MIREMBE!
So, I went a little crazy and got a dog. I was visiting another volunteer who had a dog and he recommended the earlier the better for getting a dog, that and I had been wanting one forever (and by forever I mean the entire 3 months I have been at site). So I talked to some of the locals and found out that one of the muts in the village had babies that were 2 months old. I went to go pick up my pup and they brought them all out by the scruff of their necks. They were all flea covered, skinny as hell, and generally unhappy. I picked up a few of them, but then I picked one up and it peed all over me. I thought…. This is my dog. They told me it was a boy, so I took my little boy home and introduced him to the students. During English club I let them name him and they decided on Lute (loo-tee). I loved it, but when I introduced him in the staff room the next day the teachers said they hated that name. We had a long discussion and they decided that they wanted to call him Muze (moo-zay), which means wise old man. I loved it and thought that he might as well have two names. So for the first 2 weeks the dog was a bit confused but was getting used to his two names.
Last week another volunteer came to visit and I introduced him to Lute/Muze. He played with him for a while and then said, “Um, I don’t think this is a boy.” I was like… of course it is, look at his parts! He continued by saying that he did look at “his” parts and they weren’t all that male looking. Come to think of it, I hadn’t really looked at “his” parts either. So I took a look, but puppy parts are sort of ambiguous so I asked for a third opinion from the college driver. He was positive it was a girl. I was mortified. My poor dog had spent the last 2 weeks of his (and by his I mean her) life being gender confused. The next day I took her out to the students and explained that he was a she and we had to come up with a new name. Then I took her into the staff room and did the same with the staff. They thought it was the funniest thing ever. So, after long contemplation we all agreed on the name Mirembe (meh-lim-bay) which means “peace” in Luganda.
It was a little after this point that I got the genius idea to take my dog to visit another volunteer. I know I have mentioned this before but I have to point it out again… Ugandans HATE dogs. Dogs here are only used as guard dogs and they are incredibly vicious. So it was kind of stupid of me to think it would be easy to take my dog by public transport. But I did it anyways. When we got to the car that we would take the driver put my bag in the boot (trunk) and then said, “Are you taking that?” I told him I was, and he told me it was fine and he would put it in the boot as well. I freaked out. There was no way he was putting her in the boot of the car for a 2 hour (granted only 35 miles) ride. He said fine but then the passengers agreed that we should tie all of her paws together before he could sit in the car. It took a good 15 minutes to convince them that she wasn’t a menace and that she would sit patiently on my lap (though I doubted he actually would for the whole ride). Finally they agreed and we were off. I was in the front by myself at the beginning and Mirembe was sleeping on a pillow in between me and the driver. I noticed after a bit that the driver was paying more attention to my dog then to the road and asked him in Luganda if he feared the dog. He said he did and so I took the pup back onto my lap. But it is pretty funny to see a 45 year old man who is deathly afraid of an adorable puppy.
Everything would have been fine and dandy if we would have stayed that way and continued on our journey, but it wouldn’t be as good of a story if that was the case. Approximately 15 minutes into the 2 hour journey we had gone from 6 people in a 4 passenger car to 12 people in a 4 passenger car (and a dog). You may be wondering how that is possible, but I ask you to recall “sober sister” at Northwest and then you will get a better idea of how it is done. Except in Uganda it is totally appropriate for someone to share the drivers seat with the driver, which seems far from safe to me! Anyways, at this point Mirembe was getting restless and whining and of course the two people on either side of me made it very clear that they “feared dogs”. Not only did they tell me, but anytime my dog would move her head towards them they would literally cringe or jump. And of course Mirembe wanted to lay her head on the lap of the man next to me, but he would not have it. Anyways we finally made it there and I vowed to never travel with my dog again in this country. You live and learn. (I would also like to add in that on the ride home there was a goat tied up in the trunk and we maxed out with 12 passengers again. And if you have ever heard an angry goat you know it sounds like a newborn baby crying. And if you have ever seen me around a newborn baby crying you know I can stand that sound for about .5 seconds and then I pick the baby up. But you can’t pick up a goat that has its legs tied together and is chilling in your trunk. Fun. I think it passed out after about an hour.)
I teach computers at night at the college and don’t like to leave my dog in my house for a long time so I tend to take her up to the lab. It scares the crap out of the students and gives me a good laugh while teaching. For the last 10 minutes or so of the class I let the students have free time on the computers and encourage them to get onto Encarta to research things that interest them. Inevitably a majority of them look up things like “reproduction”, but I figure at least they are learning more than their parents have told them. One of the students clicked on one of the reproduction videos and up comes a full screen view of some lady having a baby. Everyone was silent for the whole birth and then one kid pipes up and says, “Well, that’s not pretty.” Hilarious. When they aren’t looking up reproduction I find that they look at the silliest things. The other night half the lab was watching Scott Hamilton Ice skating in the 90’s while the others were watching a kangaroo nurse its baby from its pouch. I love my students.
