The Circle of Life on Steroids

Is it true what they say -that you can only truly know your home if you leave it? They say this is true because traveling provides perspective. That is, living in another culture allow you to compare values, habits and practices to those of you own culture, thus bolstering your understanding of how your country fits in the world.

For me, knowing your home and knowing how your country fits in the world are two related but distinct sets of knowledge. I've lived in rural Panama for nearly two years in a place that, aside from a few children having watched "Avatar" in school, could not be more different from the United States. But have I developed a better understanding of the US as a result of this experience? No. But I have become better at comparing the US to other places. Simply put, the best way to know your home more deeply is to stay put; the best way to learn how your home fits in the world is to travel. Since I am currently rooted the the Comarca Ngäbe-Bugle thousands of miles from my "home" lets stick to comparisons.

A couple months ago I romantically blogged about the birth of puppies in my hut. Events following that blogpost turned a promising summer into a summer of death. I have been forced to compare US and Ngäbe reactions to pet death, which I did not expect to be so different.

One month following the birth of three puppies I returned home to find Pinto, the puppies' three-year-old father, dead in the corner of my hut. We dragged his stiff body from his deathbed, dug a hole, and buried him. He died of starvation. One week later one of his puppies died of unknown causes (which usually means starvation). Another week, another puppy died. Initially we thought this puppy was stolen but days after he went missing we found his decomposing body by a nearby stream. He probably died of starvation, too.

Two weeks later, naively thinking the dying was over, we lost Puma, the adorable two-year-old mother of the puppies. Her tongue turned black after she was bitten by a snake. If you are a math wiz you will have figured out by now that in a two month period we went from seven dogs to three. While the sheer amount of death surprised me it was the reaction from Samuel and his family that shocked me the most.

Puma

They were mildly perturbed but nowhere near distraught. Not even upset. The most that was said was "poor Pinto" or "you don't think he starved to death, do you?" When Pinto died, I tried to hide him from five-year-old Luiz but his brother Jonathan told him to come see something in my house. Thoroughly expecting waterworks upon seeing the lifeless dog, I was surprised to witness Luiz look at Pinto then yell to Lela, "Hey mom Pinto died." Not even pretending to be upset, he then poked Pinto's ear with a stick then tore off after an unsuspecting chicken, swinging his stick wildly and completely unfazed.

American's react to pet death differently. For example, my mom actively searched a year for her missing dog, refusing to accept that he was gone. My step-mom missed work when her dog recently died. I remember balling when my childhood dogs were brought to the dog pound. I recently listened to Scott Jannsen -an Iditarod dog musher- cry while giving an interview about how he kept his dying dog alive by giving him mouth-to-muzzle resuscitation. The dog eventually coughed and shot of bunch of who-knows-what into Scott's mouth, and Scott was jubilant. Do American's love their dogs more? Or are we just soft? Or is it something else?

Ngäbe's live in a place with an accelerated life cycle. Luiz didn't cry because he's already seen many dogs die in his short life. Ngäbe dogs are for hunting, not cuddling. When I pick my dog up (which is often), Lela always yells "oye, cuchino" ("ewe, gross"). In short, dogs are treated as dogs, not humans. Just because someone is hardened by experience doesn't mean their capacity to love is changed or diminished. It, however, might be shone in a different way.

Comparing American and Ngäbe values has been a rewarding part of Peace Corps service. That people act and make choices based on their experiences is so obvious it is easily forgotten. But it is critical to remember if you want to be an accepting and understanding person. While my understanding of the US has not changed as a direct result of travel, I have. Perhaps through travel we grow up and through that maturation learn to see our homes differently, or maybe even re-define what home is. This reminds me of the old adage "home is where the heart is." To continue this line of thought, Maya Angelou once said, "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." In that way we can learn about our homes through travel; we do it by learning about ourselves.