The Best Bad Dog Ever

Moose was always a non-negotiable. From the very first “What If” conversation, Roger and I agreed that we wouldn’t move to South Africa if we couldn’t take Moose. Later, when the conversations took a more serious turn, Roger did some research, and apart from the extremely long and expensive flight, it didn’t seem like taking him would be a problem. Even Roger’s parents seemed excited to have their “grand-dog” around. He would love the garden; he might even befriend the cats. He was welcome to come.

After six visits to our veterinarian and two trips to the U.S.D.A vet, Moose had his paperwork in order. He also had an airline approved crate and an Air France ticket to Joburg via Paris. He would soon be the most well traveled mutt on the planet (not to mention the most expensive).

We drove to the air cargo section of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport on Wednesday afternoon. Roger went inside to make sure we were in the right place while I assembled Moose’s crate. I then put Moose on the leash to help him stretch his legs before entering his little prison. Moose, never a big fan of exercise, was unimpressed with this idea. After each lap around the parking lot, he pulled to go back into the car. “Not a chance, kiddo. You’ll thank me later,” I said.

Moose and I walked around the parking lot for at least an hour until I began to worry that my dog would be dehydrated before he ever got on the plane. By the time Roger came to get us, Moose seemed relieved to get into his crate where the exercise Nazi could no longer torture him. I cried a little as I closed the cage door. I cried a lot as we left the building and damn near hyperventilated as we drove away.

Putting Moose on the plane was traumatizing, but it did make getting on my plane a little easier. There I was at the gate, longing to tear up my plane ticket and go home, but I knew Moose was already on his way. I had no choice but to follow, and sure enough, when Roger and I arrived and our little family was reunited, I knew everything would be okay. Sure, my world was upside down, but at least we were together. At least, we would all be –

“Well, I don’t know how we’re going to cope with all these animals,” my mother-in-law exclaims. “It’s just a nightmare.”
Huh?
“You’re a very bad dog, aren’t you Moose?” my father-in-law says in a not unfriendly tone, then, “He’s a terrible dog, Roger. Needs training. It’s a shame really.”
A very bad dog? Terrible?

He’s a good dog, really. He doesn’t pee or poop in the house. He doesn’t chew shoes or scratch doors or even bark all that much. Sure, he whines if he hears voices behind a closed door. And yes, he may be slightly fixated with the kitten, but it’s not like he tries to hurt her. He just watches her. Okay, he stares. But why should that bother anyone? The kitten doesn’t seem to mind too much.

It might be slightly annoying to some, the fact that he can’t make up his mind if he wants to be inside or out. When it’s time for a little nap, he prefers the couch to his doggie bed, and good luck trying to push him out of the bed at night! Yes, he might be getting a little fat from stealing the cat’s food, and it’s frustrating how he adamantly protests his daily walks to the park, but he’s not a bad dog.

Of course, even I might have called him a bad dog when I let him off the leash to play with another dog at the park, only for him to bolt into the street, forcing me to sprint into oncoming traffic, screaming and waiving my arms like an idiot. Or when we left him with the maid at Gary and Laurel’s this past weekend and he howled at the gate all night. At these moments, sure, he might seem like a bad dog, but he’s not.

In fact, he’s hardly a dog at all. I’m not sure why, but this dog thinks he’s a person, and if you look at his behavior in that context, it doesn’t seem strange at all. Certainly a person would scream all night if asked to sleep in a garage with, ahem, the dogs. And what if someone tied a leash around your neck and forced you to exercise – wouldn’t you bolt at the first opportunity? And why would anyone sleep on the floor when there are far more comfortable spots throughout the house? Now, I know everyone loves their dog, but I knew it wasn’t just my biased perception when I heard my ten year old nephew ask Laurel, “Moose isn’t exactly a dog now is he, Mum?”

Connor and Moose

I’m not sure what all of this says about our parenting skills. Perhaps everyone should be a little frightened for the time when Roger and I decide to try our hand at another kind of child, but I still maintain that Moose is not a bad dog.

And even if he is, he’s my bad dog. The best bad dog ever.

You are Cordially Invited...

Okay, so I'm not exactly invited. My brother and sister-in-law are invited, but because they assume all of their friends will love us as much as they do, we are encouraged to tag along. Plus, Laurel has taken it as her personal mission to get me drunk as often as possible, and her son’s girlfriend’s mother’s fortieth birthday party seems as good of reason as any.

The dress is formal, so I bring every dress I own to Gary and Laurel’s house so that she can evaluate my options – of course, I gave away over half of my wardrobe before moving to this side of the planet, so those options are limited to say the least. I first try on a black sequin top and a long flowy black skirt of Laurel’s. The skirt is a bit long, and Roger can’t seem to get the top tied just right so I move on to option two – a brown and blue BCBG dress. I love the dress, but is it dressy enough? Laurel thinks it’s okay. Roger picked it out so his opinion is noted. I try on option three, a long white dress belonging to Laurel. This is by far my eight year old niece’s favorite. Is it too summery, though? It is, after all, before Memorial Day, but I don’t think the same rules apply in a country without Memorial Day and where the seasons are reversed. I go downstairs to show Roger.

“You’ve given me a funeral in option one, and now a wedding in option three. I stand by my original vote.” Noted.

I explain to Dale, my niece, that I should probably go with Roger’s vote, seeing as he is the one who has to look at me all night. Laurel agrees with me, though she preferred the black. I change back into the brown, only I start to think that I preferred the black too. After much debate on the issue, I change from the brown back into the black. I go downstairs only to be sent back upstairs to change by my husband who has now moved from simply favoring the brown one to hating the black one. Men.

So this is how the evening began, and I haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet! As we set off to the party, Gary and Laurel explain to us that the birthday girl is quite the fan of the Narnia books, so there is to be a Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe theme. No one is exactly sure what that will entail. They also tell us that the birthday girl’s husband is a body builder who has never heard of sun block. Prepare to stifle giggles when we see him. Oh, and they are both Afrikaans so we will most likely be surrounded by drunken Dutchmen all night.

So, what exactly is an Afrikaner, you ask? I will try to answer (though I must state a disclaimer that nothing here has been fact checked). The Afrikaners are descendants of the Dutch settlers of South Africa. They speak Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch, German and French (I think) and is only spoken in South Africa. All children learn the language in school, so most everyone who grew up here has some understanding of the language.

“But they speak English too, right?” I ask.
“Of course,” Laurel answers.

Apparently, not at this party. I am greeted in English by the birthday girl and her red faced enormous husband, but that is the extent of the English portion of the evening. We are led into a huge space filled with polystyrene balls meant to be snow in the wintry woods of Narnia. It’s gorgeous really, but a bit surreal. We are seated at a table with other English speaking people, but once the program starts I can’t understand a word. The husband starts with a speech in Afrikaans. Laurel is trying to translate at first, but then gives up. Waiters start bringing the food. More speeches and then a short fat Italian looking man goes to the microphone. He puts five mints in his mouth and then walks back to the bar and takes two shots of some unknown liquor. He then goes back to the mike, takes another few mints and starts singing.

Ah, this I can understand. Oh wait, no I don’t, but I have heard it before. Pavaratti maybe? Some sort of opera. He sings another familiar song and then starts talking. More Afrikaans. His next song is unfamiliar, but pretty. Laurel leans over to me and jokes that he may as well be singing in Italian for all I know. He’s not? She laughs. More Afrikaans. He eventually sings an Elvis song in English, and suddenly I wish he was still singing in Afrikaans. It might not be so painful.

When the Italian looking Afrikaans man finishes, a DJ takes over the music. He starts things off with a little Justin Timberlake, because even the Afrikaners know how to get a party started. I pull Laurel up to the dance floor, but once the song is over it’s…more Afrikaans! “What is this?” I ask as everyone around me pairs up and starts moving around the dance floor.

Laurel laughs her trademark laugh. “Boer Music!”

I sigh and head back to the table. The dance that everyone seems to know is called suki suki. Or saki saki. I can’t be sure. The waiter offers more wine and Laurel brings over four shots of tequila. My sister-in-law is insane, but afterwards, I feel ready to take on the saki suki dance. I spin Laurel around the floor a few times before realizing that the Afrikaners do not seem to appreciate my attempt at absorbing the culture. We sit back down at the table.

I watch in wonder at these people that look like me, live in the same country as me, but speak a different language and have an entirely different identity. I later ask Roger, why the big difference? He was born in South Africa, granted to English parents, but he’s still South African. The Afrikaners are South African too. So why so different? He compares it to being Irish American or Italian American, but having grown up is the South, I don’t really get the reference. He thinks for a minute, then decides it’s somewhat like being a redneck. This explains the derogatory comments I usually hear about the Afrikaans people, but that’s not a heritage, is it? I counter that one’s parents might be a redneck, but the children don’t necessarily become rednecks. He says it’s the same with Afrikaners. Many times, the parents have a strong Afrikaans identity, but their children don’t. For that very reason, he believes, it’s a dying culture, a dying language. I think it’s kind of sad.

We get ready to leave and I feel quite impressed with myself for having experienced a new culture. Yes, this is why I moved across the planet. New people. New places. Learn something new every day. I am still patting myself on the back when Laurel falls into a hole. We end the evening at the Sandton Clinic Emergency Room. Waiting on Laurel, I wonder if my mother or father were ever in this room, for this is the hospital where my sister was born thirty-one years ago. The world suddenly seems so small. Everything feels a bit dreamlike, but that may just be the tequila.

My sister-in-law’s foot is not broken, though she has torn several ligaments. We wheel her out of the ER in a wheelchair and pile back in the car. A perfect ending to a perfectly odd night.



PS An addendum to my earlier post...

Laurel went back to the doctor the following Monday to learn she had broken the long bone of her third toe. Below is a lovely photo of her newly decorated cast.

Facing My Fear

So, I think I have a problem. It’s not a crisis, but I’m having a minor adjustment issue. It’s a problem I’ve had in the past, but in Africa, it’s unavoidable.

It’s the maid. I’m afraid of the maid.

I’m not afraid she will hurt me or steal from me. Not at all. Sheila’s nice, or she seems nice in the brief contact I have had with her. See, when she’s downstairs, I’m upstairs. If she’s upstairs, I’m downstairs. If she’s in the kitchen, I don’t eat. If she’s in the living room, I don’t watch TV. When she seems to be everywhere, I take Moose to the park. Despite my best efforts, however, I am finding that contact is unavoidable – she’s here thirty-five hours a week! And with no current mode of transport, I am forced to share the house with her while she scrubs, sweeps, vacuums, mops, washes clothes and irons everything from underwear to sheets.

As I mentioned earlier, this problem is not entirely new. In Atlanta, I had a sweet lady clean my house every other Tuesday morning. She came early and left around noon. I would have preferred her to come while I was at work, but she was a little uncomfortable with Moose, so I hung around. Only I didn’t. I was there to let her in, but I would immediately throw Moose in the car and go to the park or run errands. So it’s not just Sheila, I was afraid of Evelia too.

So where does this fear come from? It’s not that I’m shy, or rude. I like Sheila, and I want her to like me, but for some reason I become mute in her presence. I don’t know what to say. My instincts tell me to flee, and I usually do, but it’s getting to be rather challenging.

With Evelia, her English wasn’t great, so I told myself that it was pointless to try to get to know her. I wouldn’t want to make her uncomfortable by speaking to her in an unknown language, right? Sheila’s English seems great, though, and yet I say nothing. Perhaps I’m afraid that if I talk to Sheila, if I get to know her, I will feel bad that she sweeps up mountains of my dog’s hair and cleans last night’s spaghetti sauce off the inside of the microwave and scrubs the toilet with a pubic hair still lingering on the bowl. Having someone I knew do all of that would be awkward, it would make me feel bad. At least Evelia was paid well for it. Sheila does it all, and laundry too, for around fifteen dollars a day.

Sheila’s not much older than me. She’s married and has two little kids. She works hard in this house from eight o'clock in the morning to three-thirty in the afternoon, five days a week. She's just a nice woman trying to make a living.

Perhaps I’m afraid of Sheila because I’m not sure why, in this random world, she is the maid and I’m the girl who has her sheets ironed. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. We’ve both worked hard in our young lives, but we’ve lived in different worlds. That’s just how it works, I guess.

I’ve got to get over myself. Avoiding Sheila isn’t helping her any, and it’s not like hiding is easing my conscious. While, at this point, Sheila’s probably glad that the weird American girl isn’t around too much, that is about to change. I will face my fear of the maid. I will get to know her if it kills me. And if I feel so damn bad about her salary, perhaps I should pay her a little more. (Let’s see how that goes over with my father-in-law!)

Future Laughs

One day I’ll look back on this and laugh. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Roger and I love to reminisce about the two years we spent living with my mom and my grandmother. I smile whenever we recount my grandmother’s outbursts and my mom’s medicated tranquility. The four dogs, the one bathroom, the soundproofing duct tape around the doorframe – these things are humorous now. So I’m sure that one day all of this will seem funny too.

It will be funny, the M-I-L's (mother-in-law) need to wash each article of clothing the moment you take it off of your body. She might even help you strip should you think of changing clothes within a ten meter radius of her Speed Queen. With that kind of pressure, is it any wonder that my father-in-law walks around naked half the time?

Perhaps one day, I will look back at my father-in-law’s constant shouting at the television and think of it as a charming trait. Cricket, rugby, football – the athletes would surely win if they would only heed his advice. Not that he limits his commentary to sports – American Idol contestants, the heroine of Hallmark’s movie of the week, the lead CSI agent – they could all benefit if they would only listen.

I’m sure driving with my in-laws will seem humorous as well. My father-in-law, cussing at pedestrians and driving over curbs while my mother-in-law swears at him for swearing so much. You may be laughing already, but it's only because you are not in the car!

Okay, so I may not be laughing yet, but they’re lovely, really. I don’t mind my father-in-law’s grimace every time I do the cooking, or his subtle opinions on the ridiculousness of a married couple practicing birth control. It doesn’t bother me, the way my mother-in-law continuously reminds me she’s never liked sweets and that she rarely eats breakfast, or lunch either for that matter. Are these statements meant to be suggestions, or just annoying revelations? I can’t be sure, but I don’t mind. I could learn a lot from my mother-in-law – she’s a former model after all. And lucky for me, she has a remarkable way of telling you exactly what to do without being overbearing. She always quailfies her explicit instructions with, “Well, that’s how I would do it anyway.” See? She’s no dictator (though it’s a far cry from a democracy).

But as you can see, all is well in Africa. These things may not be funny just yet, but none of it bothers me. Nothing stresses me out. This is Africa Robyn. I am laid back and easy-going. I go with the flow. I also go see the pharmacist next week about renewing my prescription. I’ll be laughing in no time.

April Fool's Day

“What the hell was I thinking?” Sitting at the gate, I considered the possibility that our April Fools’ Day arrival could get me out of this. “April Fools’ Day, Baby! I don’t think moving to South Africa is such a great idea after all…can we go home?”

I knew better than to vocalize these thoughts as we waited for the plane that would take us to our new home, but the tears did nothing to hide my sudden uncertainty. The terrified look on Roger’s face told me that he knew what I was thinking, but I could read his mind too. “We can’t back out now. I have a job. We’ve made commitments.” I started hyperventilating again because I knew he was right.

“It’s gonna be fine, baby,” he said. “I’ll look after you, I promise.”

That was just it, though. Up until this point, I never required looking after. Not that I would be incapable of taking care of myself in Africa, but the idea that he could and would “look after me” was both comforting and scary as hell. Comforting to the part of me that was tired of holding the world on my shoulders, but scary to the part of me that believed no one else could hold it better. Ridiculous, even arrogant, I know, but could the control freak in me hand it over?

So there I was, in the airport, second-guessing a decision we had taken twelve months to finalize. I tried to remind myself that this had been my choice. No one was forcing me to go, and yet at that moment, I couldn’t remember why I had agreed. How had I arrived at this decision?

I never thought of myself as particularly adventurous or spontaneous. That being said, I always feel a bit like a new person when I’m traveling. More exotic, more laid back. Traveling demands that you surrender control, otherwise you won’t enjoy yourself when your hotel turns out to be a hostel or you’ve been wearing the same underwear for three days because there is nowhere to do laundry. Someone else might freak out if they developed a strange rash because of the sheets at a questionable hotel, but not me. I could go with the flow. Yes, I definitely liked myself better outside of the USA...but for how long?

I have now fled the country three times. The first time I was running away from a boy. Actually, running away implies that the boy was chasing me, which was most certainly not the case. The move across the pond might have been radical, but my pathetic pining required drastic measures. The UK study abroad program was the kick in the pants that I needed. It took eight months, but with the help of a handsome South African, I headed back to the US with my mission accomplished.

The second time I moved out of the country I was running to a boy (the handsome South African to be more specific). We enjoyed our tiny flat in London for seven months before I convinced him that we could trade it in for a huge apartment at half the price, along with Target Superstores, American football and Terminator 2 on the day of release. We headed back to the USA and got married along the way. That’s the short version, anyway.

So now I leave once again, this time for several years, and I can’t help but ask myself, What am I running from this time? My former job would be the obvious answer. Certainly my career in real estate was enough to make a would-be writer feel like a bit of a sell-out. Yes, I suppose it was as simple as that. I had been lured by the promise of stress free days in sunny Africa where I would embrace my creative self once again.

So here I go. Embracing my creativity with a blog, something I formerly believed was only an activity for teenagers on myspace. True, this blog will be more factual than creative, but it’s a start. It puts my fingers to the keyboard while keeping the masses updated on my African adventures (actually, it’s just you Mom). We'll see how this goes...