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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