I was doing some writing today about Ginger and I was reminded of one of the funniest “cultural difference” lessons I learned in Haiti.<\/p>\n\n\n
Americans can be\nweird about our dogs. We buy stuffed animals, soft beds, and canned food for them. We will\nwrap gifts for them at Christmas time and refer to our dogs as our \u201cfur babies\u201d and as “members of the family”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It was\nnot that way in Haiti.<\/p>\n\n\n
Ma Lwi was a sweet Haitian lady who cooked for our family a\nfew nights a week. As she prepared the meals, she would often set aside scraps\nof fat and skin trimmed from the meat. I knew she took those scraps home to feed\nto her dog. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I will never forget the first time I visited her at her\nhome. Her gate was made of metal sheeting and when I knocked to announce my\narrival, a little dog in the yard raised a terrible ruckus.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
As Ma Lwi opened\nthe gate to me, I said, \u201cSo this is your dog! What\u2019s your dog\u2019s name?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
Ma Lwi gave me a puzzled look and responded simply, \u201cDog\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n
It had no name. It was an “it”, not a “he” or a “she”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The thought of giving a dog a name struck her as strange. As far as she was concerned, that dog was not a member of the family \u2013 it was there to work. It was the dog\u2019s\nduty to alert the family to the presence of intruders and, preferably, to scare those intruders\naway.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And for its trouble it was paid in table scraps, not affection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was doing some writing today about Ginger and I was reminded of one of the funniest “cultural difference” lessons I learned in Haiti. Americans can be weird about our dogs. We buy stuffed animals, soft beds, and canned food for them. We will wrap gifts for them at Christmas time and refer to our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4565,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4564\/revisions\/4565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}