R.I.P. My Friend

This is the last picture ever taken of JoJo, I think sometime in November of 2007.

She died just before the Cambodian election, in July. I had left the house to buy some water and then got sucked into watching part of an election debate at a friend's restaurant. When I got home, I saw the neighborhood kids gathered on one of the bedframes that sits in front of a neighbor's house. They were looking at JoJo, who was lying on her side on the ground. They told me that she had been hit by a moto. She didn't look so bad; there was a little blood on her muzzle. But she was seizing slowly, as if trying to get air. Every few seconds she would draw her chin toward her chest, tensing all her muscles, and then relax again.

After this had gone on for a few minutes, she stopped moving.

I ran off to cry, vaguely wondering what is done with animal corpses here. Do they get buried? When I stopped crying, I went out by the garden in our backyard, which, I felt, would be a fine place to bury JoJo. It looked like my host grandpa (really my host mom's aunt's husband, who lives in the house behind ours) was making some preparations, getting ready to light some wood. Was it to be cremation then?

Alas, no. I think I was being willfully stupid while the preparations were going on, but when one of the neighborhood boys started filling an enormous pot with water, I finally had to ask. "What're you doing?" "Preparing JoJo. To eat," he said matter-of-factly.

And that was the fate of my beloved dog. All that evening, the scent of something I didn't want to think about wafted through the house. When dinnertime came, my family was tactful enough not to offer any of it to me: only the people at grandpa's house and some of my host brother's friends ended up eating it.

More recently, I mentioned to my family during Pchum Ben (the Cambodian ancestor holiday) that I missed JoJo. They decided that, since I didn't have any local ancestors to honor during the festival, I could throw my balls of rice to JoJo's spirit the next time we went to the pagoda. The thought of feeding her spirit was some consolation, but I still miss her. All I can say about that is, she was a good dog.