directions. The ant line will be there when we are on the way to lunch but an hour later the line can be completely gone with absolutely no trace they were even there. There seem to be larger ants that appear when it is/has rained recently and they kind of make a covering for the smaller ants (the big ones are super creepy). We look like little kids, everyday we spend at least 5 minutes inspecting the ant line. When we decide to cross we all hike up our skirts and take the biggest step we can!!