Animals, People, and some rather interesting Places...

With Jeremy Hulme, SPANA’s CEO, off visiting our projects in Tunisia, this blog is from Simon Pope who oversees SPANA’s Communications Department.

Like many people of my generation, Ethiopia came into my consciousness about 25 years ago with the BBC reports about the drought and then the subsequent Band Aid / Live Aid initiative overseen by Bob Geldof. Now, a quarter of a century later, and with new BBC reports about droughts in the region , many commentators were asking what lasting impact all that awareness-raising and money had made on this country. On what was to be a short trip to this country of contradictions, I got a small chance to see for myself.



Ethiopia is vast. Its also densely populated, multi-cultural (predominantly Christian but with more-than-tolerated Muslim communities), green (in parts), desert (in others) friendly, welcoming and politically stable. Addis Ababa (the capital) has undoubtedly the worst air pollution I’ve ever experienced (possibly due to its lofty altitude) and some of the most inane driving as well – It’s as if everyone has been to some sort of Jedi Driving School (“Don’t look. Close your eyes. Drive by your instincts.”) where only telepathy means that an accident doesn’t occur every 30 seconds – which it probably does anyway.

SPANA’s work here is unfussy, uncomplicated and yet badly needed. Although motorised tuk-tuks are making inroads after being imported from Asia, the favoured method of transport is a horse drawn taxi - that is assuming you can’t afford a Toyota Hi-Lux and seemingly the only ones who drive those, (incredibly badly I might add, and as if they have some God-given right to do so) are UN workers.

So I join the SPANA mobile clinic team for a day, at one of its regular visit to the fairly rural town of Modjo, about 100km south of Addis Ababa. We set up the clinic in a grassy compound and the horses which just ten minutes before had been hooked up to their taxi carts, come filing in.

Despite the shade of the trees its sweltering, but the team plough on. I vaguely wonder if they might stop for a coffee break but they all know that for every minute the owners are here they are losing business, and that means losing money. So they simply don’t stop. Not even for five minutes. Everyone helps each other out. Abebow is handing Gebre fat, squirming ticks he’s removed from a horses rectum – Gebre is holding them in the palm of his hand, trapped with his other forefinger to stop them leaping to freedom before he goes away and squishes them. Kefyalew has set up an improvised practical lecture corner for a group of local vet students. Even Alex, SPANA’s driver is fetching and carrying fresh supplies of iodine and cotton wool.

There’s a second wave of arrivals – names are added to the list to ensure no-one jumps the queue. Kefyalew begins treating an injury caused by poor shoeing – these are nearly always pieces of rubber cut from old car tyres and roughly nailed on to the hoof. The village farriers are poorly trained and their work is shoddy. We see a number of injuries caused when the exiting nail ends aren’t properly turned down, so that they lacerate the opposite fetlock as the horse trots. More common is when the nail doesn’t come out where it should at all and punctures the soft part of the hoof. Its inevitably painful for the horse and invariably results in an infection, which is what’s happened here.

Kebedi is one of SPANA’s most junior staff, but he’s a wizard when it comes to hooves – a few soothing words in the ear of a rather skittish horse, a stroke of the neck and then in one smooth movement he strokes and lifts its leg.

He carefully examines the hoof deftly cleaning and paring it to find the source of infection. He files it flat , and then scans the surface again but its still eluding him. But he’s not giving up. Bent double, a heavy file in one hand and a sharp knife in the other and somehow still holding the hoof between his knees. He’s absolutely determined to help this horse out.

And then after 20 minutes of scraping, filing, squeezing, clipping, surrounded by flies, and with sweat running down his face and a bruise of his arm courtesy of a swift sly kick from the next horse in line, he finds the nail hole. He asks for me to get Iodine and I watch as he flushes out the painful looking abscess – a needleless syringe shoots Iodine into the hoof and it shoots out again just as quickly from the drain hole. He keeps at this until he’s satisfied that its thoroughly flushed out. Only then is the wound expertly dressed, and after a shot of antibiotics its bandaged hoof hasn’t even touched the ground before he’s calling for the next patient. Job done. But his face shows real pride for that one moment as the horse gingerly steps away, and then he’s back to work again, bent double and already stripping the rubber shoe off the next one.

Its gone one o'clock when the last of the horses leaves the compound. A check on the stats shows that in 4 hours, 85 horses were assessed, treated and sent home in a better shape than when they arrived.

(PS - Another Blog from Ethiopia to follow later this week,...)