zen and the art of home pest management - part ii

I have a little mouse problem. Much better than a giant rat problem, which some of the other volunteers have (bush rat is apparently quite yummy and one of those suckers is a hearty meal) but still I need to do something about it so a little while ago started telling people I was interested in getting a kitten. What I was probably saying was something along the lines of "me want child-cat" but I think I must have gotten the point across because last Friday at the crack of dawn (ok more like 7 but still way before visiting hours) I woke up to someone calling "Aminata Porto" (that's "white girl Aminata) from my front porch. Crawled out of my mosquito net and slid the bolt back from the front door to find the neighbor girl Aissatou holding a black and white furball. "Baby cat!" she said proudly, holding it up to my face where it hissed at me. "You want a baby cat right?" Um, well, yeah.... "OK!" she smiled, set the cat down on the floor, and closed the door. The kitten slinked around the door to my kitchen, bumped into the wall and spat at it, and disappeared inside.

Um, well, looks like I got me a cat! I decided to let her chill in solitude under the bamboo shelves where she was hiding for a bit while I got some supplies. I looked up the word for sand in my Pulaar dictionary and set off to get 1) sand for litterbox and 2) fish for food. Simple, right? Yeah, right. There was a giant pile of sand sitting in a lot down the road so I went over and asked a guy nearby, "I want sand. I have baby kitten. I take?" He said I had to ask the owner of the sand, he's "over there" with a wave of the hand down the road. Directions are really imprecise around here, I mean not like there are street names of course but you could do a little better than "over there." Anyway I went over to where "there" looked to be and tried again: "I want sand. You have sand? I take?" No luck, I had to ask the maitre who lives behind "that door there." Awesome. I went down the alley he waved at, picked a likely looking door, and walked into a courtyard where half a dozen women stopped their cooking and clothes washing to stare at me. I put on a big smile, "Hi! I have baby cat. I want sand. I take sand? It is good?" They all stared at me for a few more seconds before bursting out laughing and talking. "Eeeeh! White girl speaks Pulaar! Ha ha, porto has a kitten. Ah! Porto wants sand for her kitten!" They helped me fill up my bag with sand, laughing and chatting the whole time, made introductions all around, invited me to eat breakfast with them, and waved me on my way. Sweet! Step 1 down.

Step 2 was a longer goose chase that sent me all around town (stocks get kind of low the day before market day during the hungry season) til I ended up at the health center where the Chef's wife had some bonga (dried) fish (there are some great words in Pulaar). Everyone seemed to think it was hilarious that I was buying fish for a cat, oh silly American with her strange ways! I headed back home with a small parade of children that kept growing as kids shouted out to other kids "Hey, Aminata got a cat!" I shooed most of them away when we got to the door but there were about 10 kids I let in to peer at the kitten crouched in her corner. I said she was sleeping cus I don't know the word for terrified, and then we all sat down and flipped through my photo album and magazines and public health picture flip books for the rest of the morning. One of the girls asked at some point if the kitty was a Diallo or a Bah (the last names of about 95% of the people in my town, there's a kind of friendly rivalry between the two--you know, Bahs are cattle thieves, Diallos eat beans, hahaa it's good for hours of entertainment) and I said actually she's a Kamara and since it's a custom here sometimes to name babies after the day they were born on she's now Juma Kamara. So mice in my house be warned cus you are mouse brochette just as soon as Juma has enough coordination to walk for more than two feet without falling over!