Well, I stood firm from April 1st when I left California, to May 14 at 11:26 a.m. Botswana time when I was texted this nice statement, “Hi Maggie, I am Amy. I stay at Camphill with my husband Colin. I heard u will be volunteering at Camphill. Congrats! Do you want a kitty?”
So during my site visit to Camphill, part of my orientation process was to find out where my closest bank branch was, where I should shop for food, etc. Turns out both the bank and a nice grocery store are right across the street from the only veterinarian for a million miles. Give or take. And since Ms. Sisi was clearly headed during my visit right into another “heat” and has already had two litters in her two years of life, it seemed like a no brainer that the only way I would take her would be if they had her fixed. And, the only way they could have her fixed, given their work schedules, before this next round of howling, screaming, sneak-out-at-night-and-here-we-go-again moment was for me to take her to the bank with me and er, well, just casually drop her off on my way, um, at the vet. And since I am a volunteer with no car, this meant taking her in a box of some sort on the bus the 15 km up the road to Lobatse and then grabbing a taxi from the bus stop to the vet. We had the box, the tape and were getting ready to practice loading her into the box when we decided to borrow a cat carrier from the vet the day before the big event. A very smart move.
The next morning, at 7 a.m., I proceeded to put Sisi into the carrier and steel myself for carrying a screaming cat for 20 minutes on a crowded bus, with at least 50% of the people either unfriendly towards cats or not understanding the reason for spending money to have one spayed. So, there she goes into the carrier. And then out she pops, having slammed the carrier door open with surprising force for such a petite lil thing. But remember, she is heating up. Sure glad that happened at home and not on the road or I would have killed a perfectly good cat. After learning how to properly close the latch, I walked 10 minutes to the bus stop – carrying her past all the early morning workers here at the center who enjoyed a nice laugh at the white woman carrying a perfectly healthy cat around in a cat carrier.
Wind and cat howling, I stood with others gathering at the stop who were either trying to hitch or wait for the bus. I had resigned myself to the mortifying bus ride when a car pulled up and people rushed to it to get a hitch. Exiting from the vehicle was my unexpected knight in shining armor, Victor, my counterpart here at Camphill who I will be working closely with until December, just arriving from his commute from Gabs. In my memory, he appeared to be brandishing his messenger bag like a sword, fending off the hitchers, calling me over as he did so and flashing me that big hero smile. Suddenly, I am in the car, breaking numerous Peace Corps rules, and getting a ride from a pet owning, Motswana who took me directly to the vets office.
I walk in and realize, I am not in Oz anymore. Staff are all locals, but the room where the animals are being taken for their morning fixings is full with white South African women living in Botswana with their felines in tow (okay, two women and one 8 year old daughter, but the room was small and they each had brought in 3 really large cats). The one with the daughter was planning to stay for the duration, because her daughter wants to be a vet so gets to actually watch the vet do the fixings. The vet, Mark, also a non-American white person from somewhere else, gave me the poor volunteer rate and threw in a rabies shot and the various other feline vaccines for nothing. Apparently I am the soon to be proud owner of the only cat in Otse who has had her shots and been fixed. I hope she isn’t shunned for this by the devil-may-care cats in the area.
So I left her in good hands, ran my official errands and headed back to Otse on the bus. The return trip was legit, as my agency’s project coordinator was going into town with his wife (who is also my landlord) and took me along so we could chat about the agency. No lie. I waited with my spayed/drugged kitty at the vet while they did their banking and got to learn all about the 4 leopards that live in and around my town and kill and eat the vet’s calves but he refuses to try to kill the leopards, because, well, duh, there are only 4 of them and as he said “if we are going to leave our calves laying around in the bush…”. He talked about the sick vultures at the vulture sanctuary/nesting area here in Otse who are too sick to get to the top of the hill where they are supposed to sanctuate/nest and thus sit on telephone poles until they get too weak and fall off and are picked up by the vet’s staff at his ranch who bring them in to him to treat. He tells me about the people who stole a bunch of his goats and then sold them to locals in smaller herds, including a bunch of castrated ones he had rescued from the SPCA. Apparently whoever stole them eventually got caught and the un-eaten goats were taken to the local chief’s office for the vet to identify and reclaim. As he stood with the chief, who in this town happens to be a woman – a rarity – the delighted goats approached them and quite happily made it known to her that they did indeed belong to the vet. I guess they were almost petting zoo variety and must have somehow convinced the people who misappropriated them that they were too cute for goat stew. As I guess not many castrated goats are.
As I was waiting for my boss/landlord/ride the vet takes a call from a fellow on the other side of Botswana who is working with some cattle farmers. Seems one pregnant cow lost her vagina (I kid you not) or rather it had dropped outside of her, as apparently can happen to pregnant cows. Gives new meaning to the words “difficult pregnancy.” Well, the cattle farmer didn’t deal with this right away, so the poor girl has been in this state for a couple of weeks! I now know a lot more about how to fix this particular problem in cows than I ever thought I would. If I had too, I could probably do all but the stitchery part of it. Knowing that sugar is better to use than salt was also helpful. The vet also was a wealth of information about who’s who in Otse as far as businesess and Rotarians, as the nearest Rotary club is in Lobatse and I hope to be able to attend some of their meetings. The guy who owns the diamond cutting business here in Otse is apparently a Rotarian, but I don’t think the dutch cheesemaker is, although he does own the most pretentious house in town, sitting on the side of the hill a bit above mine with big huge round windows staring back at the town folk like empty eyes.
Leaving Sisi safely at home to sleep it off, I got back to the office by 2 where I experienced a very slow internet experience so instead went for a walk across town to see if I could find a shorter route to my soon to be home. Walking back from there I picked up Jim, another PC volunteer, at his work site and we ran into the village chief who walked us part of the way home. He is 46 years old, which is pretty young for a kgosi.
Sisi had been in heat and recovered well from her surgery. Her silly 3 month old kitten (Colin and Amy call her T-bone, I call her Pudi, which is “goat” in Setswana and sounds like how tweedy bird says “pussy” in the cartoon. Another PC volunteer, Ameila will have to straighten all this out when she finally gets that kitten for herself) was very upset with her upon her return. T-bone/Pudi, threw a total hissy fit at her mother (heh, now I know where that comes from!) for a couple of hours for god only knows what reason. The next day, when mom was feeling more herself, she hauled off and smacked the Goat and I applauded her parental acumen.
Its nice to have a cat with a name pronounced the same as Ceci my trainer at Praxis back home. Perhaps seeing Sisi laying around on the couch sleeping will be the motivation I will need to do a few push ups and crunches from time to time. Eish.
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