Our illustrious chairman, Derek Knottenbelt did a couple of training courses at our new Centre in Casablanca – what a difference the greening grass and trees that we planted in the spring makes. It was great to watch this all-consuming teacher inspire our technicians with his enthusiasm and skill. Although watching him clean an abscess in a horse’s eye, with a tiny hooked needle, sent little shivers of horror down through my stomach, it was soon time to leave the delights of a wintry Morocco, and head for our next rendez-vous, in Nouakchott, Mauritania.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Air Mauritanie (motto: ‘It’s always Ramadan with Air Mauritanie’), has gone belly up. Huge unpaid bills for aviation fuel all over the place. So, it’s back to good old Royal Air Maroc. But why do they have to fly everywhere at three o’clock in the morning ?
So after a pretty grim three or four hours we decamp into the mighty Nouakchott International Airport at four am. Not great. Plus due to a general cock-up in the planning, there is not only no-one to meet us, we have no local money, and when we finally arrive in the very picturesque taxi, there are no rooms in the hotel. Well, to cut a long story short, with a mixture of cajoling and bullying, we eventually found a few rooms spread around the town and crawled thankfully into bed.
Nouakchott is the city where we are working with the fifty thousand donkeys that get the Whatsit beaten out of them as they haul barrels of water around the town. Not easy. The youngsters that work them come from some of the poorest stratas of society on earth. But it’s not good to be a donkey worked by youngsters – who take out all their frustrations, angst and testosterone on their wretched charges.
( There’s a local proverb, the donkey says – ‘if children go to heaven, I don’t want to go there’).
So we’re running a major campaign to try and change things – we’ve done a harness course to make thousands of cheap head collars and reins – so the drivers don’t have to beat them round the head to steer them – and a bit of ‘PR’ in the form of a TV sketch, where the kids play football and compare it to their work ,and (hopefully) football stars tell them it isn’t cool to knock seven bells out of your animals. Oh, plus the usual stuff of competitions and prizes for best donk, prettiest animal, best team etc. Nothing like a bit of bribery.
But sometimes you wonder if those donkeys know whose side we’re on. We’re out at one of the water points with the mobile clinic, treating wounds, trimming feet, fitting the (free!) comfy head collars, when Whammo ! One of the little so-and-sos bites off the tip of our vet’s finger.
Understandably a bit ashen-faced, he’s helped into the Landrover.
‘Did anyone pick up my finger ?’ he asks plaintively.
I didn’t like to tell him I think the donk ate it.
Shiver.
Monday, 17 December 2007
Fingerless in Mauritania
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.
Sunday, 25 November 2007
The Road to Marrakech - Update
Patrick Sells, newly qualified from Liverpool Vet School, has started his 3,100 mile motorbike ride last week.
Before he left Leahurs, he handed over a cheque for an impressive £4,540 to our Chairman Prof Derek Knottenbelt. The grand total raised exceeds £9,500 if the value of a scanner from BCF Technologies and some £3,000 worth of equine dentistry equipment from VesVetVision are included. LUVS generously contributed £1,000.
Patrick is doing well so far, in spite of poor weather; snow in Herefordshire, torrential rain in the south of England and fog in France. Wet weather caused the engine to fail near Limoges and it took him an entire day to fix it.
Last night he was in the south of France, camping in sub-zero temperatures and will head for the Pyrenees today. With a fair wind he should reach Morocco hopefully around the end of the month.
Fingers crossed the weather gods take it easy on him for the rest of his journey and good luck from all of us here at SPANA!
Monday, 19 November 2007
Poppies in Tunisia
Yesterday we drove up into the north-west of the country, almost up to the border with Algeria – the tail end of the Atlas mountains. Cold and bleak at this time of the year, it was also drizzling with rain.
The hills themselves are either stripped bare by over-grazing and wood-cutting (who can blame them for trying to keep warm), but where given some kind of protection they are thickly forested with mostly cork-oak trees. Incidentally these are the only refuge for the Barbary Stag, the only species of deer in Africa and now very rare.
But one of the reasons SPANA is in the area is to help the mules that work in the woods, bringing down great loads of cork to the collecting points.Yesterday, however, we took the mobile clinic to the souk in Bousalem town itself. Held every Thursday, it reminded me of a British boot-sale only most of the stuff was not stolen goods. Farmers and traders bring in all their produce, and a sea of tents and shelters springs up, selling everything from vegetables to shoes, buckets to shovels, cereals to spices – a vast assault on the senses – noise, colour and smell.
And of course there are animals in their thousands. From chickens (in truth, not destined probably to have a very good day), rabbits (likewise), sheep, goats, cattle and hundreds of horses, mules and donkeys – many carrying the goods for sale, and the people to buy them. It must have been a bit like that in Medieval Britain – I bet Robin Hood would have felt quite at home. We park the Landrover in a corner, where people park their animals, and treat a steady stream of sore feet, cuts and scratches, a bit of a cough, a touch of mange, an infected eye – all the usual complaints.
But then after the crowds have started to drift away about mid-day, we pack up and head up into the hills – a different village each afternoon. We arrive in a cluster of shabby stone houses and yards – it looks as if everyone has emigrated - but suddenly, almost out of the rocks and ground itself, animals start to appear.
Amazingly, after a mere ten minutes, there are thirty or so owners and their animals standing round the mobile clinic getting wormed, or feet trimmed, even anti-biotics for an infection. And here there is time to talk to the owners and tell them what is going wrong, and how to look after their livestock better.
That’s another myth – most visitors only see the rich coastal strip of the country, with its hotels, shops and bars, and the money that comes from the tourists. But twenty miles inland, it’s quite another story - another world in fact – where poverty is still rife, and people and their animals struggle to wrest a living from a hard country.
By this time we are frozen stiff, and grateful to climb into the Landrover, say ‘Goodbye’ to the team, and start the long drive back to Tunis.
November is a particularly poignant time to drive along that road, as it was the same road that the First Army fought their way along in the winter and spring of 1942/43. All along the road there are the green signs of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, marking the cemeteries that plot their route to the capital. In one, at Medjez-al-bab, there are nearly fifteen hundred graves, mostly of men killed in late April 1943, just a fortnight before the Germans finally surrendered in Tunis.
I say men, but most of them, as can be seen from the ages on their gravestones, are just boys. In the failing light and November drizzle, I put last week’s poppy on the grave of an unknown soldier of the Black Watch.
Perhaps it’s just that we were cold and tired, and working with another very basic sort of existence, but walking out of that tragic, lonely garden was a very sobering and humbling experience.
Jeremy Hulme
Friday, 2 November 2007
In the company of wolves
After ten years of working in Ethiopia, Diana and I kept saying we ought to take some time to see the rest of the country - we finally did it. We organised a trek with 'Walks Worldwide' through the Simien Moutains in the far north of the country, on foot (but with four hill mules to help us out).
It was wonderful, but I have to admit, it was so knackering that there were three or four days when I really thought I wasn't going to make it.
At one stage we climbed over a col at 4200 metres high - I felt sick and ill, and very, very old! I am eternally grateful to Simon (one of the mules) who gave me a helping hand one afternoon when I was struggling up through a thousand foot of alpine forest.
But of course the payback for all that suffering is the stupendous view you get from the top.
And the wildlife.
We lay on our stomachs on a bed of pungent wild thyme, perched on the edge of a two thousand foot cliff, looking down at a group of Walia Ibex (the males equipped with enormous semi-circular horns) grazing on a ledge below amongst giant lobelia trees. At the same time, lammergeiers ('bearded' vultures) and Lanner falcons swooped and soared on the up-currents, whizzing unconcerned a mere twenty feet in front of us.
Then one morning, as we were again struggling upwards, we heard that distinctive bark, answered by a yowl. Wolf! Frantically we searched the hillside with our binos, then suddenly, with his eagle-eyes our scout spotted one.
The Abyssinian Wolf, or Simien Fox - now one of the rarest animals in the world, is reduced to probably only twenty or so individuals in the Simiens, though there are probably still about a hundred in the southern Bale mountains.
'Our' one, a beautiful pinkish-orange with white throat and chest, trotted up to the skyline, before posing for us, silhouetted against the dawn sky, and calling occasionally to his mate, before finally disappearing again, as suddenly as he'd appeared.
They feed on small rodents, particularly the Abyssinian rat - which needs long tussock grass, and so is suffering from the overgrazing of villagers' goats and sheep. They also prey on the beautiful Gelada baboons, adapted to the freezing cold of the high places by their long, thick coats. The baboons also feed on the grasslands, but sleep at night on the cliff ledges for safety. So a battle of wits develops between wolf and baboon - hunger or safety?
Sadly though, for once it is not loss of habitat that is wiping out the wolf, but his cousin the domestic dog. Or more accurately the diseases the village dogs carry and spread to them - distemper, parvo and perhaps even rabies. These diseases have already wiped out the Golden Jackal from the mountains. A simple, cheap programme of vaccinating the local sheepdogs would go a long way to preserving these wonderful creatures.
The flowers were breathtaking. Whole hillsides of red-hot pokers, lillies and exotic shrubs, with African marigolds filling in the spaces, and of course hosts of butterflies and small birds, including irridescent Sunbirds drinking the nectar.The people were fabulous too. For them we must appear as if from outer space, and with unbelievable wealth compared with their simple lifestyles. Yet we met nothing but kindness and hospitality.
But the starkness and brutality of life in the mountains was brought abruptly home to us one night, as we camped in an isolated village at the edge of the plateau. We were woken at midnight by groans and moans from a grass-thatched hut about fifteen feet away. A young woman was in labour, and there was nothing that could be done to help her. Mercifully nature did not need any help that night, and about five o'clock in the morning we heard the little cries that said another life had come into the world. But twenty miles from the nearest track, and even then perhaps a day's drive to the nearest doctor - it was very clear to us how hard life is for everyone, animals and humans, in those magnificent, towering, mountain fastnesses.
