I came back from fetching pump water and see at least five boys, some with a puppy in arms, walking off to the bush. There was an air of excitement, such as you’d imagine perpetually surrounds Peter Pan’s Lost Boys. They shooed off Kuri and Levi, who tried to follow, and I was surprised the boys were successful, because after all, they were walking away with Kuri’s children.
After some time—I guess they wanted to be certain the puppies wouldn’t come crawling home—the boys returned to the compound empty-handed. I thought I overheard Kairaba asking Mamadou if he killed it and Mamadou saying yes. Inconceivable! These boys love puppies! Inconceivable…but not implausible.
Still, I wanted to believe the boys incapable of puppy-cide even more than I wanted to believe the puppies still alive, so I imagined a scene like in a movie where later the puppies come trotting home, or Kuri and Levi carry them home one-by-one, 101 Dalmations-style, because the boys didn’t actually kill them after all.
That night, just before dinner, Musa confided to me, “Today we tossed Kuri’s children to the bush.”
“Yes.”
“But I brought them rice. And milk!”
A week later, after dinner one night, we see one of the tossed puppies whimpering around the compound.We laugh, because he's such a scared little puppy in the beam of the flashlight, but then Neene starts complaining. She tells Gaye the puppies should have been thrown before their eyes were open. She told Amadou to do this, but he had not accepted; he'd said it was not good. But now look...
I guess that's what happens when you trust six-year-old boys to dispose of your puppies.
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