Puppy Love

So lately my life is full of flowers, sunshine, and puppies. Well, not too many flowers- although we have some on our gate... For those of you who don't know, Mus's house is now inhabited by 12 puppies, and I will now proceed to bore you to death by telling you all about them.

First, you should know the permanent residents, the adult dogs. We have three females. First is Satchmo, who is the oldest and the mother or grandmother of every dog and puppy in the compound. If Satch were a human being, she would be an old English governess with a tight bun at the back of her head, silves spectacles ona chain, and a dumpy frock and apron. She is all about the rules. No fun allowed and affection comes secondary to function. For example, it's her duty to feed her 8 puppies and keep them clean, and she performs these duties very well, but it is not her duty to cuddle her puppies, and she will growl at and even bite any puppy who approaches her face. She has similar rules for humans. No human is allowed to touch her under any circumstances, and she'll yell at you if you try. I'm not allowed to touch her puppies, but I am allowed to sit near them, and they are allowed to touch me- although I'm ony allowed to do this if I come to her den with a present, such as a cracker or a piece of bread. I'm also allowed to feed them by hand, as long as she sniffs it and approves the food first.

Now on to Poos-Poos. She's the next oldest and the daughter of Satch. If she were a human being she would be a flower child. She's free and happy and easy-going, and life is all about the fun and the loving. She's terribly stupid, but has a heart of gold. She loves food and physically trembles in awe when you est in front of her. She currently has a litter of 4 puppies and it's her first go at mothering. She's given birth twice before, but was too stupid to understand that she must be careful to not sit or lie on her newborn pups- as a result, her first two litters were smothered in the first days of their lives, leaving Poos-Poos a bit distraught and totally confused. This time she has the hang of it, though, and her puppies are happy and well-fed. You can see in her interactions with them, she really loves being a mother. Lately, she's even taken to mothering Satch's pups when Satch is in a mood. Satch's pups will be hungry or scared and crying, and Poos-Poos will go and suckle them and lick them and let them chew on her ears and legs. They just love her- they never get that kind of loving from Satch.

And lastly, we have Scooby-Doo (By the way, I didn't name these dogs, Mus's sister did) Scooby has had a tough life. She is also Satch's daughter. Unfortunately, there is a guy around who takes the puppies when they get old enough and sells them, and he's not nice. He tried grabbing Scooby one night when he was drunk, and Scooby freaked out and bit him and then ran and hid. He got really mad and took a 2 x 4 and beat her, and seriously injured her spine. This was all before I ever met her. They tell me that for awhile she couldn't walk, and would drag her back legs around behind her. Mus's mom applied some herbs to her bones, and now she's healed enough that three of her legs are fully usable, and the fourth is usable except when she runs. She's much smaller than the other two, probably as a result of the inujury when she was a pup, and even though she's fully grown and almost 2 years old, she's not sexually mature. I doubt she ever will. She's naturally timid around people and dogs, and frightens easily.

When I came none of the dogs would permit a human to touch them. But once Satch and Poos-Poos had their puppies and were spending all their time in their dens, Scooby got lonely and bored. She's always been taken with me, because I would greet her by snapping my fingers when I came in (something I learned from Mus). She started sitting near me to watch me. Then, gradually, she would come up to me and lick my fingers. I took this as a sign. So, working on things for some time, I was able to convince Scooby to let me pet her and even get a flea collar on her, though she was NOT happy about me trying to hold her still while Mus put on the collar, and she was pissed at me for awhile.

Once Poos-Poos saw the scratching Scooby got, she decided she wanted to jump on the love train too. Sometimes I catch Satch looking longingly at us while I scratch them, but as of yet, she hasn't let down her guard. She will eat out of my hand though, which is a pretty big step for her.

So I'm taming the dogs, and everyone's excited. All the people in the house (short of the puppy-seller) wants to see the dogs happy and healthy, and they fully approve of my taming them, since now I can pick ticks off of them and put flea collars on and just overall take care fo them. I'm also taming the puppies- Poos-Poos's are as good-natured as their mother and come when I call. I'm working on Satch's. I'm hoping we can keep maybe one puppy, but even if we can't, I love my time with them now. It's amazing to wake up in the morning and head outside, and get covered in puppy kisses. Puppy loving is the best, isn't it?

So you think your boss is crazy...

I’ve been volunteering at a school for the last 2 + months, and I have been banned from setting foot inside of it again. “Why?” you ask. Because a sixth grade kid used school computers to look at porn.

Please keep in mind that this is a kid I’ve never met, who used a computer I’ve never used, in a classroom I’m not responsible for, at a time when I was not present at the school, nor was I supposed to be.

The owner of the school, who Mus and I have long known to be crazy, flipped out upon finding out that someone used her pcs to look at a porn site. So on Wed. morning she called the school and informed her secretary that the computers must remain switched off until she come to handle the situation, and all computer classes are cancelled. The secretary informs Mus, who decides to investigate. He goes to the internet history, and finds out exactly what time the site was visited. Sure enough, someone visited the site on Sat. afternoon after Mus’s shift had ended. He starts interviewing kids to see if they saw anything, and before the end of the day, he’s found out that this 6^th grade kid was the one who visited the site.

Mus tells me about the situation, and together he and I look through Windows to see if we can block such sites in the future. We find the Content controller for Internet Options, and I show him how it works so he can tell his boss about it.

The boss lady doesn’t show up for two days. She finally comes after the school has closed and Mus is waiting for her when he should be at home. He goes into her office, ready to tell her who did it and off his suggestion at preventing a recurrence.

But she wasn’t interested in hearing him talk. Instead, she just yelled at him and insulted him for a long time. Finally when she pauses briefly, he jumps in to let her know he’s discovered the kid who did this. She still wasn’t interested, and accused Mus of turning on the computer- against her orders- to tamper with evidence.

Through this Mus has remained pretty calm. At the next pause he tries to explain to her his solution, but he starts his explanation with, “Jessica and I have worked out a solution…”

At which point she started insulting me, who was not present. When I first arrived here, she had invited me to use her PC to check my email and keep in contact with my family in America. I used her pc 5 times, visiting sites like meanded.com, facebook, and wikipeadia. I also was looking up some websites on epilepsy, because a friend here has it and I wanted to learn more about treatment.

But the owner of the school was saying how now there are all these shady websites in her address bar, and who knows what I had been looking at, and the websites probably link to porn… (yeah, Adam should start charging a subscription fee with all those naked bodies floating around meanded.com!) Essentially, she was insinuating to all the staff members there that I had been using her computer to look at porn, and that somehow I’d also influenced the 6^th grader to do the same, even though I’ve never met the kid nor has the kid ever touched the boss lady’s computer.

Well, of course Mus was extremely angry, and he pointed at her and said, “What exactly are you accusing Jess of? You need to just come out and say it, because she has nothing to do with this conversation. You should retract that statement unless you have something you can show us against her. It’s really unfair for you to drag her name into this and I’m not going to sit by and let you do it.”

She hemmed and hawed and was like, “You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that. Still, I don’t want her to ever use my computer again.”

The next day Mus was at school, and the other teachers told him that she kept going on about me and the sleazy websites I went to, and had directed her secretary not to let me in the school again.

We think the real reason she attacked me in this way was because of an incident early on in my stay. Once I had been in Ghana for two weeks, she started asking me to do things we had not previously discussed. She seemed to have wanted me to be something of a personal assistant/ protégé to her. She asked me to join girl scouts with her, which I politely declined. Then she asked me to put together an ad for the school to put in a publication. We hadn’t discussed this kind of work, but with my previous experience with campground ads, I felt qualified. I had begun working on it when she realized that she had already asked a professional to put together an ad. Which was fine, but then she wanted me to the calling and clerical work of placing the ad. Which I began working on, until she informed me that I had better make sure that this publication was worthwhile, because she wasn’t going to spend $200 if it wasn’t going to benefit the school. She told me I should go down to the publication office, check out the magazine, talk to the people in charge, and decide if the ad will draw more students to the school.

Can you imagine my family asking Mus, after he had been in the U.S. for 2 weeks, to go to Madison by himself and check out a magazine and decide if we should spend our money on an ad for a business he’s not even familiar with? Then imagine that Mus didn’t speak the language and wasn’t getting paid at all. The situation was crazy. I’ve never even seen a Ghanaian magazine, how can I tell if one is successful and worthwhile? How do I know how to advertise for a school- we don’t even do that in the U.S. Besides, I don’t travel by myself in Accra- doing so is the equivalent of asking the taxi drivers to rip me off, since I have no idea where things are in Accra or how to get anywhere.

So I politely informed her that I did not feel qualified to handle the task, and I wasn’t comfortable making this decision, and I handed all the information and materials back to her. I was very polite and didn’t insult her or try to show her that it was crazy; I just simply told her I wasn’t qualified.

However, this lady is the queen of One-Sided Conversations. Her philosophy is that employees should not speak in the presence of their employer- not even when they’re being spoken to. No one says no to her, and she was furious.

Unfortunately, this is just one of many crazy things she does. She gives these crazy decrees- her latest is that the kids who come voluntarily to school on Saturday should be locked inside from 9 to 4 without any access to food or water. Mus was astonished and furious about that- that’s like prison! Or she’ll go into a classroom and yell at a teacher in front of his students- she’ll call him names and insult him with the kids right there, and then take over the class to “show” him how to teach properly. Or she’ll randomly pick students and call them to her and make them read to her, and if they make a mistake she yells at them and calls them stupid until they cry. And she always talks to her staff like they’re naughty children, without an ounce of respect for them or their dignity.

Originally when she hired Mus, she told him he would work from 7:30-2:30, Monday through Friday. Now she’s upped that to 7:30 to 3:30, Monday through Friday and 9 to 4 on Saturdays. And she hasn’t increased his salary, even though she added 12 more hours to his work week.

Mus is looking for a new job, which I think is a good idea for two reasons:

A) We’ve both stood up to her and said no. This is unacceptable behavior in her mind. She’s furious at both of us, and she would fired Mus on the spot except that all her staff is quitting. 3 teachers quit just during last week alone. She’s lost at least 5 or 6 teachers already this term, which means she’s running on 80% of the staff she needs- and she doesn’t have any substitutes to cover. She can’t afford to fire a teacher at this point, because she doesn’t have enough as it is. But I have a feeling that as soon as she’s filled all the positions again, Mus will be the first to go.

B) He loves the kids and he loves the work, but the crazy lady making the staff and students suffer breaks his heart. He fluctuates between rage at her and compassion for the kids. So I know that if he’s teaching in a workplace that isn’t brimming with fear, he will really love his job. We just need to find him such a workplace.

So what does this mean to you fine people, out there in cyberspace? I won’t be as connected to the internet, so I won’t be able to communicate with you so much. We’re looking at me going to a café once a week, if that. Just so you know. There’s no longer any hope for adding photos while I’m here, so I’ll publish an awesome album on the net as soon as I get home.