When Oxfam sent Toby Gooch to Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso as its director for West Africa, his wife Jenny found a house which a Dutch family had just left. The house suited the Gooches perfectly. Jenny was delighted. It was only after they moved in that they discovered why the Dutch family had moved out. The neighbors’ dog barked every night.
     It barked all night long. If there was light in the sky, it growled at shadows. It yipped at stars and howled at the moon. If the night was as black as the earth itself, the dog whimpered like a creature afraid of the dark. If someone passed on the road, it raised a ruckus; it rarr-rarr-rarred at being disturbed. Along about morning when the night was silent and empty, the dog whined with loneliness.
     Every night Jenny sat up in bed. Toby would moan, "I’m afraid to turn over, afraid the damn dog will hear and wail louder." Jenny said nothing. She listened for the sound of her daughters sleeping. But she heard only the ruckus next door.
     Dogs barking at night: the Gooches had faced this problem in Nairobi and Addis Ababa. There the barking had been sporadic; they had shrugged it off. This Burkina dog was the worst case they’d ever encountered. And now they had two small children. The girls needed restful sleep. But the prospects for that seemed doubtful.
     Jenny sought out the previous residents of the house she and Toby occupied. They were aid technicians from the Netherlands. "That dog is a real problem," commiserated the Dutch woman. On several occasions, she told Jenny, she had appealed to her African neighbor, a school teacher, just as she would have to any other woman. "I said to her, ‘Please, stop the dog barking! My children cannot sleep.’ But she did nothing. We moved away because of that dog."
     And it was still barking.
     Now Jenny and Toby and their children were having to put up with it, with the howling, yowling, yapping, yipping, and yelping all night long.
     Jenny pondered the Dutch woman’s approach. There must be some reason why it failed. She appealed to the elderly servant who helped her run the house. "Achille," she said, "you are wise. I have no idea what to do about the barking dog. Your wisdom must guide me."
     "Take a present to your neighbor," Achille advised. "She’s intelligent. She will wonder why you’ve come."
     "What kind of present?" Jenny asked.
     "Perhaps something you have here," Achille suggested. "You keep hens."
     "Should I take her some eggs?" Jenny asked.
     "Precisely," Achille said. Then he counseled, "And please, Madame, you must say exactly the words I tell you to say."
     Jenny selected the best eggs from the hens she and Toby kept. She placed them in a basket and called on her neighbor. The Burkina teacher received her pleasantly and Jenny offered her the eggs. "I am concerned about you," she told the neighbor, using exactly the words Achille told her to say. "Is there trouble at your house? We hear the dog all night. Can I help?"
     The neighbor smiled and took the eggs. She thanked Jenny for her visit and said there was no trouble at her house.
     "The visit went well, did it, Madame?" Achille asked when Jenny returned.
     She assured him that it had gone well.
     "Good," he said.
     And that was that. The Gooches’s relations remained cordial with the Burkina family next door. They saw the dog outside. It wagged its tail and sometimes barked a bit during the day. But never again did it bark at night.