November Rains Bring Spring

It has been almost a year since I first landed in Kenya, and now I am preparing to meet the new group of trainees as they travel to their training site in Loitokitok. In the mornings I have been hearing a vibrancy among the birds' songs that has not been present since last November. The start of the rains have come and everything is green again. There continues to be a lot of talk about El Nino, with people telling tales of last time El Nino hit the country and all of the destruction it caused. I was a bit scared by their stories, but now I am a bit disappointed by this "El Nino" - if it can even be called that. We only had "torrential" rains for maybe two days. I really think that the country needs more of this. I may be speaking too soon though, since the rain is supposed to come again in November and December.

A few days after the fiercest rains I went outside my house and found a week old puppy curled up next to my bread oven. His mother was not around, and although he as weak he was still alive. I wondered how it had landed here, but without giving it a thorough inquisition I bought it milk and started feeding it. He was so weak that the milk had to be poured into his mouth. It was all the talk around the school, "that dog is lucky to have landed at one of the few houses where it would be given milk instead of being stoned to death." I admit that buying milk for the dog made me feel guilty since there are so many humans around that would love milk. How would I have reacted if a beggar had found his way to my house?

I made a burlap bed for the dog and went to teach my classes. When I returned the dogs mother was there, and it was obvious that she was too malnourished to produce any milk for the puppy. A teacher at school told me, "if you love the child, shouldn't you also love the mother?" To which I said, "sure, but that doesn't mean that I want to feed her." After a few minutes I softened and I cooked the mother a meal of dog food (the dog food here comes as a powder. You have to mix it with boiling water and stir).

I tried to attend to the puppy again, giving it more milk, until it eventually threw it all back up due to my enthusiastic feeding regiment.

As I went to sleep I tucked the puppy into the burlap bed, and watched as the mother put her paws around it to keep it warm.

In the morning, the puppy was lying about a foot away from the mother, dead. I was disappointed, because I had been thinking about how fun it would be to have a dog, but I was also relieved because I have other things to focus my attention on besides a dog. Maybe I should have let the puppy sleep inside my house next to a sauce pot of hot water. Maybe there is nothing I could have done. I felt bad, but I dug a hole, while two of my students sung a Kimeru burial song, and that was the end of my puppy.

Since then almost all of the heavy rain clouds have faded from the sky. Even the dirt seems to be more vibrant than before, probably because of the contrast between the brown and green. The dust is definitely gone for a few days and the students are happy to be able to sit in the grass without getting muddy OR dusty.

I hope that we remain in this equilibrium for another week so that the new trainees can wake up their first morning in Nairobi to the smell of growing plants and the sounds of birds. If they miss it, at least they will get to see Kenya's second spring season in April.