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Ana settles on her sleeping mat – squeezed onto a tiny edge of it by four fuzzy dogs, each of whom licks and nuzzles her. Her upper body rests on a firm triangular cushion, to help ease her congested chest which persistently wracks her diminutive frame.
She is tired.
Her day has been one long cycle of feeding around 17 dogs and 20 cats, but in the sticky heat sleep eludes her so she watches the huge TV screen under from under her pile of dogs.
About a year ago Ana lost her soul mate and partner and despite the love of her daughter Nor and her gang of fur babies, she misses him painfully every day.
The love that tiny Ana has to give is enormous and she pours it into street dogs, house dogs and cats, from a seemingly bottomless well. Before work, Nor cleans out and feeds eight of the cats who live in an enclosure in the back porch. The back door is open during the day but strangely, they choose to stay inside, gravitating to the invisible web of love spun by Ana. The two ladies live on tobacco and strong coffee -and love. Nor feeds one last cat, in her bedroom, by syringe and leaves for the day.
The love that tiny Ana has to give is enormous and she pours it into street dogs, house dogs and cats, from a seemingly bottomless well. Before work Nor cleans out and feeds eight of the cats who live in an enclosure in the back porch. The back door is always open during the day but strangely they choose to stay inside, gravitating to the invisible web of love spun by Ana. The two ladies live on tobacco, strong coffee -and love. Nor feeds one last cat, in her bedroom, by syringe and leaves for the day.
I get up at 6.30 and it is hot already. The dogs timeshare ‘my’ room and it is time for me to vacate it for the shift change. Four or five dogs clamber onto the made bed, ruffling and raking the covers into a comfy nest where they settle until noon and the next changeover.
I watch as Ana dishes out generous portions of cooked chicken and rice from huge pots by the roadside then balances them strategically on the car bonnet and roof. Canine shapes emerge from fields, storm drains and nowhere, hovering in the shadows but still none cross the invisible boundaries.
With military precision, plates are deftly placed on the verge at regular intervals as each dog warily and hungrily scoffs their own portion, eyes and ears ever alert. Each portion is infinitely more than I have seen either Ana or Nor eat in a day. The quiet crossroads is a canine soup kitchen to seventeen lucky dogs, again under the benign spell of love. Each has a name and a story, from the lame one who lost a foot in a boar trap, to the mother of four three-month-old pups under the rambutan tree.
The dogs and cats embrace this routine, from eagerly being shut in a small, hot room for some hours, to happily dozing in a shower tray all day (to avoid being picked on) even though the back door is open. These animals seem to respect and adore the tiny lady who loves and feeds them and they respond to her powerful but gentle leadership; I have never heard her raise her voice. My western veterinary nurse instincts twitch and struggle to comprehend the fact that this situation is wrong: it breaks all the rules, yet it works.
Travel and observation enable us to witness fascinating conundrums like this and it is addictive and humbling.