The boy who cried wolf, or The dog who cried xixi

I think I'm raising a hooligan. A fluffy white hooligan named XimaXima who seems to have hit the rebellious teenage stage. Maybe it's my fault, I'm the working parent who is never home to give my child the love and attention she deserves. Well, that's not really true. I only work 7 am to 1 pm every day, rushing back to feed my kids lunch, often a specialty meal I've saved from the escolhina. The escolhina serves lunch to the students, usually rice with some sort of protein- goat, beans, chicken, fish. All these things I rarely, if ever, cook for myself at home. (My usual source of protein is eggs and canned tuna. Sometimes beans.) So of course the puppies are excited to get a special treat, a nice change from their usual dried fish cooked with flour.
They wake me up at 5 every morning. I let them out and feed them before I return to bed, even if it's just to catch an extra 30 minutes of sleep. They then spend the whole day playing outside, wrestling with each other, chasing chickens, exploring the neighbor's yards, and who knows what. Xima shows up at least three times a day at my work and each time I carry her and deposit her back in my yard, but she keeps following me. Stubborn dog.
At around 7 or 730 in the evening, when I want to round up the dogs and close the doors for the night so as not to let mosquitoes, she is nowhere to be found. Mel, the quiet mousy one, is already laying down on her towel in her corner of the kitchen looking sleepy.
I walk around the yard for a bit calling Xima's name, which she has been responding to less and less. More often than not I see a flash of white (it's like me trying to squat in a public place in the dark to do business, hoping that no one will notice. Unlike Mozambicans, I don't blend in the dark). I call Xima again, but all I get is the cheerful wave of a curly white tail as she continues to trot the other way, too busy with her adventures at the moment to bother with me, the one who feeds her three times a day and raised her from a tiny puppy, saving her from a life of reckless children who dont know the first thing about caring for dogs and who named her Dragao (Dragon) thinking the entire time she was a boy. I actually paid 100mts the other day to buy her from her 'owner,' some neighborhood kid who once again had tied her up at his house one day when he felt like having a dog for a few hours.
How ungrateful of her to turn her back on me now, I sigh. She tends to disappear right after dinner time, possibly to eat dinner
course number 2 at someone else's house, as if I don't feed her plenty. (This is possibly why she is now significantly larger than Mel, who started out only slightly smaller). The worst is when she comes home with rancid breath, having chewed on or eaten something disgusting and rotten, and licks me affectionately, leaving the smell on me.
I scoop up my little explorer, who is getting a little heavy to carry long distances, and tell her it's time for bed. She starts struggling in my arms when she sees where we're headed, lightly starts biting my arm. (I also think she may be teething.) I put her next to Mel, on her own towel inside the kitchen.
'But mooooom,' I imagine is what she's whining.
'But nothing.' I respond. 'You've been out all day. Time to go to bed. Look at Mel, she's sleeping on her towel already. Go lay down.'
Xima looks at me reproachfully with her big black button eyes. 'But Bop and Jave get to stay out ALL night.'
'Well, they're not my dogs. My house, my rules.' (I have already got this child discipline thing down pat!)
Xima whines again, lays down resentfully. I think I've won for now.
Oh, no. The moment I walk away she's up, trying to climb the boxes that fence off their area of the kitchen, boxes that do not get bigger as the dogs do. She's over in no time, wagging her tail triumphantly as she passes by my room headed for the door. She sits expectantly in front of the closed back door as I point to the kitchen and tell her, 'NO! Go lay down!'
She looks at me, wags her white tail petulantly. 'But I don't wanna.'
I pick her up and lug her back to the kitchen. She sulks a bit but never manages to look ashamed. This is another difference between the dogs: Mel looks constantly guilty, with her timid slouch, droopy tail, furrowed forehead, and tiny black eyes. Xima is the golden child everyone compliments for her great personality and good looks. Even when she's in trouble (ie. Taking a huge dump in the house) her tail is held high, wagging back and forth, and her eyes hold a look of complete innocence. I tell her she could have more shame, at least appear contrite, but it's not her style.
I put up the straw mat around the boxes so she can't see around them. She instantly starts whining and whining, a high pitched annoying kind of whine that grates on my nerves. I leave her alone, refusing to give her attention. She tries getting out again, scratching at the boxes to try to pull herself out.
She reminds me of one of the kids at the escolhina, Stelio, who cries unconsolably all day and never makes it a full day without running home. His parents are obviously less than pleased; they're paying money for him to be here but he just won't stay. They are constantly bringing him back; sometimes waving around a stick and threatening to hit him (completely acceptable here) if he keeps escaping, but he obviously would rather be beaten and scolded than stay where he's supposed to... That's how Xima is.
Finally I can't take it anymore. 'What is your problem?' I ask, turning the lights back on in the kitchen. I wonder if i'm misunderstanding something. A few times early on, I ignored the puppy cries that later resulted in me having to clean up puppy messes.
'Do you have to go xixi?' I ask. Xixi is pee, in Portuguese, fyi. Obviously I have a bilingual dog. Xima whines again and wags her tail. I decide she looks more desperate than usual. I let her out of the corner (Mel watches all this with a sleepy eye but does not get up. What an exemplary daughter) and open the back door.
Xima hesitates for a second. I urge her to go do her business, and she doesn't need to be told twice. She bounds down the stairs, heads for her chosen part of the yard and squats down. Success.
It's dark and I can't tell if she is going xixi or otherwise, but im happy it wasn't in the house. She finishes and begins sniffing around in another direction. I call her name and she ignores me. 'XIma!' I say more forcefully. She looks at me and then promptly turns and scampers off the other way, out of the yard.
Cursing, I change from my house flipflops to my outdoor flipflops and race out the door after my runaway daughter. I should be in bed by now, we should all be in bed by now, what the heck!
I walk around for a bit in the dark, but see no trace of a mischievous white and brown puppy. The stars at night are amazing in Africa. The mosquitoes, however, are not.
I return home grumpy and Xima-less. It's not dangerous for her to be out at night: there are virtually no predators in Mozambique, all exotic animal species decimated by the civil war. I just don't want her causing trouble at night and sleeping during the day.
Twenty minutes later, as I'm drifting off to sleep that's been beckoning all night, , I hear whining at the door. 'Mom! I'm locked out!' Xima says.
'No kidding!' I respond. 'I disowned you!'
Empty, empty threats. I get up to let her in and she comes bounding in, casually laying down next to my bed as if that's where she sleeps.
'Sorry kiddo but I don't trust you yet to hold your bladder.' I put her back in the kitchen for what seems the millionth time just this evening. She finally lays down and I leave for my hot date with my pillow, who has been waiting for a while now.
An hour later it's Mel stirring and whining softly about how she has to go xixi...

Oh, and I bet I know what you're thinking: it must get lonely in Africa. ;)