Saturday, November 2, 2013

Life and (human decreed) death in Africa

So I went to the clinic and talked to some random man that decided to help me out by giving me the number of the doctor that was gone at the time. I called the man and asked him if there was a drug I could inject the dog with to make him die peacefully, and he said "well, no. So, you need to go get a rope.." So I said okay, yeah.

I don't know how much detail I'll put into the account because I'm pretty tired of dwelling on it, already. I also don't know how appropriate this story is to tell on this public account. Sorry for the recently dark posts!

So then I went home, and the dog had escaped by breaking the chain. Luckily, he came back a few minutes later because he was a dumb dog that loved me. I-Tal's boy came by and we started walking through the bush out to the river. I-Tal eventually came even though I think he was sick or something.

A bunch of little boys came along for the entertainment because they knew we were going out to drown the dog I had on a chain. We all walked along the bed of this tributary that was starting to fill up with the high tide coming in. The mud on the shore goes up to your knees. The dog was obviously terrified because of his vacation on the other side of the river a couple weeks ago. But yeah, our plans were worse this time.

I-Tal found a big rock and tied some string to it. I slipped off the dog's collar and chain and slipped on the rope. We threw the dog and the rock into the middle of the shallow tributary at the same time. At this point I'm already upset because this obviously isn't going to work. The dog is well above water. The children are pelting him with rocks (actually mud, mostly), and the dog is terrified, pissed off, and suffering. I don't really understand why the children thought throwing rocks at his face was doing anything. This was the most upsetting part of the whole thing. His face was all bloody and it was horrible. I told the children to stop, a few times, but they would just start again. This obviously wasn't going to kill the dog.

Yeah, I was just pissed off. This was turning out to be the worst way to kill him. I wish we would have just taken a boat out and dropped him somewhere deep, but I didn't think about that until the dog with attached stone were already in this stupid shallow tributary. This obviously wasn't going to work. The tide was coming up, and I-Tal said oh, just leave him, he'll drown eventually. But that was horrible, to me. I doubt it would have worked, anyway. The dog would have mustered up any amount of strength to save its life. So eventually I said somebody needs to just go down there and hold him under. They all said no, don't do it, the dog is wild now! But when I went down, he didn't want to bite me, he was just hoping his owner would save him.

Eventually I was the one to have to finalize things, and I was disgusted mostly because I had allowed a bunch of kids to torture him for some time before taking action. I knew what had to be done to minimize this animal's suffering and yet accomplish what I knew had to be done. It /had/ to be done. I promise you, I tried and tried to save this dog and I fought against the standards of things here. If there would have been any other course of action available to me, I would be regretting things right now, and I'm not. I only regret not having jumped in sooner or else have thought about it more to make it quick and decent.

After it was done with, I was just pissed off at the children and how little ability they obviously have for considering any experience outside of their own. It feels to me like this culture has this dark center in some ways. I wish they would teach their children to know that the world doesn't just revolve around them and other things are in fact experiencing and suffering like themselves. They treat other living things as objects to use or play with. Dogs are the animals here with the most capacity for emotion next to us. They seem to treat them the worst despite seeing obvious pain in their faces.

It sucked, a lot, but I am doing fine.

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