30 2GM Monday May 2 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
I
n Nigeria, caring for dogs
can lose you your home.
Ugochukwu Ikpeame had
amassed a pack of 15 after
finishing high school when
his parents said he had to get rid
of them. He spent two years
considering taking to the streets
rather than living without them,
before persuading his family to
let him have some back.
“I’m not sure I could live
without dogs,” he said. Now he
lives off them. In an unassuming
side street in Abuja, the capital,
12 hairy characters of every
shape and size romp around,
chasing plastic balls and
splashing in a paddling pool.
Loki, Kiki, Unity, Tiara and the
rest have been booked into the
Boris Pets Hotel, the first of its
kind in a country that is only just
learning to love its pooches.
Dogs were once seen as agents
of terror in Africa. In Belgian
colonial Zaire, alsatians were
used to put down unrest. In
apartheid South Africa, some said
they had a taste for black flesh.
The market for pets in Africa is
far outstripped by that in the
West, with three in ten British
households and four in ten in theUS thought to own a dog, but
studies suggest there is year-on-
year growth in Nigeria, and that
Africa as a whole is throwing off
those historic connotations.
Ikpeame, now 30, charges up to
15,000 Naira (£29) a night for the
biggest dogs. He hopes to expand
to offer a complete VIP — or VID
— service along the lines of a
top-end hotel for humans.
Others have the same idea. The
Lagos Boujee Dog Hotel offers
“executive suites” and cages with
arched gates and faux wrought-
iron street lamps.
Grooming shops, vets and a
social media app for pet owners
have also sprung up. The alsatian
is the most popular breed in
Nigeria today, accounting for 800
of the 5,000 dogs listed for sale
on the online site Jiji. Other big
dogs such as mastiffs and
boerboels are in
demand too, but
there is also a
market for
smaller,
fluffier breeds
such as the
Lhasa apso.
Fora
Okpala, 35,
believes she is
Nigeria’s first
professionally
trained pet
groomer. She learnt
her trade in Kharkiv,
Ukraine, where her
mother hails from, before
starting her Pawfect PetGrooming business from her
home in Abuja in 2017. She now
has a full salon and four staff.
They deal mostly with dogs, but
also the occasional cat or rabbit,
and once even a monkey.
She said that many Nigerians
did not understand what it takes
to care for an animal. “You have
to remember Nigeria is still a
country that eats dogs — in two
states, Jos and Calabar. It’s still
looked upon as, it’s an animal, it
doesn’t have a brain, why should
you give it more than the basic
needs of food and water?”
Many still treat dogs as no
more than security guards, and
leave them uncared for when
they go away, sometimes not even
feeding them. Under a bridge in
Abuja, a trader sells them from
cages in which they are packed
tight, unable even to lie down.
Dogs are brought into Okpala’s
salon shaggy, stinking and often
flea-ridden, she said. “We help to
make people understand that it’s
a member of the family and you
have to care for it.”
The Nigerian pet market is no
longer just for the rich. Bolanle
Hassan, 32, said she launched the
social media app Petmi to give
owners a place to connect and
“post cute pictures”. She was
aiming at a wealthy clientele, and
was surprised that many of her
users were “typical
everyday Nigerians”.
She believes
Nigeria has been
slow to warm to
the idea of
owning a dog
because it has
a lot of
Muslims, who
consider them
dirty. Others
can’t afford a
pet, or don’t
have the space.
Whatever the
reasons, Africans are
clearly starting to fall in
love with dogs, which for
Ikpeame can only be a good
thing. “If you have a pet you treat
right, that’s the same way you will
treat everyone around you.”Richard Assheton
ABUJABoujee Dog Hotel in Lagos offers
“executive suites” for its guestsusers were t
everyday
She b
Nige
slow
the
ow
be
a
M
co
di
can
pet,
hhhave
What
reasons, A
clearly starting
love with dogs whichastiffs and
n
tearnt
arkiv,
her
om beforeFROM OUR
CORRESPONDENT
Nigerians are learning to love the dogs they
used to fear or simply eat, with a hotel for
pampered pooches in Abuja leading the way
Before they commune with the Devil
in orgiastic abandon to celebrate
Walpurgis Night, witches in the Harz
mountains of central Germany have
to obtain a broomstick licence, or
Hexenbesenführerschein.
Bea Fulst got hers as a child, but
adult women take their test too. “You
have to learn how to handle a broom,”
the 48-year-old witch told The Times.
“You run in slalom lines round an ob-
stacle course and then hop over a
tree trunk. Then you get a certifi-
cate saying you’re qualified.
Every girl here wants to be a
witch and every boy a Devil.”
Fulst and dozens of fel-
low witches, dwarves and
devils of all ages celebrated
the coming of spring by per-
forming a play in the most
Germanic setting imagina-
Broomstick battalions return
to revive spring fertility rite
Strawberry fair A California ground squirrel, orphaned last year as a baby and bottle
fed, has a feast before being released back into the wild at Elkton, southwest OregonROBIN LOZNAK/ZUMA/PAcentury English missionary Walpur-
ga, a student of medicine who be-
came a nun. Canonised on May 1 in
about 870, she is venerated as a healer
and for her ability to repel witchcraft.
The mayor of Bad Grund, Holger
Diener, 44, has played Lucifer for the
past ten years. “I fetch the witches and
fly with them to the Brocken to wed
them,” he said, wearing a red-horned
frilly wig and a cloak at a rehearsal
last week. “I’ve really missed this.”
The folklore gained fame thanks to
Goethe, who referred to witches
gathering on the Brocken in his
magnum opus Faust in 1808.
The festival has become an inter-
national tourist attraction since the
1990s. Shops sell witch brandy, witch
beer, witch dolls and witch fridge
magnets. Every village has conjured
up its own Walpurgis event.
Even though other parts of Ger-
many and northern Europe celebrate
Walpurgis Night, it has become a
hugely important source of regional
identity for the historic mining
region which relies heavily on tour-
ism and the timber industry.ble — a forest clearing beneath a tow-
ering rock topped with a statue of an
eagle dedicated to Wilhelm I.
Around two thousand people
attended the performance on Satur-
day above the town of Bad Grund,
one of dozens of events in the Harz
mountains to resume after a two-
year break because of Covid-19.
The towns and villages that nestle
in this landscape of forests, craggy
rocks and dark ravines put on bon-
fires, fancy dress parties, light
shows and medieval markets.
According to folklore derived
from pagan fertility rites, witch-
es descend from the Brocken,
the highest peak, each Wal-
purgis Night, April 30.
They dance around a
fire and kiss the devil’s bottom
before wedding him and he
bestows magical powers
on them. Villagers light
fires to protect them-
selves and their live-
stock.
The celebration is
named after the ninth-Germany
David Crossland
dWitches met in the Harz
mountains for the first
time since the pandemic