Tuesday, March 19, 2013
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Giving
dogs super powers
Our part time gardener is of an
indeterminate age. He does his job on a timescale known only to him. He moves
around the compound cutting grass and shrubs and attending to the dogs in a
slow, inexorable pattern. Sometimes he sits in the shade for a hour or two and
sleeps. Remember that temperatures in Accra hover always above 30 degrees with
high humidity. The sun is like paint stripper on the skin. We have anecdotal
conversations once in a while. Because I research local medicinal plants and we
grow them, I pass on what I glean. Locals here have forgotten the efficacy of
what burgeons around them. For example, a shrub called bitter leaf prevents
malaria. Chewing the leaves kills parasites in the blood.
He was saying yesterday that his
forefathers knew such things. He was busy coating the Doberman with shea butter
and spraying both it and the bitch, a blonde Alsatian, with a spray I concocted
from soursop leaves. This is a summary of what he said.
“My grandfather had six dogs. To protect them he went into the bush
and collected plant leaves, bark from trees and roots. These he boiled and then
bathed the dogs in the juice for a week. This made the dogs strong. In those
days there were lions and animals with long back legs and short front ones.
They could open doors and kill your creatures (chickens, cattle) but once the
dogs were ready nothing could harm your beasts. If a lion tried to bite a dog
it would jump back as if it had touched an electric fish. The dogs could not be
cut by anything. Anyone coming to the village with a gun could not shoot the
dogs. The bullets would never hit them. This knowledge has died with the
forefathers.”
Our gardener became a Muslim in 1977, the
only one of his generation. He is sad that the old ways and the old knowledge
are not being maintained and that he, himself, does not carry them inside him. He knows
that they are at odds with modern religions which stamp out ancient lore in the interests of a single god..
Labels: Making dogs invulnerable. Accra #Ghana. The old ways.
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