Sick kitties

I’ve had better days than the ones leading up to today. Late Tuesday afternoon, I saw that my kittens were still not feeling well. Whereas before they would scamper around and nearly attack you when meal time came, now they had no interest in eating and just moped around dejectedly. I was with Phil at the time, and I decided we should go to the veterinary pharmacy down the road and see what was the matter.

I explained the situation to the man behind the counter, and he pulled out some shots they should get. His younger colleague accompanied us back to the house with them and we found the kittens. Pili was the first up. I held her while the vet went to give her the injection in her nape. At first she was fine, but then she struggled and cried so much that she freed herself from our hands and fell to the ground, the needle still in her neck, yowling and convulsing. I thought for sure she was going to die right then. The vet insisted it was okay, that the medicine was just strong, but I remained (and remain) unconvinced. She lie there in a catatonic state for a while, and even now, her back right leg doesn’t work like it used to, so she limps around. I don’t know whether she hurt her leg or she hurt her spine, but I hope it’s just the leg. Sami responded much better to the shots.

I was a mess all night, alternately blaming myself and blaming the vet (who probably doesn’t know anything about small animals, only livestock) for what happened, but generally just feeling miserable about the state of small animals in my house. Phil tried to convince me that it would be okay, that when I came back from the village, Pili would be back to normal. I tried my best to believe it.

The next morning at 7, Minkailou and I set off for Tongo-Tongo. We took his (Jeff’s) Yamaha DT that used to be with Kirill. It’s a much more powerful dirt bike than my Star. We made it to the base of the cliff in good time and found the valley carpeted with greenery—fields of onions, garlic and tobacco interspersed with overburdened papaya and banana trees. And it smelled amazing.

We got to the village around 10 AM and the usual slow trickle of villagers noticing I’m there began. Ramata’s mother brought us lunch, and afterwards M. le Maire took me on a tour of the village, showing me various things we’d discussed while working on the dictionary. We walked by two men weaving cotton cloth with an old-fashioned loom, down a little alley where women were spinning cotton thread, into a courtyard with niches built into the wall called ‘sinuge’ (see-noo-gay), and finally over to M. le Maire’s mother’s house. We ducked through the low doorway into the dark room filled to the brim with calabashes and buckets and sacks of who knows what. As soon as I was seated on the mud-brick bed, M. le Maire procured the millet beer. I was sitting in the middle of the millet beer factory, essentially.

We talked and drank and then M. le Maire’s 3-year-old daughter Jumare, the cutest kid in the world, came in and sat by me. I wasn’t sure if I was appalled or amused when M. le Maire gave Juma a small calabash of millet beer. How very Dogon.

After we left there, he showed me the new cereal bank that they’d just built and we stopped by a group of men splitting stone bricks with mallet and chisel. Our final stop was the mayor’s office, where he wrote up a birth certificate for someone, even though he’s not the mayor.

I am so impressed by M. le Maire. He constantly is working to help his village, writing petition after petition to the government for schools and other projects, working as the village doctor of sorts, taking care of his family, helping me, and doing official duties all at once. But what is most remarkable of all is his humility. The man for whom he was writing the birth certificate called him a doctor, and M. le Maire simply replied, “I’m not a doctor. I’m a farmer.”

I spent most of the afternoon after that reading ‘Three Cups of Tea’ and feeling inspired. I talked to some little kids for a while in broken Tommo-So, which was cute. The rest of the day progressed slowly until I went to bed around 9:30 and slept wonderfully.

As usual, animals like to stop in front of my door specifically to make whatever announcements they have to make. That morning, it was an over-zealous rooster who was particularly excited about it being morning. I lay in bed and dreamed of KFC.

After breakfast, M. le Maire came with the old man so we could find the last words we hadn’t found in Douentza. I love watching the old man talk, and I wish I could just pick his brain. He was born around 1920 and was already 40 when Mali gained its independence. He very nearly predates Islam in the area, which is a recent addition in Dogon country. He must know so much.

M. le Maire himself was leaving that day for a funeral in Ibisa, and all the work I have to do requires my computer now, so Minkailou and I decided to just hit the road. We left after lunch and made it to the cliff around 3. Rounding the corner, the smell of onions and garlic hits you before you even see the fields. Once on the ground, those scents mingled with the musky smell of tobacco and damp earth. On our trip back, we passed a man working in his fields who flagged us over and gave us 10 huge tomatoes, just because. As always, I am amazed by the generosity of those who have so little.

I was hoping to find my kittens bounding about playfully when I got back, but I’m afraid there was no change in their condition. Pili was still limping and neither of them were particularly energetic. Pili will eat little pieces of meat now, but Sami is still not eating. I threw my bag in my room and called Oumar to go with me to the vet, the actual vet I had heard of, not the pharmacy.

I bundled my kittens in a sweater and got on the back of the motorcycle with them. We found the place, again mainly for livestock because no one cares about small animals here, and went in. It turned out that the boss there is actually the boss of the pharmacy, so he told us we needed to go back there and try to sort it out with them first, and only if they couldn’t do anything would he intervene. Discouraged, we went back to the pharmacy, and it was the same guy there who had given my cats their shots.

I told him the cats were not better and if anything worse. He smugly told me that it was I who requested to stop the shots (which I did, it was supposed to be a series of 3, but I didn’t want him anywhere near my kittens after that), and I sort of let him have it about messing up Pili. Basically, I was a wreck, trying to keep my cool but not doing a good job of it. He assured me that it would be okay, that Pili was limping because she’s small and she fell and she’ll get better, and we need to resume the treatment. Seeing no other option, I consented and went out front to wait for the shots to be over. While fuming outside, some other guy, maybe affiliated with the vet, kept trying to talk to me about how much I liked my cats and about how he used to catch and eat cats as a kid. Thank you, sir, that makes me feel much better right now.

While pacing, I sauntered up to my motorcycle and burned the hell out of my leg on the motor. I was in the most terrible of moods when I got back to the house, feeling generally awful about my cats. Luckily, Braxton, another PCV, got into town yesterday with his family, and he invited me out for a couple beers. It was just what I needed, and by the end of the night, when Antony also showed up, I was in a perfectly fine mood.

Today, the kittens might be slightly better. Pili is still limping, but she’s eating a bit, and for the first time in days, she played a little bit. Sami is still the same, not eating, but drinking milk at least. They’re both incredibly needy and want to be next to me all the time, which is fine by me. I just wish I could make them feel better and that Mali had real vets for small animals.