Dod Eat Dog World

So I, like many people, am a dog lover (I miss you Ivan!), and that's something that's pretty damn hard to be in Cape Verde. The concept of animals as pets here is a novelty, where they are strictly sources of food or labor or both. Katxors (dogs) in this country DO NOT have it good. Quite the contrary, they live an almost uniformly miserable existence. In Praia, hundreds of crazed roaming packs conduct warfare in the streets like drug cartels in Mexican bordertowns. (During our Peace Corps safety training, we were advised to carry rocks in our pockets to defend ourselves against mongrel hoards.) They're sick and soiled and starving. Most have mange or fleas or some other oozing variety of skin ailment. All of them limp. People either hate them or fear them, and rarely do they feed them. Those that aren't cannibals survive off of garbage. They shit in the street, then eat it. It's not a pretty picture, and much less so for a country that's betting much of it's financial future on tourist dollars.

Things in Santo Antao are better, but it still ain't pretty. When I came here last June, the populace of the tiny village of Janela was being overrun by wild dogs, and the kamera was forced to conduct a large scale extermination. Over a hundred of the bastards killed with poisoned fish bait, tossed in a pile, and burned. It wasn't much of a pile. It turns out that the type of dogs that survive in, literally, a dog-eat-dog world, aren't the big bruisers you might expect. Rather, it seems evolution in this part of the world favors the short, lean, skiddish, jackal-looking types.

All that being said, I recently got a dog. Accidentally.

A few weeks ago several volunteers hiked the five mountainous hours to my village from Ponto do Sol. And they brought Demonio (Demon) with them. Demonio isn't a Cape Verdian dog...he's a 2nd (now 3rd) generation Peace Corps dog. A 2003 volunteer first adopted him, before passing him on to a 2006 volunteer, who then broke from tradition and gave him to a Cape Verdian neighbor. That did not turn out too well for Demonio. In the 4 or 5 months since, Demonio has gone from well-fed, well-rested and well-adjusted, to a flea-ridden, gimpy, half-starved sad sack.

According to the volunteers that he followed here that weekend, they came across him in Ponto do Sol and gave him a few drinks of their water before heading off, and he just followed them all the way here. Conditions must have been pretty bad to make that unfamiliar walk, with pretty much total strangers, based on a few sips of water. Maybe he recognized them as Americans, or at least english speakers. Whatever the reason, when I walked into the Sona Fish bar in Cruzinha to greet my friends, there was Demonio, looking pathetic and collapsed on the floor, and I knew I was in trouble.

In the days since we've become fast friends, and I must admit, I like having a dog again. Plus, this guy game pre-trained. He can sit, down, stay (up to a point), shake hands and I've just got him to start rolling over today. This is Absolutely Mind Blowing to my neighbors, and Demonio and I have been the talk of the town for several days now. When we go walking, people will grab their friends and say something along the lines of: "Fazel senta! Oi DEUS, a bo oiya?!!! Aghora fazel deta! BROP!!! Fazel da mao! KRED!!!" (Make him sit! Holy Shit, did you see that?! Now make him lay down! Holy Shit! Make him shake! Holy Shit!) When the kids see us coming they'll start pointing their fingers at him and yelling, en masse, senta! It's like that.

What I think is even stranger for them is to see how I interact with him. I think its' safe to say that the only thing a dog in Txangreja has ever been given by anyone is a swift kick in the ass. But now they see me giving him attention, affection, a bath, a plate of fish and rice and I've overheard people talking about us, saying "Agora Caley dja ranja prop um companher" (Caley's made himself a new friend.)

Anyway, I've had to change his name. Things were going great until last Sunday, when Demonio took off after a cat and I couldn't find him. Church was letting out, with all the village elders strolling and chatting in their Sunday's finest, and I was walking through the plaza, calling for the dog, hollering "Demonio! Demonio! Onde-b Demonio!" Well, that did not go over too well, and suddenly everyone was crossing themselves and whispering and and staring at me in disbelief, and a few even went back into the church. Thankfully Romeo pulled me aside and explained the problem to me. Essentially people assumed I was walking through town clapping and whistling and calling forth the demon spirits and in general engaging in blasphemous and intolerable behavior. I told him that was the dog's name, that I didn't name it, that it has had the name for years. He made it very clear to me that none of that mattered and that Demonio was um nom feo (an ugly name) and that I needed to change it. So, now Demonio is Timo, cuz I think that was one of the names from the Lion King, and it sorta sounds like Demonio, and now I don't have any problems calling him or introducing him to anyone.