Thursday, February 4, 2010

‘Boo has a stranger!’
(Exclaimed by my twelve year old neighbor Lamin Makalo, not pictured. That's Ousman up there.
He's usually impossible but he settled down for this pic.)

Gambians love ‘strangers’. A stranger is anyone who is not native to the village. When I ask about their hospitality to outsiders I usually get some version of ‘We’re all strangers at one point or another so we should treat them as we would like to be treated’. And it’s true, Gambians are very transitory due to extended family ties and poverty. They often travel to far away villages for work and stay with distant relatives for indefinite periods of time. When I say they ‘love’ strangers I am not exaggerating either. It is not unheard of for a Gambian to invite someone that they do not know to stay in their home and share their bed! Their bed people! This can go on for weeks, months, even years. There are worse ways to treat your fellow man I suppose.

Boo’s stranger Charlie:


I crossed paths with Charlie at my friend Alieu’s house. Alieu sells fish in Soma, the market town about twenty minutes away from me that has an internet connection and electricity between the hours of 9 a.m to 1 p.m and 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. This means I can get a cold Coke there AND check my mail so it’s pretty much my favorite place in the world at the moment.

Soma

When I went to Alieu’s house I saw that Charlie was limping. Apparently he was kicked by a donkey! That’s the problem with being a puppy, no common sense. Everyone knows to steer clear of the donkeys. Well Charlie’s leg was broken as a result and it’s not like people rush their dogs to the vet when something like that happens here.

Charlie at Home (Alieu is in the organge shirt and this is his family.)

The vet works on cows, horses and donkeys primarily. He’d probably be pretty confused if you brought a dog or cat in. People here have a very lackadaisical attitude about their dogs and cats. Dogs are tolerated because they can be useful for hunting small game in the bush, tracking and retrieving. When I say ‘tolerated’ I mean they let them hang around but they take very little to no care of them. They pretty much just wander around the village, their ears being ravaged by flys, the females having litter after litter of puppies of which maybe two percent survive. I guess some people feed them scraps from the food bowl but I’ve never actually seen it. Dogs are considered pests to some degree though so when they wander into compounds people chase them out and it is not unusual for kids to throw rocks at them. My kids know better after seeing my horrified reaction but I’m sure when I’m not around stones are still being thrown. To be fair these dogs are bordering on being wild so it is kind of dangerous to have them around, hence the stones. I just hope that with my influence someone somewhere will see a dog and think, ‘I’m going to flap my arms around and yell ‘Acha’ (That’s what we say to anything we want to move – kids, sheep, etc.) instead of throwing that rock.

Charlie Taking a Nap Next to Fatou

There are far fewer cats around than dogs which I think is strange since cats are much more self sufficient and useful when it comes to eating pests (you should hear the rats in my ceiling, they are so loud!). I’ve seen a total of two cats in my village, ever. That’s probably because the Gambians kill them as they are generally deathly afraid of them. Grown men jump back when they see that I am carrying my tiny kitten; men who spend their weekend hunting crocodiles in the river. Seriously. I have no idea what that's about. I grill them but they never give me a substantial reason. They don't think they are evil or anything like that though. The cats that I do see look a lot less sorry than the dogs. They are on the thin side but that’s about it. See, self-sufficient.

Charlie and Binta Playing on the Mat

So I took Charlie home and he has been spent the last week here. The veterinarian in my village offered to give him antibiotic shots to prevent or fight any infection but that’s pretty much all he can do at this point since the injury is over a week old. The vet said it felt like a simple fracture and Charlie is putting a little more weight on it now so hopefully it will heal on its own with no permanent damage. It’s been nice having him around since I really miss having a dog but I’m ready to take him back to Alieu because a) between Boo and Charlie it’s like the Tooth and Claw Brigade have moved in. I am constantly being bitten and/or scratched and I don’t have a spray bottle to fend them off with. B) Charlie doesn’t reserve his biting just for me, he goes after Boo constantly. It wouldn’t take much for him to accidentally kill her so I’m pulling him off of her thirty times a day. Of course she refuses to just stay up on the bed where she’s safe. My family will be sorry to see Charlie go which is unbelievably cute give how Gambians feel about dogs in general.
They constantly (CONSTANTLY) ask me what the animals are doing and where they are (probably because those questions are among the six things I understand when they talk to me and I can actually answer them correctly for the most part!). My mom is Charlie’s biggest fan which is even more surprising. She even let him sit on the mat! (That’s a big deal.) I know they find the whole pet thing mysterious but everyone is very good-natured about it which is just another example of how ‘live-and-let-live’ these people are (up to a point and concerning certain things, i.e. Don’t try to tell them that a girl should be able to make her own choices about marriage instead of being given away at fourteen for the right price though).
Fo Wati Do! (Until next time!)

2 comments:

  1. Ummmm....I assume Charlie hasn't had a rabies shot and I'm just going to go with the assumption that when you say he's "biting" you mean he's taking little nips and not actually drawing blood. Do they have rabies in The Gambia? Great pictures. The Gambians are such handsome people. I think the same when I see the pictures from Haiti. Are The Gambians aware of what happened in Haiti? Love the pictures. All hail electricity!!!!

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  2. Oh they're just puppy bites so no blood but his teeth are sharp so it actually does hurt! Rabies is alive and well here. One of my co-volunteers got bitten by a rat her first week in village so she had to get a bunch of shots. The Gambians have no idea where Haiti is and I'm pretty sure they don't know what an earthquake is. The children are absolutely beautiful. Talk to you soon!

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