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Shakawe -now there's town. It does not get much further from civilization. So we went to the village and approached the chief. He appeared in all his fine livery, a nice shiny navy blue jacket, a white cardigan, drainpipe pants and worn black shoes. His round bottle end glasses, missing tooth and cane gave him a regal standing. He would have been 70-80 yrs old. Most of the village assembled with about 30 women in beautiful dresses of all ages and states of repair on one side and men loitering on the other side. Teenagers with mobile phones and worn blue jeans made up the foreground. I got one of our helpers to ask the chief if we could take a photo as the chief only spoke his dialect. I was told the chief wanted money so that was the end of that - as James would say "no point contributing to inflation".
It's 5 lashes with the cane if you are rude to the chief or his wives or show bare legs or chest in front of them. We changed in the car making sure no white flesh met their gazes.
At first only a couple of dogs appeared which
we quickly operated on. When they judged our success rate was 100% dogs came from every hut in the village, skinny ones, ancient ones, puppies with worms, old dogs with cancers. We operated under an ancient acacia tree with the occasional pod bouncing off the operating tables. It got really hot in the middle of the day but we got through 15 surgeries which must be some kind of record for the village. Post surgical recovery is interesting. It means that you get up and struggle back to your hut before nightfall so a lion does not get you. Each day we had to be finished by 2pm so our patients could straggle around the village to their respective homes. Any drunken dogs at sunset could be picked off by predators. This is Africa.
The African domestic dog is just the toughest dog you can imagine. Their genetics are mostly those of the ancient Egyptian's dogs. The dogs depicted in the cartoons of the pyramids. A poodle wouldn't last a week out there - a jackal or hyena would gobble it up.
As the week progressed we left the houseboat and were hosted by a delightful couple with a restaurant in town. The restaurant was to open shortly but they were still practising new dishes and boy did we get looked after well.
We had hot and cold water and did our surgery in their front yard. They had great stories. A few months prior to our visit a women hit and killed a baby elephant on the road at night. The distraught mother elephant attacked the car and crushed it to a pulp killing the driver inside! Who says animals have no emotions.
We got another boat trip out on the river in a boat donated by the local crocodile farm. It had a few teeth patches on the hull. Again we spent an afternoon on a river safari. We got to within a couple of meters of a big fat crocodile on the bank of the river. These things pinch dogs, donkeys, wart hogs from the river bank. Hence no lovely river walks. We saw vervet monkies again on the river banks with their blue reproductive parts clearly visible as they scampered away.
Malaria and HIV are prevalent in these parts. We met a young volunteer from Canada here to work on HIV. She said the incidence is 30 - 40% and there are grannies bringing up clutches of orphans. When locals get Malaria here they seem to brush it off but we take our doxycyline every night. They have an encephalitic form here which is really bad.
This is Africa, throw away your watch, incredible scenery and wildlife, characters from all around the world living in the bush amidst tribespeople with Ivory teeth, brilliant smiles despite awful adversity, donkey carts on the road interspersed with fancy four wheel drives sheltering Sth African Safari tourists. Life is cheap but worth living. Death is everywhere. It is the cow being butchered at the side of the road to the cheers of locals. It is the donkey struck on the road by a truck - a regular event. It is the mother with AIDS giving a final gasp with her 5 kids around her. It is the eagle stealing out of the sky to stab something in the bush. It is written in the cold eye of the crocodile or something as innocuous as a mosquito. It makes you feel good to be alive, something hard to feel on the way to the office in a big city..............
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