Day 53

Today was an exceptionally long day that ended with the promise of another long day tomorrow. There have been some interesting developments at the site and I’m eager to see where they lead. It’s a little too early to get excited, but I’m hopeful. That being said, today was a pretty rough day. Therefore, I’m going to talk about dogs.

Tanzania was made for dog lovers. The whole country is overrun by what are essentially farm dogs, and marvellous ones at that. They are more prevalent in the rural areas where they assist with herding goats and cows, but we see dogs absolutely everywhere. Strangely enough, most of them even look alike. They are all about Labrador-sized with tan coats and floppy ears. Whenever we see a dog with different colours and features, it’s a momentous occasion with a lot of pointing. It doesn’t seem like any of the dogs are pets. Although many are loosely associated with people, they aren’t trained at all and they’re fairly resistant to petting. Also, most of them have colonies of interesting other creatures living in their fur. Whenever pint-sized Maasai herdsmen show up at our site looking for candy, they are almost always accompanied by a canine friend or two. I always tell them “ninapenda mbwa” (I love dogs) and they look at me like I’m a little cracked. After all, one does not love dogs, they are simply there. They also laughed at me the day I tried to coax one into letting me pet him and he barked at me. The dogs here remind me of Riley, the wondrous dog that presided over my archaeological field school in southern Alberta. He didn’t really belong to anyone, but rather roamed about freely protecting his dominion. He was like the spirit of that site. Likewise, the dogs here have their own mysterious agendas that people don’t quite fit into. They seem completely unfettered by the rules of human society, and I love them for it. This is one place where all the dogs seem happy, half wild, and free.

To date, I have seen five skinny and irate-looking cats in Tanzania. Sorry, cat lovers.