What on earth did I get myself into now! Keoki somehow thought I needed him to protect me, and maybe he's right, but he's a nut case. Granted, he's still considered a puppy, but he doesn't understand English, and I don't understand Setswana, so we have a real problem here. Even when I imitate others telling Keoki to stop his shennegans, he still doesn't listen...I think it's my accent, because he just looks at me and laughs, and the villagers are also laughing at me, or just shaking their heads watching me try to deal with this dog. Keoki doesn't stop jumping on me to play, biting me, scratching me, following me to school, and screaming when I leave. He's hyper, destructive, untrainable, completely crazy, and becoming more popular than I am around here. This is not fair Keoki! Trying to calm him in the evening, he follows me for a long walk, then when we get home, I take a pair of pants he found, he takes one leg, I take the other, and we run around the yard, and he gets to pull as hard as his little heart wants while I swing him all around. He has boundless energy, and this dogggie bonding is causing quite the talk of the neighborhood. Because he's had a taste of being Americanized, he is completely ruined! I hate this dog! I mean it—I really hate him! Even when he pops his long face on my lap and looks at me with his big puppy eyes, I laugh, but I still hate him! Oh, did I mention when I hung my laundry out the other day, my neighbor woke me from a sound nap, telling me that Keoki has struck again. Whaaat---I go out to see my laundry all over the nice red African dirt. Did I mention that I HATE this dog!
Recently, Keoki has developed a shoe fetish. No joke! I've come home on 4 consecutive days to all sorts of shoes in my yard---black shoes, sandles, women's heels, kids school uniform shoes, big men's shoes---have I left anything out? He then digs holes in the yard to bury some of them, and the rest he likes to ferociously play with. The embarressment it's causing when someone walks by, looking, and says, “I think that's my shoe.” Oh God help me! Maybe I should just start a shoe store and sell them for flee market prices. Whatta ya think? I am completely beside myself here! So with the fact that I'll be going to a training for 10 days soon, I asked my neighbor if he would build Keoki a dog house. Well, my good intentions has made Keoki completely ticked off! He is so not happy with this house, and now he won't even set foot on the little area that he had been sleeping on. I just don't know how to handle this situation, so guilt ridden me, goes and spends even more of my measly salary on buying him some cow with lots of bones---this should surely lure him back to sanity. But no, he isn't going near the bones if they're near the house, and he starts glaring at me, “Why on earth have you ruined my perfect world?” Ok baby, I hate you, but here's your bones, and where on earth are you going to sleep tonight, or when it's storming, or freezing outside in our winter time you crazy dog. The Peace Corps then interrupts my day, asking me to come to Gaborone to pick up rent money because there's been some confusion with that---”Sorry, I have no money to get there, I've had some urgent things to deal with.” “Ok Lynn, is everything alright?” “Sure, I can work it out myself---see you next week at training.” They should only know why I have to postpone the rent money!
Anyway, back to Keoki---His sleeping patterns, the scratches and bites all over me are only half my problem---now he has a hussy girlfriend who comes to call on him daily around 6pm. The nerve of her! I sit him down---well--he doesn't really sit---but I have a long talk with him about him being to young to date, and getting girls pregnant. He listens to my schpeel, and off he goes on his hot date! The girlfriend is so ugly, that if they have puppies, I'll be the grandma of the ugliest dogs in Africa---I'm thrilled!
Keoki is just a dog, but maybe I should learn some lessons from him---he is African after all, and we do have our cultural differences to deal with! Maybe the lesson is to let him just be African, to not impose my values on him---let him have all the kids he wants out of wedlock like everyone else around here does--let him sleep in the rain and cold---let him run around barefoot, even though he has more shoes than anyone else around here---let him be unruly, because nobody has physical boundaries, or follows rules around here anyway! Maybe the lesson is for me to be free too, to give up rules and any scrupples---this sounds good to me—Ok Keoki, you win---and off I go throwing my shoes to the wind!
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