This is my friend Bounkita - named after the donkey character in one of the children's reading books we use here.
He was also an orphan foal, so all in all, in a country like Morocco, he's a pretty lucky chap.
He earns his living as well, by being nice and gentle with all the kids who visit the SPANA refuge here in Rabat as part of the education proramme - 2300 children this year alone.
He's pretty important too. In the Arab/Moroccan culture here, everyone believes donkeys are stupid, lazy and ridiculous animals - so Bounkita gives them their first experience of a real live donkey. They just love him - and he enjoys showing them that all those stupid misconceptions are wrong.
Have you ever seen a donkey laugh?
Showing posts with label Morocco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morocco. Show all posts
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Bounkita
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Diana the Dog
Kirsty Brzeczek here – SPANA’s Fundraising and Supporter Care Officer. I recently returned from the Morocco Supporters’ Tour and wanted to share with you the tale of one of the happiest dogs I’ve ever met!
The story starts with newly qualified Vet, Patrick Sells, who not only volunteered with SPANA in Morocco but also raised almost £5,000 by journeying the whole way there on his motorbike! On his way to the Midelt refuge, situated between the Middle and High Atlas Mountains, he spotted a tiny puppy who had been abandoned. Dogs aren’t well liked in Morocco as they are thought to carry infectious diseases like rabies so they’re often chased away with rocks and stones. Patrick was determined that life would be different for little “Diana” though, who he tucked into his jacket and took with him to the SPANA refuge. He taught the SPANA technicians there how to train her properly and what a wonderful companion she could make. Almost three years later and it’s wonderful to see the relationship that’s developed between dog and owner and Diana has made an invaluable addition to the busy education programme there.
Monday, 18 May 2009
Back to Morocco
Spending a week in Morocco once again confirms why I love the place for its quirkiness – but also why it can drive people absolutely crazy.
We came for a host of reasons, which involved driving practically the length and breadth of the country – visiting SPANA’s most northerly, and southerly clinics.
Now, anyone who has had any doings with Morocco’s roads, and the unusual style and driving skills of its drivers, will confirm that it is an interesting experience.
I mean, call me old fashioned if you will, but would you expect vehicles, including mule and donkey drawn carts to regularly approach you coming the wrong way down the motorway, passing our astonished stares with nothing more than a cheery waive?
Or to see sheep and cows grazing on the central reservation – after all you wouldn’t want to waste all that lovely grass.
And if you happen to live on the other side of the main (very busy) Casablanca/Rabat motorway , what could possibly be more normal than a mother dispatching her children to run across, dodging the juggernauts, to get to the school on the other side?
But then, you drive down the Casablanca Avenue in Marrakech – it’s mid May – and the Jacarandas lining each side of the street are in their full glory. They create a thick haze of cobalt blue stretching into the far distance.
As we pass a bloke is painting the walls of a house and spills half the paint across the pavement. He doesn’t even notice.
Going up into the mountains the Tamarisk trees are also in full flower, and just for once, after exceptional rains this year, cattle and sheep are lying contentedly it their dappled shade, chewing the cud.
Even the poor old broken-down horses, mules and donkeys waiting stoically in our hospital in Marrakech look a little bit better than normal. Their owners ask pathetically for our help, but sadly there is no miracle injection we can give to make these animals young again.
But we do what we can – especially to try and ease the pain of old wounds and injuries. In that respect, I feel a certain kinship with them. I know old wounds and injuries I thought long since healed, come back to haunt us as we age. At least I feel I can look the trudging, loaded donkeys in the eye now, after trudging myself round the Marathon. And I only had to do it once – and then had to spend a week nursing the blisters.
Still, it did make an impression on the people. They now know that the English are completely mad – shaking their heads in disbelief at the photos of the three of us in our donkey outfits.
But we raised over two thousand pounds at a fundraiser in Tangier, and at the AGM in Rabat last night, people stood to applaud the donors of SPANA in Britain for their generosity.
So, who cares about their unusual driving habits?
Jeremy Hulme
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Rude Bishops and Morocco
It’s irritating, but whenever I tell people I’m going to Morocco, especially during the winter, they usually come up with “Oooh, you are lucky. All that lovely sunshine!”
If only they knew.
We just spent a few days visiting some of our more remote centres – Khenifra and Midelt stuck away in Morocco’s backwoods, in the Middle Atlas Mountains.
Absolutely blooming freezing.
It’s p****d down with rain solidly for the past six weeks (good for the farmers, it’s true), so the whole country is a muddy quagmire, (film-makers wanting to do the First World War trenches on the cheap, now’s your chance), floods everywhere, only now it’s December, it’s turned to snow, shutting roads, freezing pipes and bursting drains, generally adding to the jollity of life.
We spent a night in a jolly little ‘auberge’ in the hills near Midelt. No heating, no hot water, actually putting clothes ON to get into bed. People told me it was ‘characterful’. Frankly, I’d rather have a little less ‘character’ and a few more ‘mod cons’.
Strange though, I really love the area. One of the poorest regions in Morocco – 75% of all motive power still comes from mules and donkeys. Yet the people couldn’t be kinder or more hospitable, and with a sense of humour to help them cope. And my God, they need it.
Finally, on our way home – courtesy of Royal Air Maroc. The flight is both extremely full and extremely disorganised – the food came, but no water – and in taking away the trays they’ve just dropped a tin-tray of ‘Boeuf et riz’ all over my head.
Two blokes across the aisle, coming back from a Marrakech stag night have just been sick.
Sitting next to us is a Nigerian Bishop – in all his purple finery. And what an extremely unpleasant man he is.
Arrogance is mixed with a certain brutality, as he barks and grunts commands at the Moroccan stewards. ”TEA!”, “WATER!” he yells at them. I find I’m increasingly often having to remind my fellow passengers that we have a tradition in England of saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to people who give us things or help us, or do things for us. Twice in the last two weeks I've done this...and now to a Bish. It’s true, they look at me rather strangely. But didn’t they have mothers or grandmothers to teach them such things?
Our friend the Bishop seems to think we will all be impressed by his huge status if he treats anyone beneath him like a slave. No doubt he’s very big on theology, but frankly, a little short on Christian humility and the ‘love thy neighbour bit’
Oh well, never mind. It’s nearly Christmas.
It would be nicer going home, if I didn’t have the dread/guilt of another blinking training run tomorrow. The London Marathon. At my age? I must be completely barking mad.
Jeremy Hulme
Friday, 11 July 2008
The (Long) Road to Marrakech
Life has been a mite hectic of late – hence no blogs for a week or two. The biggest problem was the frantic rush to get everything shipped to Morocco for the wretched Eco-Museum in Toubkal National Park. All in all it’s been a nightmare – working with the local authorities over there (half of whom have been hoping the whole project would be a disaster), funding courtesy of World Bank, Diana working here on the text and displays, SPANA Morocco doing the translations. That should give you a bit of a clue as to the squabbling, fights and major opportunities for gold-plated, 24 carat cock-ups.
I mean, not only are we doing each bit of text in three languages – English, French
(taking 30% more space to say the same thing), and Arabic – where of course the printers over here don’t even know whether it’s upside down or not! And if that’s not enough, some bright spark decided to add Berber as well. And all the locals argue about its alphabet, or even whether it really exists. What a nightmare.
Then the World Bank got difficult and said all the invoices had to be received for payment by 1st July – so a mad rush to get all the displays finished and packed off in the little SPANA truck (remember, it brought all the stuff over from Marrakech for Chelsea).
The truck had spent the previous month parked outside our house in Essex, gradually being packed with stuff –including a full size replica Friesian cow.
Just before the deadline – and don’t tell me, I know that this is a guaranteed recipe for disaster – on the day before we’d booked the ferry we were due to receive the panels for the food-web display. Very sexy – back lit Perspex, with integrated art-work, flashing lights etc – only they were 2 metres 90 long, and the truck was only 2 metres 70. Disaster. And the designers couldn’t give a toss and just walked off and left us. Simon (the lucky driver), Diana and I, sunk to the floor in desperation and gloom in the loading bay. We were already two hours late.
We suggested cutting a bit off one end. ‘Can’t possibly be done’, the designers chirruped with that melancholy glee unique to the British.
Finally, following a blinding flash of inspiration, we discovered that if we unloaded everything, put the panels in diagonally, then re-loaded everything around them, they might just fit.
I swear the designers were disappointed.
So we waved finally a cheery farewell to Simon, setting off for Lille and a rendez-vous with our Moroccan counterpart.(Of course the truck broke down en route, and then despite having all the correct papers the Moroccan Customs impounded the vehicle – but it’s just too painful to go into here.
Then all we had to do was organise the wedding in the garden for our daughter. Horrific weather, but the tents went up, along with the running battle to stop the blooming rabbits eating the bedding plants as fast as we could stick them in.
But we got lucky, last Saturday afternoon the sun appeared, the little village church looked lovely - half of SPANA’s staff turned up, including the overseas directors, and we had a great party in the garden – with much singing and dancing.
At least it scared the blinking rabbits away for an hour or two.
Now all we’ve got to do is write the next SPANA News – by Monday!
Jeremy Hulme
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Writing this in the glorious luxury of the economy-class cabin of Royal Air Maroc, having just finished the delicious in-flight meal. All around me the happy passengers are dozing quietly, snoring gently, or hawking and spitting into the airsick bags.
I am feeling somewhat jaded after eight days on the move, without spending two nights in the same hotel – irritatingly leaving a rather fine pair of trousers that I’ve become rather fond of somewhere along the way.
It all started last Monday in Geneva where we had been invited to make a presentation to the UNHCR. That is a big deal. The livestock strategy paper we’d been asked to produce for Chad has been somewhat stalled (could it be the three million pounds we reckoned it might cost?), so it was really exciting to get a chance to shake them all up a bit. Simon (our communications guy) and I had done a bit of work on a bi-lingual presentation and a bit of film (culled from our appearance on Channel 4 News and the BBC – but don’t tell them), and it looked pretty good. We got a pretty good reception too. We've always tended to find in our dealings with the powers that be that amazingly, (and from with people who’ve got more doctorates and degrees between them than Tony Blair’s had free holidays), they rarely twig that nomads and poor farmers in Africa depend on animals. Perhaps we’ve begun to lift the veil from their eyes.
Then I went on to Marrakech that night by Air France via Paris. Big Mistake.
France was on strike. And not helped by them being whupped by Italy in the football while I was trying to get from Charles de Gaulle airport across Paris to Orly.
Royal Air Maroc cancelled a couple of flights, and I finally crawled into bed in Marrakech at two-thirty the following morning.
Then we had an inspection tour of our various clinics and projects with a couple of trustees, before winding up in Tangiers, the other end of the country, on Saturday.
I must have driven at least a thousand miles in the three days, dodging the police speed traps wherever possible, or trying to schmooze out of trouble when caught.
It normally works – ‘Oh officer, was I really doing a hundred and fifty in an eighty zone ? Surely not ? And your country is so lovely – what a silly stupid little visitor to your lovely country I’ve been’.
‘Well, yes you were. But don’t you ever be so naughty again –now off you go’
Though I did come unstuck once.
Several years ago I was stopped coming out of Ben Guerir on the way down to Marrakech, doing some amazing amount above the speed limit.
One of Morocco’s finest invited me to step out of the car and requested my driving licence.
‘Your middle name is Ferguson I see’
‘Yes’ I replied.
‘That’s interesting’ he went on,’ I once had a Ferguson television’.
‘Yesss !’ I thought to myself, ‘That should do it’.
‘That was my uncle,’ I replied, ’he made televisions’.
‘Great!’ he grinned at me. ‘Revenge at last. You’re fined five hundred dirhams – the bloody thing never did work properly’.
So in Tangier yesterday we had our annual ‘out-of-this-world-experience’, when the original It-Girl, Annie Lambton, organises a cocktail party cum fundraiser on the roof of her house in the middle of a sumptuous garden. Tangier is famous of course for its, er, ’colourful’ people, and they come along in force for drinkies, and don’t seem to mind too much having their cash forcibly extracted from them.
Jeremy Hulme
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Morocco - the good and bad
Perhaps I just don’t have much imagination, but when I’m standing shivering on Witham Station waiting for the 7.15 train on a winter’s morning, in the freezing drizzle and numbing wind, wondering if perhaps I’ve forgotten to put any clothes on, frankly it’s hard to believe that not everybody else is suffering the same fate.
So it’s quite depressing (probably even more so for you people reading this rubbish), to arrive in Marrakech last Friday and find that not everywhere is like Witham Station in January. Sorry to have to report, but the sun was shining, it was lovely and warm - people were even swimming. Not Witham Station at all really.
Of course that’s not quite true, because thanks to good old British Airways, we were four hours late, so didn’t actually arrive until one o’clock in the morning. But when we surfaced the next day and drew back the curtains, the sun was streaming into the room, and I was cursing the fact that I’d brought nothing but thick jumpers and heavy coats. Still, mustn’t complain, and I can assure, it really IS lovely to be surprised by warm sunshine in January.
So, having made you all jealous, let me remind you of some of the downsides of all this. The bad bits. Well, Saturday morning we went to the SPANA refuge (Good).
Queuing for treatment were about thirty horses, mules and donkeys, most of them looking like something out of a horror film (Bad).
But nice to see them helping themselves to a long soothing drink of cold, clean water (Good), from the huge water trough just by the entrance. Remember, I’ve been looking at animals like this for twenty years or so, but the wounds and crippling arthritis still shocks me (Bad).
But then I watch the SPANA team in action. (Good). With quiet efficiency, the two vets, three technicians, and three grooms, set about sorting out the queue (Good).
It’s nice to find somewhere unobtrusive, to keep out of sight, and just stand and watch ‘the action’.
Of course they’re not sentimental - SPANA staff see this and worse, six days a week. Yet alongside the quiet efficiency, as the different problems are assessed and ‘triaged’, or sorted into degrees of seriousness, there still remains that essential compassion. As one of the vets waits for a different wound dressing, I see him absent-mindedly fondling a donkey’s ears (Good).
Then I see an old grey mule. So old and thin, that frankly the only real solution is a trip to that great mule-stable in the sky (Bad – although quite Good as well, if you know what I mean). Then I see his owner. Thin as a pin, no teeth, and old enough to remember the Roman legions leaving Marrakech. Doesn’t look as if he’s eaten for a week (Bad) and when I ask, I hear that his mule is his only form of income – if the mule dies, he starves. So, we do what we can. Pain killers for the arthritis (the mule’s – the owner will just have to live with his), filing-down the teeth (the owner doesn’t have any), trimming the hooves (the owner’s are all twisted from ancient injuries), a wormer, then cleaning and dressing the sores and wounds (Good). We can give him a new bit, a doughnut bandage to lift the saddle of the sores (Good). We can give him a new head-collar and a SPANA nose-band, but by God, whatever we do, we can’t make him young again. In the end, I watch the two of them, like two brothers, limp off back into their hard cruel world (Bad) We have done all that we can.
Then we battle all day to agree the text for the eco-museum we are building in partnership with the Ministry of Eaux et Forets (definitely Bad), while the sun goes down, touching the snowy Atlas Mountains on the distant horizon red and gold, and we work on ‘til nearly ten. It’s not all beer and skittles.
The Road to Marrakesh
Patrick Sells, newly qualified from Liverpool Vet School, has finished his 3,100 mile sponsored motorbike ride to Marrakesh, which has brought in a staggering £9k!
Here are his impressions of the city and SPANA's work there:
"When I arrived in Marrakesh I was bowled over by the haphazardness of it all, I had forgotten how random Africa can be. An old man on a BMX, a sheep being carried on the back of a moped, a man in a wheelchair vying for a piece of road at a mad intersection, red lights ignored happily. I steered my forlorn course for the big green gates of the SPANA refuge. Inside I found a white-washed haven, a tranquil space in the mad busy city, where injured and sick working animals (as well as the small furries) are given free veterinary treatment, and a chance to rest."
"I threw myself into the work, finding it hugely rewarding. The ethos of the charity concentrates not only on treatment but also prevention. I spend time trimming feet and rasping teeth, between jaw-dropping cases, from trauma (usually road collisions) to disease (rabies to botulism), most of which you’d never encounter back home. Yesterday we removed a 3kg testicular tumour from a donkey, anaesthetised on a mattress on the ground outside. The frequent sight of severe, chronic harness wounds gives me incentive to do a good job on my project, which will hopefully shed light on possible intervention strategies for this huge problem."
"In the staff I have found firm friends, who have shown me the true Morocco, both in the city and up in the mountains, countless hilarious forays and adventures, happy memories. My third week coincided with the Muslim festival of Eid, so I spent the day preparing sheep with my new friends; in the ensuing feasts we ate everything from brain to testicles, my gastronomic horizons have been significantly broadened! Touch wood, I have only got sick once, and crashed my bike once, and I am still alive and kicking, loving every second here in Morocco, wishing I could stay longer. It has been a superb learning curve from a veterinary perspective, and a life experience I shall never forget. The contrast of Marrakesh and Midelt (high in the Atlas Mountains) is still staggering for me. I am off there again now, back up to the freezing heights for three weeks. I’m taking a tiny abandoned puppy along with me, I’ve named him Tadge (short for Tajine, photo). He will make a fine guard-dog for the Midelt refuge, behind which towers staggering snow-capped peaks. I will leave behind here friends and memories that I must revisit in the near future."
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
In the Bleak Midwinter!
This is the time of year when we try to visit all the countries – and battle with them over next year’s budget, and what we ought to try and achieve. And it really is a battle – blood in the snow. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, North Africa and the Middle East is often freezing cold at this time of the year. Literally, snow.
A couple of years ago, in the week before Christmas, we were working with Bedouin sheep flocks in the hills above the Jordan valley. The ‘leader’ of the flock is always a donkey, and the ewes follow him devotedly from grazing to grazing. We were worming rural donkeys and vaccinating the sheep-dogs. We came across this flock and its donkey, with three shepherds in traditional gear, two of them holding new-born lambs, with the snow-covered hills behind stretching away to Beith-el- heim across the valley. All it needed was a big, bright star.
Hardly a whisper of change in two thousand years.
The shepherds were gentle, kind and welcoming - it was probably the most moving ‘Christmas Card’ I’ve ever seen.
Last week we were in Morocco, our biggest project – we’ve got nine vet. hospitals there, to try and cope with the two and a half million working animals – not to count the dogs and cats – many of them abandoned – that find their way into our centres. We spend nearly a million pounds a year there, so there is a lot of work to do to ensure that we get best value for money. It takes a whole day, arguing over what price fodder will be next year (will there be a drought?), will fuel still go up at twenty per cent per year, and can we make that pick-up truck last out another year?
But at least it provides a little spare time. Time to go and visit Sidi Boughaba, - the coastal bird sanctuary we run. We ship urban kids in by bus, (over 120,000 so far), where they get an intensive day of ‘nature’ in the raw. From pond-dipping and identifying bugs down a microscope, to woodland walks spotting fungi and butterflies, to standing watching spellbound as the Marsh Harriers swoop and dive above their heads.
I always think these fabulous birds are the stars of the reserve – in December the twenty eight or so individuals are already sparring, to secure a mate and a breeding site. But in spring, if you’re really lucky, you can sometimes watch the males ‘tumbling’, calling up their mates from their nests in the reed-beds and throwing a nice tasty rat or something at them, which is caught in mid-air, then mum drops back down onto the nest. Not every girl’s idea of romantic courtship I suppose, but for Marsh harriers it works a treat.
It’s also a big deal that we have in the winter about a quarter of the entire world population of Marbled Teal – about twelve hundred individuals. It’s great to see them just sitting out on the lake kipping quietly.
Which was not what happened to us when we went to Mauritania.
Friday, 21 September 2007
Mt. Toubkal National Park, Morocco
SPANA has been working with the Department Des Eaux et Forets (a sort of wildlife and forestry Ministry) in Morocco for many years. I think it would be fair to say it has not always been an easy relationship. Something like that between Ken Livingstone and the Conservative Party would sum it up nicely.
Because we have built environmental education exhibitions in some of our refuges, as well as producing booklets and posters on endangered birds and mammals, we are seen by them to be the experts.
Sometimes I wish we weren’t.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, we eventually agreed to design and build an exhibition about the animals, people and natural environment of Toubkal National Park in the High Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco. This is to be in the currently empty building, titled ‘Eco Museum’, near Asni, a village on the hill road leading right into the heart of the mountains.
From there you can see mighty Mt Toubkal, 4,167 metres high, towering up into the piercing blue sky. The Berber hill people of the region call it Adrar N’dern, ‘Mountain of Mountains’ and retain a very healthy respect for the changeability and often violence of the weather - freezing snow-storms in winter, baking sun and desiccating winds in summer.
Anything living in the mountains has got to be tough; the plants, animals and of course the people. Which brings us to SPANA’s particular interest in the region. The villagers, depend absolutely on the toughness and resilience of that most wondrous creature – the mule.
Created by mating a donkey stallion to a horse mare, this remarkable creature has had more than its share of bad publicity, and a certain mythology has grown up around it. ‘Stubborn as a mule’, ’Mule headed’ – all denigrating a truly amazing animal.
Yet it was actually the mule that conquered the American West. It was mules, not horses, that pulled the prairie schooners. And it was mules that carried the forty-niners up into the Yukon and Alaska. The British Army had whole mountain brigades equipped with mules, complete with artillery specially designed to be packed on them. The Chindits in the Burmese jungle depended on them, and many a sick or wounded soldier owed their life to the hardiness and stamina of the good old army mule.
So SPANA has been only too pleased to provide veterinary care for the mules of the High Atlas – we’ve even built a little clinic in the village of Imlil (right at the foot of Mt. Toubkal) where every month the mobile vet team visit from Marrakech.
Every family depends on these mules for their very existence. Not only are they used in agriculture to plough and carry crops and water and firewood, many villagers are also mountain guides, and their mules carry supplies up to the mountain refuges, as well as tourists’ baggage, and more than occasionally, the odd tourist themselves.
So it seemed essential that mules should feature strongly in the exhibition, and last weekend we trekked into the heart of the mountains to get film and photos of the mules, their owners and the way of life in some of the remotest mountain villages.
It was absolutely stunning. Not only the spectacular landscapes – bleak, brown, barren summits soaring into the cobalt blue of the sky, with viridian valley bottoms crammed with fruit-trees and narrow terraces of maize and barley. The villages cling to the steep valley sides – any flat piece of earth is at a premium – so they seem a jumble of flat roofed layers, storey upon storey with little windows guarded by traditional wrought-iron grills.
The people who still struggle to wrest a living from this hard and hostile land are like their animals in many ways – tough and hardy, nimble and sure-footed, yet gentle and hospitable. It is a great joy and privilege to live amongst them for a little while, sharing their lives, their trials and tribulations, in fact stepping back into another, largely vanished world.
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