I’m back in Thilogne once again, and I brought a new dog with me. She’s a 9-month-old African Terrier who I adopted from a volunteer who ended her Peace Corps service. I named her Mon Amie, and although she doesn’t understand the concept of chasing a tennis ball and she would rather eat trash than the dog food I bought her, she is really sweet and docile.

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Having a dog here is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Mon Amie is under constant threat of the mean dogs and the herds of goats and cattle. Nobody has a dog for a pet and the street dogs are aggressive and they bite. So, when I take Mon Amie for walks, people stare at her and sometimes run away. As if I wasn’t enough of a freak already in the town, I am now an alien who has a pet lion. However, people are starting to learn that she is a good, American-style dog who can sit on command and likes to be petted, and they think that’s pretty cool.

Mon Amie also follows me around everywhere, which caused major problems with my host father/landlord. Before I brought the dog, I called the house, and my host mother said I could bring a dog, no problem. The day after I arrived, however, my host father started yelling at me after I said good morning to him, speaking in Pulaar so quickly that the only words I understood were ‘dog,’ ‘house,’ ‘bad,’ and ‘Muslim.’ To give some background on Demba, he yells excessively, especially at his 14-yr-old daughter, who is really nice and spends all her free time cooking and cleaning. For this reason, I have not taken a liking to him.

I found out later, from Demba’s nephew, that Demba did not want the dog to stay in my room with me because the Kur’an forbids dogs to be in the home. He told me that it wouldn’t be a problem if it were a goat or a cat, but dogs are not allowed. He said that the dog must stay up against the wall in the yard because the rest of the space is for humans. The idea of Mon Amie having to stay against a wall at all times really upset me, so I tried talking to Demba, explaining that the dog would be in my room for just a few hours a day and that I would build her a cage for when I was out during the day. He refused, saying it was against his religion.

Then, as I was sitting in my room, wondering what to do, Demba barged in with a meter of hose in his hands, yelling that I needed to get the dog out that instant. Demba is blind, so he tried feeling around for Mon Amie, but she was luckily under my desk. I finally got Demba out of my room, and I locked my door. I thought about moving but I had paid a lot of money for the construction of my bathroom, and I also really liked the other members of my host family. I went to Demba and told him that I was willing to compromise. Then he changed the subject and said he had been angry for a while because he felt that I didn’t respect him. He said, “In Senegal, I am your father, and you must respect me.” I told him he was not my father, he was my landlord, and I offered him 5,000 cfa (about $10.00) extra per month to keep the dog with me in my room, and he agreed without hesitating. It’s a shame it had to become an issue of money but at least now everyone is happy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 4:35 am and is filed under Pre-service training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.