Dogs 'n fishbones

Well, after the hard work on my last blog entry, I've received a couple of comments about its length and how I must have "so much time on my hands," but then followed by, "But, I'm enjoying reading about your experiences. Keep them coming!" Hmmm... these are mixed signals from my loyal readers. Perhaps I could shorten my entries, but that would take away from the richness of my fabulous descriptions, don't you think?

I suppose I could give up writing every day, but then the entries would definitely be longer, and most likely all would read like 'Memento.' Perhaps everyone enjoys the 'Memento' entries. I guess if I wrote only once a week, all of them could go on and on and in backwards order. Would you like that better? Hmmm... Let's think about that for awhile. I'll get back to you 'mawa'.

Rest assured if you're still trying to catch up on a daily basis that this one will be relatively short (well, by Jen X standards). Nothing too earth-shattering happened today, but I did tell my students that I was writing a blog about my experiences here, and that I've already mentioned them. I think that made them nervous. I told them they'd better behave, or I'd write about them on the blog. I wonder if that will work as well as the Santa lie works on kids. "You'd better be good, or you'll end up on my naughty list, and the whole world reads that list on my blog, cuz my blog's really popular, and I have at least a billion readers!" Ya, that should do it... I'll tell them during the next class on Wed.

Speaking of the class, did I mention last week that there was a lecturer's strike at Chancellor College? But, since I'm not in the union, I don't get to take a vacation. My students are really loving me now, because I'm making them write a research paper, and they have to come to my class, but not most of their other classes. Ya, not so fun for them, but they're good kids, and they're taking it well. Amazingly, the attendance has been very good in my class since the strike started. I guess that's a good sign, at least. I hope they don't vandalize my car. I'll keep you posted.

Other than that, not much to tell. I did find out this evening that dogs in Malawi can eat fish bones. I thought fish and chicken bones could kill dogs, but I guess it's just American dogs. You know, we spoil them like we spoil our kids. If we just fed them the bones, they'd be tough and chew them up and just eat them. Like my dogs. Deliwe and I ate outside this evening because it was so hot, and of course the dogs (the one I adopted and his sidekick) were begging. We were eating chambo (the famous Malawi fish), and Deliwe laughed at me when I said I couldn't give them the bones. "Of course, they can eat them," she said. I answered, "But won't they choke on them?" "No, these are Malawian Dogs. They can eat anything," was her answer. Sure enough. I threw them the bones, and they chewed them up and ate them. No subsequent choking ensued.

It's all got me thinking. Somehow in our information-saturation, we've become more misinformed and overly paranoid. Perhaps I'm reading into it a bit too much, but it seems that we do tend to over-think things, let parnoia rule us, and take the joy out of life (especially for our dogs and our kids). In that spirit, I won't over-think this idea and drive all of my (3-5, now maybe 2-4) readers nuts by rambling on about it. Let's just say the dogs here can eat fish bones, but in the U.S. they only eat dog food. Let's see which ones live longer, more fulfilling lives. I'm bettin on the African dogs. Tiwonana mawa!