Dog Gone

Building relationships and earning trust. That was how we began our work in Upper Volta when we first arrived at our mission post. We knew that trying to dress like the villagers or eating the same food as them or just trying to live like them was not going to help us earn their trust. They were smart and very savvy people who had survived in that desolate place for generations, and they knew that we had so many more resources than they did.  Trying to “be like them” was not going to earn their affection. After all, we arrived in a vehicle—the only one in the area as the villagers either walked or rode a donkey or bicycle to get around between villages. No one anywhere near us even had a moped or other motorized vehicle.

Helping the villagers with their expressed needs was an effective means of building strong relationships with our new friends. According to their means, villagers had livestock. The most prosperous had a few cows, and the less prosperous had sheep and goats. Most villagers at least had a few chickens and guineas. We introduced rabbit production to add a little more protein to their diets. We also helped with teaching how to raise pigeons and ducks.

Villagers had no one to help them with animal health and vaccinations, so we provided that service at a small cost (we learned that something provided for no cost to the villagers was worth nothing to them, so we always charged a nominal fee for any animal service, seeds or equipment).

One day in the village of Lantaago we were vaccinating sheep and goats at the new church building (mud bricks with a tin roof and dirt floor was our typical church building). One of the church leaders came up to me and asked me to “fix” his male dog. I had learned to do this from one of the volunteer veterinarians who had served with us, but I did not like to do dogs because it was an open wound surgery, and the dog had to be anesthetized. Plus, the chance of infection was high especially since villagers did not give any care to the dog after the surgery. However, I wanted to strengthen my relationship with this new church leader, so I agreed.

I finished the procedure and laid the dog in the shade in the sorghum patch next to the church. After about 30 minutes, the church leader came to me and said, “Larry, my dog is dead.” I ran to the sorghum field only to find the dog sleeping and assured my friend that his dog was not dead.

We continued vaccinating sheep and goats, and the church leader came to me again to inform me that his dog was dead. Once again I checked and assured him that the dog was still sleeping because of the drug that I had given him for the surgery. I told him that the dog was arousing and in a few minutes he would be up and running around.

As we were wrapping up the vaccinations, Jeremy came to me and said that some women had prepared a meal for us. We gathered our supplies and walked to where the ladies had been cooking. As we sat down to eat the church leader prayed and thanked God for providing meat for the meal. I asked after the prayer what meat the Lord had provided, and the church leader said they had cooked his dog!

I asked why he did not let him wake up from the surgery, and he said that he was afraid that he was going to die, and that if he died they could not eat him. The common practice was that no one would eat an animal that had died because it had to be killed in a proper fashion before they would consume it.

I spent 45 minutes castrating that dog only to have to eat it for lunch!

Note: A guest never refused to eat in a village. Not to eat whatever they prepared was an insult to them and was certainly not a way to build relationships with them. Our prayer was often this: “Lord, my job is to get this food down. Your job is to keep it down!”