roller coaster...

Ahhh, this country. It feels like so many things have happened since I last posted, I don’t know where to start! Lots of ups and downs…

I’ll start with what’s freshest in my mind at the moment, and which I will warn you is very sad- at least it was for me. On the way back from the field 2 days ago we stopped by a village where a field assistant I worked with last year lives (one fun piece of news- she named her daughter’s middle name after me!!! I am feeling very honored and excited about this). The man I’m working with this year had bought some chickens from her, so we stopped by to pick them up. While we were there, I spotted a little puppy splayed out in the dirt all by himself- maybe 5 or 6 weeks old. I am already quite the laughing stock with regard to my well known love of “mbwa” (dogs), and I had to go visit with the little guy- long story short, he was in bad shape and I could see he would die there if I left him. I asked the owner if I could take him and she said yes- she’s a very sweet lady but also very poor, and didn’t know what to do with him…

So I spent the last 2 days hand feeding him, dipping him in medicine to get rid of the fleas, removing a shocking number of ticks from his ears, bathing, feeding, etc, etc.…. I did have some hope for him and you all know how attached I get!, but he had a respiratory infection that I just couldn’t do anything about, and he finally died while I held him last night. Ahhh.. it made me so sad! It was a hard night.

This part of the world is such a place of dichotomies for me. It’s a place where humans and animals alike seem to literally scrape a living out the earth; it is back breaking work to tease enough food from the ground for a family to live on, much of it from land which was never meant to produce crops in the first place…starving dogs try to keep a safe and wary distance from people who are more likely to kick them then feed them… as they half-heartedly keep their noses to the ground on the chance they might find some scrap left behind. Life is just hard for everyone. The most fortunate of the lot seem to be the cows, as they represent wealth and essentially the contents of a person’s bank account, pastoralists tend to take quite good care of them.

In general, death is of course sad and people sympathize, but the idea doesn’t seem to generate quite the same fear that it does for us at home, or sense of tragedy. It is just an inevitable and almost commonplace thing. The man I’m working with this year was on the phone with a family member of his as we were driving to the villages the other day, and he had been told that one of his relations had died- she was 30 years old, but since she was a twin, the culture does not permit a real mourning to take place for her- the logic being that since her twin still lives, she in a sense still lives to, so there’s nothing to mourn.

This same man (I guess I hesitate to use names on the internet), was talking with me last year about why he has so many children. (I am of course a person of great misfortune and pity to be childless at my age). He said he had met a wazungu (white) couple with only one child and felt so sorry for them; I asked why and he said, what if their child dies, then they will have none left. It’s a thought that doesn’t cross our minds in the western world- we don’t typically plan for one of our children to die.

So given this mentality, you can imagine how strange I appear to people here, to show such concern over a dying puppy. They don’t exactly have “Animal Cops” here. But I can’t help it… the fact that death and suffering is common place here has not desensitized me to it… here’s to hoping it never will…

I have to say though, that seeing the strength and just pure resilience that people have here, to every kind of tragedy, while still finding a reason to smile and laugh and find the joy in life… that is something I truly admire and do hope to learn from.

…. In the meantime, I’ve been chasing elephants!!! Whoo hoo! It is almost ridiculous how much I love this work- it’s hard to believe someone offered to pay to let me do it! Feeling excessively fortunate for that.

Lots to tell show and tell there, but I’ll leave it for next time so this doesn’t turn into a novel. I will say that I’m hoping next week to arrange at least one day of tracking elephants on foot with a Masaai (that would be so completely exciting, I can’t even think about it without wanting to jump up and down). So, I’ll definitely post about that if it happens! I hope you all are doing very well, and I’ll post again soon. In the meantime, feel free to let me know what’s happening with you, and out there in planet America .

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