Animal Planet

This month I helped birth a litter of puppies, met a devil, failed to steal a monkey, and lost the good fight.

So one of the great things about living in my new site, Kerewan, instead of my old site, Njaba Kunda, is that in my compound there is another dog, a sweet but not very bright girl. Her fur is mostly white, so they named her Brownie. The reason this is great is that in Njaba Kunda I was having some real behavior problems with Chulo – ripping things up, going crazy in my house, giving lots of little bites and nips when we played. He wasn’t a bad dog, he was just lonely. He needed to bite something, and since he didn’t have any friends I was the next best thing. As soon as we got to Kerewan and he met Brownie all that ended. He’s generally a much happier dog, and much easier to deal with.

Brownie, in turn, has fallen in love with the two of us. Although she is technically my neighbor’s dog, she spends all of her time in my house. I’m the one that gives her attention and affection, I’m the one that goes running with her. She has a favorite chair that she sleeps in every night. It’s been great, except for one thing.

There’s a reason I got a boy dog instead of a girl. A few months back Brownie became quite popular with the male dogs in the neighborhood, a fact that caused Chulo no small amount of consternation – especially because he was too young to engage in such activities himself. In general Brownie kept her distance (except for one memorable occasion when she and another dog ended up stuck together. I’ll spare you the details, except to say that I have never seen two creatures look more uncomfortable and embarrassed in my life. I imagined the male dog saying, “So, do you want to get breakfast or something?”)
But there’s no stopping nature, and Brownie’s stomach began to swell. She started doing weird things like scoot under my bed or behind a dresser, wedge herself in, then freak out and try to scramble back out. More than once I had to lift my bed off her so she could escape. She was insanely hungry, developed an appetite for strange foods, and stole out of the trash more than once, usually something bizarre like eggshells or coffee grinds. Finally one morning I woke to her whining pitifully and trying to climb up on my bed, foiled by her big belly. I was mostly asleep, but some intuition told me not to let her up, which was a good thing because at that moment her water broke.

I’m not sure I can adequately describe to you just how disgusting the next few hours were. I moved her outside, where I set up a nest of old pieces of fabric and sheet. She couldn’t walk properly, so I had to carry her, doing my best not to squish the little creatures inside. As I wrestled for a hold and she wriggled frantically, a paw poked out. I didn’t know much about puppies, but I knew with people that’s bad. I had nightmare visions of having to reach in and turn it around, or it getting stuck and all the others being trapped inside. I called everyone I knew who might have the vaguest idea what was going on, babbling words in a panic like “alien creature,” “clawing its way out,” and “placenta everywhere.” Turns out that’s totally normal, and the little beast popped out just fine. It was tiny, slimy, and wailing like a fire truck. Some… other stuff came out with it, which Brownie slurped up. (She wasn’t hungry that night, which surprised me until I remembered how much she'd already eaten.)

Five more came out, all with relative ease, over the next few hours. Brownie licked each one thoroughly before settling back, looking exhausted but proud, to let them feed. My heart finally settled into a normal rhythm and I even let myself be happy about the whole thing. More than one person had expressed interest in adopting, and I felt confident I could get them out quickly. But it turns out that puppies have to stay with their mother for at least six weeks after birth. My neighbor assured me that they would be no trouble during that time; Brownie would take care of raising them, feeding them, everything. All I had to do was make sure Brownie stayed fed and hydrated.

What neither of us took into account was just how dumb Brownie is, and that she would probably pass on this dumbness to her offspring. She’s a terrible mother. She often forgets that her puppies are there, and will roll over on top of them without realizing. The whole process of feeding mystifies her. She never lies in such a way that the puppies have easy access, and will often wander away and take a nap in another part of the house, ignoring the puppies’ pitiful squeals. Even when the little monsters are right by her belly they seem incapable of figuring out exactly what it is they’re supposed to do unless you put their heads right in front of a teat. So every few hours I’m notified by a chorus of whimpers that my governance is needed. I grab Brownie and force her onto her side, then take each of the six puppies in turn and line its head up with a nipple, until all are suckling happily. After a few minutes Brownie usually gets bored and wanders away. This game is especially fun at three o’clock every morning.

Needless to say, I spend a lot more time out of the house these days. Running has become a lot more interesting these days. You see, the Gambia doesn’t have normal season, like summer and winter. Instead it has two – wet and dry. During the dry season, it doesn’t rain for eight months, temperatures routinely top a hundred degrees, and during the hot parts of the day movement is simply impossible – the only reasonable activity is lying in the shade and trying not to die.

But the wet season is worse. It’s not as hot, but the air is so thick you can cut chunks out of it with a knife. It could be seventy degrees and you’ll be drenched with sweat. This is the season of heat rash, of infections, of fungus. It’s when the mosquitoes come out in force and the clinics explode with malaria cases. It’s when the ants, the cockroaches, and the spiders all come out to play in every corner of your house. It’s also known as the hungry season - when every food bowl gets pretty skimpy and every stomach gets pretty empty, since it’s been a full year since the last harvest and the food stores have run low. Normal work (such as it is) grinds to a halt as every able-bodied person goes out to the field to plant. Every aspect of your life gets worse in the wet season, except one. The country turns absolutely beautiful.

It’s kind of surreal. Eight or nine months out of the year the countryside is brown, barren, especially in the heavily deforested areas like my region. As soon as the rains start the growth is explosive. I usually run the same path every day, and every day the plants are noticeably higher. The land turns so green it’s unreal, like someone took a neon paint brush of life and swept with heavy-handed strokes over the whole world. You can just stare and stare. It’s a overpowering example of a principle that I’ve been noticing more and more in the Peace Corps – that good things after a lot of bad. When I get chocolate, or wine, it doesn’t matter that it’s low quality – it’s still better than anything I ever tasted in America. And when I see green here, real green, the life of the land exploding for a precious few months – it’s almost worth the heat rash. Almost.

So I go running, usually with some kids from my neighborhoods (for those of you paying attention, these are the same kids I almost drowned). One day I wanted to go a little farther than we had before, toward some trees in the distance that looked interesting. After a few seconds I noticed I was running alone. I looked back and saw the boys hanging back, with a mixture of fear and embarrassment. They said we couldn’t go there. I asked why. They said there was a devil there. I laughed. I shouldn’t have, but I did. These were smart kids. They were going to school, doing well. We would sometimes do math problems or practice spelling as we ran. But they were honestly terrified to go to this place that didn’t look to me any different from anywhere else in the bush. It’s not like a lot of people had died there, or there were dangerous animals. But apparently everyone knew that a devil lived there, and you shouldn’t go.

So I went. I figured what the hell. It was... I don't even know how to say it. I’ve seen a lot of pretty amazing things in my life, I like to think. I’ve visited some of the great cities in the world, hiked canyons, mountains, walked on a glacier. But I have never seen anything as beautiful as this place. There's nothing awesome or sublime about it - but everything there is perfect. It's amazing. There is a small pond, surrounded by reeds and trees. It’s quiet there. It seems more alive, more real, than any place I’ve ever been. Chulo likes to run along the edge of the pond, where the water is only a few inches deep. I don’t know why, but he goes crazy for it, sprinting back and forth, biting at the splashes that he fountains up. There’s a tree growing at a strange angle, almost horizontal, with a crook that fits my back perfectly. It’s more comfortable than any bed. Birds and monkeys talk in the trees, and I even saw a bush pig come up and drink at the pond once. I’ve gone back at least every other day when my schedule allows, and I just sit there, sometimes for hours. If there is a devil there, he’s got good taste. The boys still refuse to go in with me, but that’s all right. It feels like mine.

My other encounters with nature have been less blissful. My neighbor and his family acquired a monkey from somewhere, God knows why. They seem to hate it. They spend at least half an hour each day shouting at it and whacking it with sticks. They keep it tied up to a tree, with the other end of the rope cinched tight around its waist. The other day I walked outside to see my neighbor holding a stick so big it was more like a branch. He kept swinging it at the monkey and shouting in Mandinka. I didn't catch everything he said, but at several points he called it lazy. Which seems a little unreasonable. It just glared at him, its expression clearly saying “What the hell is your problem?”

So I decided to free it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly a hippy Greenpeace type. The whales can shave themselves, for all I care. And if I were to save an animal, it would be one much cuter and nicer than this nasty little creature. But seeing something that has clear moods and facial expressions get the living hell beaten out of it every day just gets to me. So the last week, the night before I went to the capital, I snuck out at three, creeping my quietest past my neighbor’s house. I untied the end of the rope, and granted the poor monkey its freedom, feeling like a master criminal with a heart of gold.

It wouldn’t move. It just glared at me. I grabbed a stick and poked at it, the irony heavy in the night air. It just kept glaring at me. “Psst. Monkey. Fuck off. Be free.” Nothing. Then Chulo decided to lend a hand. It should be no surprise to anyone that he hates this monkey, and chases it up the tree every time he goes outside. He saw me engaged in epic battle with the beast so he let up a primal howl to back up his master, probably waking up everyone in a three block radius. The monkey snatched the stick from me and threw it at the dog. Then, deciding I was the lesser of two evils, it hopped into my arms for protection.

So I was busy trying to shush Chulo, watch my neighbor’s door, get ready to bolt, and contend with a squirming mass of terrified monkey in my arms. I knew that he would come out to shout at Chulo at any second, so I did what anyone would do.

I threw the monkey.

It was a pretty good throw, if I do say so myself, especially considering I didn’t have much of a grip. I tossed it over the compound wall and it gave a forlorn little shriek as it sailed away out of sight. Then I grabbed Chulo by the neck, dragged him inside, and slammed the door shut, heart pounding. When I didn’t hear anyone stirring for a while I went to sleep, feeling tired but righteous. Except when I came back three hours later to catch my bus, it was still there, sitting on the wall. Its glare was especially murderous in the silver dawn light.

Now I had a dilemma. If my neighbor came out that morning and saw the monkey there with the rope untied, he would know that someone had been messing with it, and I’m the only real suspect. So I had to tie it back up. But the monkey no longer trusted me, perhaps with good reason. So I had to chase the damn thing up and down the wall until I managed to grab its rope and drag it squealing back to the tree.

So just to recap: in an effort to save the monkey from being tied up and beaten, I jabbed it with a stick, threw it over a wall, yanked it around by the rope, and in the end tied it right back up. I’m a real hero.

Most of my efforts to play the hero seem to come up short these days. I work on a lot of development projects, and I usually have two main roles: speed up the process by kicking people until they do their jobs, and slow down the process by bringing up issues they’d rather ignore. As you can imagine, this sometimes causes problems. The issue I run up against again and again is that land use in West Africa is usually divided along tribal lines, with the village leader allocating land according to need and contribution to the community. It works about as well as you’d think, with lots of corruption and favoritism, but it’s been the system for thousands of years, and it’s worked – until about forty years ago, when the Gambia went “modern.” They adopted Western property laws, with deeds and sales and whatnot, which means that ninety percent of this country is legally squatting on the land they live on.
Now, before I anger the nice people in Washington who monitor this blog, I am not claiming the government of the Gambia is in the habit of stealing people’s property. All I’m saying is that if there’s a project underway, even a development project intended to benefit a community, and someone’s house or business happens to be in the way, it’s real easy to find legal justification to… reallocate the land use. I recently had a nasty run in with a contractor when we found ourselves on opposite ends of this ideological line. I can’t get into details here, but it’s an interesting story, so if you want to know, email me.

What’s frustrating is the attitude of my counterparts every time an issue like this comes up. They patronize me, like I’m a childish idealist who doesn’t understand the way things really work. I understand it fine. I just want to change it. Maybe that’s a tad ambitious for a two-year service, but I hate feeling like I’m part of the problem. But at the end of the day, I have to believe that I’m doing more good than bad, that most of the injustices would’ve happened anyway, and that by remaining involved I’m keeping it as clean and effective as possible.

There’s a phrase that keeps repeating in my head, something about the road to Hell…