Getting around in Afghanistan is never easy.
This second trip involved travelling with the Army – so lots of carrying and loading stuff yourself, along with not being told very much about the ‘when’, ‘why’, and ‘how’. And all with the added joy of wearing body armour and helmet.
So it was on a C.130 transport plane from Kabul down south to Camp Bastion – borrowed from the Americans? – then after 36 hours travelling and a couple of hours sleep, the white-knuckle ride to Lashkar Gah by helicopter.
Helicopters are nervous animals, especially when they are on the ground – so they tend to land and take off as quickly as possible – giving the ground crews endless possibilities for the torture of the unfortunate passengers – normally shattered looking squaddies carrying impossible loads. The trouble is we had to join in.
So “Right everyone – out to the landing site, with all your kit, at the double”
“Sorry – wrong chopper – everyone back into cover again”
“Oops sorry, it was the right one after all. Back again, everyone”.
And all in that damn body armour, and mid-day heat.
Still, at least when you fly, you really fly.
Trying to avoid the baddies of the region, the pilot flies as fast as he can, whizzing over fields and houses as low as possible while the gunners search anxiously for signs of attack from the ground.
Sitting right at the rear, I watch the tail-gunner leaning far out of the open ramp, nervously swinging the gun from side to side. We are low enough to see women milking their cows, and sheep grazing in the orchards, while children load firewood on a donkey. They look up and wave at us as we zoom overhead. Yet, these are the bad-lands where British troops are fighting and dying, trying to push back the Taleban and give the local people confidence that they will not be abandoned.
And that’s why SPANA is here – trying to help the people and their animals.
There isn’t one single Afghan Vet in the Province.
SECOND DAY.
The Army’s certainly changed since my day. The veterinary equipment we’d despatched from John Street just over a week before, had actually arrived! Unbroken, undamaged, un-pilfered – whatever has happened?
So, we were able to make a start with our training course for the veterinary technicians working for the Ministry of Agriculture in their deeply lovely building in down-town Lashkar Gah (next to the Governor’s Residence, so in a slightly tricky area).
These were all originally built by the Russians when they were there – and there’s been no maintenance or care since. Of course there are the normal problems – no electricity or lavatories, bomb scares – but hey! this is no time to be picky!
The Director is there to open the course – and laughs uproariously at the photos I’d brought of our previous meeting. I thought my body armour and helmet looked rather fine, actually. He obviously hadn’t seen Gordon Brown’s.
Then as the eight ‘trainees’ got involved in the course – listening avidly to the wonders of sheep parasites, and malpresentations in lambing – we were for the first time able to get a little closer to ordinary Afghan people. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they have a strong sense of humour – often of the ‘gallows’ kind – unsurprising considering the challenges, violence and naked fear they face on a daily basis. Without humour I expect one would go mad.
Though it’s not always easy to see the funny side. One morning , I was half-way through a dramatic portrayal of how to cope with a ewe with a lamb’s head presenting (sticking out) and feet back, when anxious sentries burst in to terminate the lesson. We were being measured up by suicide bombers, so it was considered important that we should abandon everything and get out. Not half. Sounds almost as dangerous as teaching in some inner city sink schools.
Poor Keith was unprepared to be asked how a shepherd from Wales could be so fat. Much sniggering – there was probably some deeply rude sexual innuendo. I escaped merely because of my great age and grey hair. Anyone over fifty is treated with real respect. I must remember to point that out to my children.
Anyway – they could all have a laugh at our attempts to write a Farmers’ Husbandry Booklet in Pashtun – everyone thinks every translation is written by some foreigner in Wolverhampton. And the drawings are of Afghan sheep and shepherds! Actually they seemed to quite like it. They’d never owned a real book before.
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All told I'd been either inside an aircraft, or a departure lounge from 1pm Monday to 5pm Tuesday so i was not in the best of spirits. At times like this its not a good idea to start answering back to a US Customs official but i couildn't help it.
A few years ago I was doing some wildlife conservation work in an African country which shall remain nameless which had the authorities found out about could have resulted in a whole lot of trouble. Taking advice from a contact there, he advised that I should pack my belongings in anything that looked like a gun case, since looking like a professional hunter would elicit the least amount of suspicion. I duly procured a solid square travel case with locks and metal bindings, and was merrilly waved through at customs. So I dug it out again on this trip, mostly because it would ensure that all my camera equipment would be lkess likley to get squashed. No-one batted an eyelid in the Southern Hemisphere, but on arrival at JFK it was a whole diffent story.
"Whats with the case?" said the customs official.
"Sorry?" I said, completely failing to comprehend
"The case. Whats with the case?" Pointing at it, snatching my passport away,and refusing to maintaining eye contact all at the same time.
Now call me a pedant, but how are you suposed to answer a question like this? If I was in a restaurant, i might ask the waiter "What's with the steak and kidney pie?" and he might reply along the lines that it was with cracked potatoes, mustard gravy and with an underlay of distressed morels. I might then have to ask him again what that was but you get the idea.
So how to answer this. I did consider "Well with the case today we have another case, a black Samsonite jobbie, in which are my clothes, a Camel shoulder bag of which i am very fond and a baggage trolley, if we're being completist."
I decided against this. I think I just went to something like "errr...."
He tried a different tack. It didn't help.
"Did you register this on departure?"
"Departure? From where? Zimbabwe? Why would I need to register it?"
It was only then that I realised he must be thinking it's a gun case. this despite the fact that the label on the front said "Orient Express suitcases - For the discerning traveller" rather than "Large Elephant Gun".
His final throw of the dice...
"What's inside the case?"
Hallelujah. Praise be. The guy has asked a question I can answer.
"Oh its just camera equipment. I've been in Africa taking photos for the charity I work for."
For the first time the guy fixed his friosty eyes upon me
"So why didn't you tell me that in the first place?"
As the words came out of my mouth it did strike me that they perhaps were not the most conciliatory ones I might have uttered. But I said them anyway.
"I didn't thnk it appropriate to volunteer information to a question I was not asked."
"You're not from here, are you?" Said the customs official, and for a moment I saw a world wearyness in his eyes before he handed my passport back seemingly with considerable relief and said simply. "Go."
When I got to Boston, I found that the locks on my case had been cut off, and inside was a pre-printed note from Homleland Security. Translated from its original it basically says "Hi there. We broke into your case because were'd allowed to and had a good rummage round! Too bad about your locks, but just make sure you know, we're not liable. If you want to tips on packing your bag better (because yours was inept) then visit www.tsa.org.
I'm glad I'm going home this evening. Its been a very long trip.
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On Sunday we were up early. This was not going to be an easy day. A family we had met several years ago had sold up and were leaving behind 130 years of history, and an assortment of donkeys and horses. They could simply not make ends meet here any longer.
16 years ago they had taken over an idyllic spot, which had once been a popular out-of-town cricket club built in the 1950’s. Their house was the pavilion – a thatched white-painted building with a hedge and gate through which incoming and outgoing batsmen would have come to and fro in immaculate cricket gear. Closing my eyes I could imagine the sound of leather on willow, and the applauding of a well-played cover drive.
But my rhapsodising over this corner of a foreign field was, to the owners of this little piece of paradise, just another insult to injury. Their distant relations had come up with Rhodes in the original Pioneer column and now here they were, 120 years later, going back down south again.
The head of the family was a no-nonsense patriarch. A vice-like handshake, ice blue eyes and an unshakeable conviction about the complete and utter lack of future of his country, much of which he laid at the door of the British Government.
But today was about us finding homes for his family’s donkeys, many of which his talented daughter had rescued from wilfully cruel owners, or from abandonment by farmers in straightened circumstances, and in each was an investment in time and effort by the family to turn their miserable lives around. It was, unsurprisingly, an emotionally charged and traumatic day for that family, ahead of their seemingly imminent relocation. We loaded up a mother and young foal and set off for their new home at wildlife orphanage outside Bulawayo.
We bounced along various dusty Zimbabwe backroads with intermittently stunning views of the distant Blue Mountains, with mother and daughter in the back. Eventually we reached our destination and the new home for Lucy and Chilli. Ian drove the pick-up round the back, and we shepherded the pair into their new home. This took quite some time as they grabbed at every bit of the lush grass they could as we ambled through the trees and eventually into a cosy thatched barn with a deep bed of straw.
Karen and I began a wander round the centre. The manager had left us in the hands of her daughter and the volunteer co-ordinator who began calling out to the first resident, a gregarious and friendly warthog. This duly came barrelling out of the bush towards us at quite alarming speed and then sat behind the fence eyeing us up. Warthogs are quite amazing creatures – although basically wildpigs they look nothing like our western porkers and this one stood behind the 5 foot fence in front of me gazing up balefully.
What happened next was something that I was not wholly prepared for.
Whether it was annoyed that I hadn’t emptied a large bowl of food for it to eat, or whether it just didn’t like my shirt very much I shall never know but suddenly, without any warning, it exploded upwards as if detonator had gone off underneath it, somehow rested two razor-sharp Warthog trotters on my chest and headbutted me square on the nose.
The sensation was somthing akin to having been punched in the face by Mike Tyson. I did not so much see stars as all the planets, several constellations, a large number of asteroids and a greater part of the Milky Way. For a moment I thought I was going to hit the canvas but then I realised that I was surrounded by people asking me if I was OK.
More as a way of reassuring myself I kept saying “I’m fine. I’m fine.”, which I certainly wasn’t. My eyes were streaming and I was sure my nose was broken. Karen had by now stopped laughing and realised this might be serious but I kept saying “No really. Im fine. Honestly!” as I staggered around punch drunk.
The warthog gazed upwards, seemingly disappointed that I wasn’t squaring up for round two. The rest of the wander was a blur.
I am informed we also saw some lions, a leopard or two and possibly a Serval. We might have seen Elvis Presley, a Beatles reunion and the Queen Mother doing the Dance of the Seven Veils and I wouldn’t have noticed it.
At the end of the tour, an enclosed pen had some particularly photogenic baby vervet monkeys in them. By now I had recovered my composure slightly and came closer to the bars for a better look. At this point one baby vervet climbed level with my face, grinned an endearing baby vervet monkey grin and then peed all over my shirt.
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Wednesday
Its not a long drive from Bulawayo to Gweru, the location of our veterinary training course, but as we set off I am slightly nervous. Even a year ago, Foreign Office advice was to not travel in Zim but a year is a long time in this country. When i was here in January last year, the shops were empty, petrol stations dry and people seemed truly desparate. Zim had just printed 100 Billion Dollar notes but they would still only buy a couple of newspapers. Now the whole place looks and feels different.
The notorious Bulawayo potholes have been filled in (well the worst ones anyway..), people’s heads are up, there’s not even the ubiquitous security guard outside our hotel. Best of all, its chucking it down with rain, and that makes most people very very happy. So Karen and I, loaned the trusty DPS 4x4 point ourselves north and plough through a deluge up to Gweru. Here we meet up with two young and dynamic Zim vets, Lisa Marabini and Keith Dutlow of the AWARE Trust who are doing some amazing work not just ion our area of concerns but on a whole range of Zims wildlife. Keith and Lisa asked SPANA if we could run a equine veterinary training course for both Government vets and groups like the ZNSPCA (Zim Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).
The two days course gets underway on Thursday with Karen covering everything from equine ageing techniques hoofcare. Many of the vets have had no other training since vet school, and they are especially keen on the practical sessions. In between Karen gets to check out an elephant with an abcess and we all have a little play with some very small lion cubs! Friday is a clinic on the outskirts oif Gweru where local donkey owners bring their animal in for treatment.
This is an initiative that SPANA funded with AWARE after we got reports about donks being attacked by smallholders with machetes and axes after straying into their crops. Its 9am and we are already seeing some nasty injuries – axe wounds, burns caused by what looks like hot ash or boiling water. And some really horrible abcesses – I have a fairly strong stomach but even the hardened vets were grimacing as one brave soul lanced a huge one – “Its like a volcano!” his colleagues cried “A volcanic eruption of pus!” I think I’ll stick to Public Relations and taking photos rather than have any aspirations to be a vet. A policeman appeared and demanded some money for no apparent reason but such things are just accepted as part of day to day life in Zimbabwe.
It began to rain but the vets ploughed on, now really getting into their work and slowly ticking off about 40 donkeys lined up for treatment. By early afternoon it was all over, and we said goodbye to new and old colleagues, who expressed real gratitude that SPANA had come out to do this course for them.
One vet coerced us to come and see one of the horses under his care which he was struggling to diagnose so we drove out of Gweru to a small farm. He though the thoroughbred mare might have a snake bite but Karen diagnosed a twisted hoof – with no x-ray it was going to be hard to be accurate but the owner was grateful we’d come out. We turn south and head for Bulawayo in the rain again.
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Simon Pope, SPANA’s Communications Director, and Karen Reed, SPANA’s Veterinary Director, have spent the last week in Zimbabwe. SPANA has a long history of helping animal welfare efforts in this beautiful country, from supporting the rescue of horses abandoned by farmers after the land invasions to the work of the Donkey Protection Trust (DPS) in Bulawayo, which provides simple but effective vet care to working donkeys and horses.
In a series of blogs, Simon gives an insight into the work being done here, which was funded by SPANA donors responding generously to an appeal in 2009.
Tuesday
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to a group of people that Zimbabwe was one of my favourite places on earth. I’ve been lucky enough to travel and even live in various parts of Africa but there is nowhere like it. The people who I said this to looked visibly shocked. “Are you joking?” one asked “I mean, it’s an awful place isn’t it?”
Zimbabwe is a country that i have never and probably will never be able to understand.
It has an indefinable, mercurial character that is also a huge mass of contradictions. It is a political basket case and i could write pages about that but it wouldn’t change a thing. So SPANA’s work here is all about supporting the efforts being made to help working equines because by doing so we are helping those people who depend completely on those animals for a livelihood.
So we are back here again, and met by Ian Redmond of the DPS. Once I’ve supplied him with Marmite and a few English newspapers to remind him of the fact that even the old homeland is going though a few problems, he drops us off at the hotel, throws me the keys to the car and we arrange to meet up on Friday.
We are staying at The Bulawayo Club - a gleaming white wedding-cake confection of colonial architecture with solid, impregnable looking columns like a portcullis at its entrance. Stepping inside it smells and even sounds like a Pall Mall Club. The oak floors and panelling seem to have become impregnated with decades of cigar smoke, gun oil, port, and impossible Boys-Own tales of man against beast. Its a glorious relic of an inglorious age and because thye Club is on its uppers its turned over part of the building to a hotel chain, and the rooms are some of the least expensive in Bulawayo.
Club luminaries from the past peer out of the prisons of their picture frames their faces frozen in oils. The cage lift would not have looked out of place in an episode of Poirot – all black and chrome Art deco rectangles.
Other rooms of uncertain purpose have been mothballed. I sneak a look in one whose roof has fallen in, but even here an indignant looking be-whiskered and ruddy faced portrait of a former Club chairman is staring out at me as if to say “You! Yes you Sir! What the devil are you doing in the Sebastopol Lounge wearing a patterned shirt? Have you no sense of propriety?”
It dawns on me that this is a sort of colonial Hogwarts- the place seems alive with the spirits of its patrons all gazing down or skulking about pre-occupied with the moral descent of the 21’st century. When one of the hotel guests at dinner on Friday night begins to breast feed her baby, I can almost hear voices calling “Oh no! This is the end! Take down the flag! The end is nigh...”
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