My friend, Susan, and I walk down the hill to the river (about a 3 mile hike) a few afternoons a week. We enjoy the time to chat, and sometimes we get into deep discussions, but most times we just share news about our days’ happenings and our families’ news from the U.S. Normally the Turks’ female dog, Bibe, (means thought or idea in Sango) goes along with us. She sometimes likes to run along right in front of one of us, which leads to tangled feet and tripping once in awhile, but generally our walks together are fine. This week, though, we had a serious problem. Bibe is in heat, so she had an entourage along with her. Now normally, suitors should behave themselves and not get into trouble with the chaperones, but these guys only had one thing on their minds. They just wanted to prove themselves and be Bibe’s partner, all by themselves. Susan and I felt like we were walking in a surrounding cloud of barking and growling and strutting and stomping and other actions that were pretty disgusting but I won’t even mention them; you get the picture. We decided that the walk to the river wasn’t going to be very pleasant, so we decided to try to put Bibe in our fenced-in yard. No sooner had we locked the gate, but there was Bibe by our sides again, with all her boyfriends. Apparently we have some fence repairs to do. Then we decided to walk in the ag orchard, but we didn’t have a key to the gate. No problem – we hopped the fence. We got about 50 meters down the path and who should join us but Bibe and her buddies. We gave up and hopped back over the fence, went to Michelle’s house for our chat, without the walking part. The next day Susan locked Bibe in the Turk boys’ kitchen and we had a lovely and peaceful walk.
