Sunday, April 1, 2012

Ghana Day 13, 032512 Man's best friend, but not here

Ghana Day 13 032512 Man's Best Friend


Like many others reading this, if anyone is actually reading it, we have a pet. Our dog, is a retriever shepard mix, about 11 years old, and pretty much a member of the family. He is anxiously hungry for both food and attention, and he follows each family member around the house in case either happens to materialize in his favor.

In the Ghana neighborhood where we are staying, just outside of Kasoa, the area was filled with animals. Most were chickens, leading their young chicks around, families of goats and a dog every so often. We saw just two cats here in two weeks. One thing that we noticed is that these animals, although owned by families, are strictly outdoor animals and seemed to have to fend for themselves. Most had some visible war wounds, scars, limps, missing tails and the like. There was a rooster with a bad leg that greeted us loudly each morning, hopping across the roadside, around 6am as we walked to help with breakfast at our volunteer assignment.

One of our family of kids at the orphanage caught a bird flying through the school yard with his bare hands, and proceeded to show off his catch to the other children, holding the terrified bird by its wings. Eventually, he did let the bird go, and it flew off, but we got an inkling that maybe animal rights wasn't high up on the Ghanaian priority list. That observation was accurate. Animals, or what we might call pets, are basically potential food. There are no cute names for animals, and no concern for an intervening with an animal injury. A close friend is a veterinarian, and my daughter works for an animal emergency room back in Connecticut. They both work in a profession that assists families with the health care needs of their four legged family members. Neither business would thrive here. People here are struggling, day to day, to eat and get water and shelter. As I wrote above, animals are living walking potential food.

Our host family, in addition to running the orphanage/school, also raises chickens (broilers) which will be sold in the market when they are six months old. We found that this religious, compassionate man was incredibly caring and kind to his “birds”, however he was motivated by business and profit to care for his product, rather than kindness. That is just the way things are. He was unable to comprehend that, in the States, people spend extraordinary sums of money on pet health care, surgeries, and even cancer therapy. It just didn't culturally compute for him, and sounded like a terrible waste of resources and money.

This is a country with deep religious roots, both Christian and Moslim. Neither extends following God's word to include all of God's creatures, just humans.

We went to a zoo-like place that was a monkey preserve; run by a Dutch couple, who arrived in 2004 to care for animals. They purchased land and built up their business, fulfilling their life dream of working with and rescuing monkeys. They hadn't anticipated that monkeys were one of the food groups in Northern Ghana, and that the local population would be so unreceptive to helping animals. 

There are animals everywhere, but this is not a hospitable place for animal rights activists. 




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