A Dog's Life Is A Dog's Life. My friend Elizabeth was a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, Africa, last year. Mali, one of the poorest of countries, is between the Congo and the Sahara Desert. Shelly is also in the Peace Corps in Africa. She is in Kenya, where the economy is at least a little better.
Some people have dogs, but they are more for protection from thieves than for pets.
Now Box and Jimmy are no longer always chained, and they have become accustomed to the kind human attention that we take for granted and comes so easy in our relative affluence. Shelly said most Kenyans assume all dogs are fierce and dangerous, and they are deathly afraid of them. The adults carry large knives and raise them threateningly towards any dog who comes near. They think nothing of kicking and beating dogs and the children commonly throw stones at dogs. Now, watching Shelly and Bill with Box and Jimmy, the local villagers refuse to believe they are Kenya dogs.