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Pablo

I never thought that I'd buy a dog from a street-side vendor hawking puppies through the windows of passing cars. But that's how I got Pablo. I was walking along the side of a major road in Lusaka, Zambia, on my way to the plaza housing Shop-Rite and the only movie theater in the country.

It was far from uncommon to see men selling various odds and ends to people in passing cars. These men were persistent and invasive. Socks, combs, candy, mirrors, grapes, oranges - all appeared through the windows of taxi cabs, usually accompanied by an expressionless face and monotone voice announcing the seller's wares.

"Oranges."

As if the obvious oranges needed description.

The day that I bought Pablo, three men stood in the median, each holding a chubby puppy. A chubby puppy was not a common sight in Zambia. All the dogs with which I was acquainted in my village were malnourished, emaciated and abused. They approached people only with their tails between their legs; they cowered and crouched as low to the ground as possible, as if hoping to evade detection but simultaneously desperate for the scraps of nutritionally empty food that might be leftover from outdoor nshima meals.

These puppies looked fat, healthy, clean. As I approached to take a look, I don't know that I intended to buy a dog. It felt spontaneous, like an impulsive reaction to their coincidental presence. But it wasn't. I'd been in Zambia over a year by then, and still I felt out of place. I felt rootless, adrift, desperately lonely. The hours in the village passed much too slowly. I wanted a dog for the nonjudgmental companionship. I wanted something to love me.

So I looked them over, bought the puppy that looked healthiest, and I carried him around Lusaka in a cardboard box. When it was time to go home to my village, my new puppy and I boarded the bus for the 10 hour ride north to Kasama. He didn't have a name yet.

In the application for the Peace Corps, I quoted a Pablo Neruda poem called Keeping Still. In this beautifully idealistic poem, Neruda asks for us all to count to twelve. To cease moving, to cease talking, to "stop waving our arms so much". He calls for us to stand in the shade together, to not speak in any language, and in this moment of silence, to find brotherhood and compassion. The beauty of great writers and poets is in their ability to make you feel as if, finally, someone has articulated the feelings you weren't even yet aware you felt, the sentiments and convictions you were

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