Johannesburg is South Africa’s business capital. It is a sprawling metropolis that runs the gauntlet from first-world prosperity to third-world ghetto.
Johannesburg is a big, bustling city in the middle of the Rainbow Nation. Dogs either live in sprawling yards behind high electric fences or in dusty poverty on the streets. Spike made the transition as a baby stray.
We got him from a shelter in a sketchy area on the other side of the tracks. He was one of the lucky ones. Most are not.
Our first house was in one of the northern suburbs. We were young and wild and free and Spike was young and as wild and free as you can be behind high electric fences.
When he did venture out it was mostly to Emeretia Dam where he delighted in chasing ducks far out into the middle of the dam.
Thoughts and Things
Africa lives on in the people that leave. On some fundamental level the smell of the dusty earth, thunder rolling endlessly across the platteland, the hyena howl – are only a moment away. Don’t let pictures or politics fool you, we are all of the earth. And Africans know it.