why JP was late

"I almost threw up... I don't want to think about it." -JP's response when I asked him about what he found in the yard.

Our walled-in and gated courtyard is shared by the 4 apartments in our building.  One of the neighbors in our building has a puppy (she is fully grown now but I still think of her as a puppy) that has become more than annoying.  I feel sorry for the little dog, she just wants to be loved, but her way of getting attention is jumping at people and biting ankles.  Some neighbors across the street from us had a wedding party at their house last week.  December is the month for a lot of weddings here, I guess because of the cooler weather and because it isn't time for planting or harvesting.  Very early on Thursday morning the neighbors butchered a cow and it was served up to the wedding party attenders later on Thursday. 
Well, Friday morning we were sleeping and woke up to the sound of the nearby mosque's call to prayer at around 5am.  Usually I don't hear the call to prayer at all, or if it does wake me up I just turn over and go back to sleep.  But this Friday morning we woke up and smelled something foul drifting in through the open window.  "what is that?!" It was pretty awful but as it was still dark out we couldn't see what was out there.  We closed the window and went back to sleep.  When it was light out and we got up, we discovered that the neighbor's puppy must have gone out in the street (sometimes the gate doesn't get latched) and dug through the trash of the neighbor who had butchered the cow.  The puppy had brought a large trash bag full of rotting cow parts into our courtyard and must have had fun tearing open the bag and spreading the stinking guts and stuff around just outside of our bedroom window and next to our front door.
Jean-Patrick realized that this problem needed to be taken care of right away as the smell wasn't improving any and there were already hordes of flies.  We also couldn't let our dog outside until it was cleaned up.  So he was late for school because he was a hero and cleaned up the mess.  After re-bagging up all of the nastiness, he hosed, soaped, scrubbed, and rinsed the paving blocks that make up our yard.  What a guy!  After all of that he needed to get himself cleaned up before he could go to school. 
This is the sort of problem that I just never encountered in my life before coming to Mali.  Maybe the neighbor's dog could poo in my yard, or their cat could leave a dead bird or mouse, but never rotting cow innards.