Comings and Goings

Mel’s first litter has already come and gone. Those six weeks flew by; they went from looking like little rats confined to the outdoor kitchen sleeping all day to running, playing and barking all over the yard. I started giving them real food, well, real dog food being xima with either dried fish or cooked chicken insides two weeks ago. They have been growing incredibly well and even getting fat. Some of my neighbors who knew Mel’s other litters said this one, by far, had the biggest, healthiest-looking pups. However, it was also her smallest litter with only five puppies. Her others had eight and nine. I received a number of requests for puppies from my neighbors, the kids who come to color, primary and secondary school teachers, hospital colleagues, activistas and other Peace Corps Volunteers. It was hard to decide who would actually be getting the puppies. I also unfortunately lost one while I was away at trainings in Maputo and Manjacaze last week. Nelio, my neighbor, was also at the training in Manjacaze all week. Dona Rachel was taking care of Mel and the puppies. On Wednesday, she called me to let me know that in the morning all five puppies were there, but in the afternoon there were just four. There wasn’t much I could do while I was away, but when I got back, I tried to conduct my own little investigation. The one missing was actually the one Nelio had claimed to keep. He had named it Buddha because he was male and the fattest. When I asked Dona Persina, my landlady, about the missing puppy, she said that when her dog had puppies, the biggest male also went missing. She said it didn’t seem likely that a puppy would run away when they are so dependent on their mother at that age. Could there be a Chicumbane puppy thief? Another neighbor told me he saw Mel carry a dead puppy in her mouth back to my veranda and left it there. I never found it. But, this was also around the same time that Mel brought home a dead piglet. So I wonder if he confused the piglet for a puppy. Regardless, neither was pleasant. But, that’s just one of the differences between dogs in Mozambique and America. So with just four puppies to give away, I gave one to Nelio’s aunt; one to Louis, my supervisor at the hospital; one to Antoineta, an activista with TSEMBEKA, a community organization here in Chicumbane; and one to João, one of my activistas at CACHES, to give to his mom. I kept a list of all the people who requested puppies to have for the next litter.

Dogs in Mozambique do not have the longest lifespans so in order to do everything I could to support them in their new homes, I wrote up little info cards in Portuguese with everything I learned about having my first litter of puppies and what they should continue to do. I included fun facts like: Don’t give dogs raw meat because it will make them hunt down chickens and other animals (which won’t make your neighbors very happy) and to bring them to the vet in Xai-Xai at six months in order to receive proper vaccination.   I also included some flea medication I had and a piece of the towel that stayed with the litter for the first six weeks. All except one of the new puppy owners came to pick up their dogs this week so already the yard is incredibly quieter.

I kind of miss having all the little guys running around. But, with their departure, there was a new arrival in Chicumbane! I now have a site-mate!! One of my colleagues, Heather Blair, a Moz 16 volunteer was relocated to Chicumbane after her site, Chalucuane, was affected by the floods. After spending a month in Maputo, she moved to Chicumbane last Thursday. Her site was hit pretty hard by the floods. Before moving, she went to her site to salvage what she could. There was not much she could take because the water had entered her house up to two meters high. What she did recover, she spent the first few days here cleaning to remove all the mud. She has been living in my house, while her new house is still being prepared. They still have to build a new latrine, replace windows and change the locks. When her house is ready, she will live just a short ten-minute walk from my house in the same neighborhood, just across the street from Nelio’s aunt.

Heather is a Moz 16 volunteer so she just has five months left in her service here in Mozambique. She also works with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatrics AIDS Foundation so she will be working at the hospital with me. At her old site, she worked with her counterpart to set up GAAC. GAAC stands for Grupos de Apoio e Adesao Comunitaria and they are groups of six people who live in the same neighborhood and are all HIV positive. Instead of having to go to the hospital every month to pick up anti-retrovirals, just one person from the group goes each month to pick up the ARVs. This way, each person only needs to go to the hospital every six months. Right now the hospital here in Chicumbane has 52 groups. Heather will be working with Enfermeiro Ricardo to improve our current GAAC system. I will continue to work at the hospital on the projects I have been doing: support groups in PTV and CCR, nutrition and papas palestras in CCR, organization with the files and in the database. We hope to work together on some projects as well. We will just have to keep in mind what is realistic to accomplish in five months. It is definitely a strange time in one’s service to have to pick up and totally relocate sites, but I think Heather is excited about being here in Chicumbane. She fondly goes by “Mana Hea” and the criancas are already getting used to having her around. As we have been going around introducing her at the hospital and the neighborhood, there was a little confusion about whether she was replacing me because the last time they met a new volunteer it was a substitution. But, I told them they were stuck with me until 2014.