Somebody once said ‘It’s a wonderful thing travel, it confirms all your prejudices'. Certainly, at five o’clock in the morning, on a freezing Sunday pre-dawn, I know exactly what they mean. Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris is far and away the worst airport in the world – and that’s up against some pretty stiff opposition – including gems like Heathrow, Algiers and not to mention Nouakchott, Mauritania.
I’m sitting writing this in Terminal ‘E’, after arriving over an hour and a half ago – there was only one bus to unload the whole plane, so we waited twenty minutes to get off, then were bussed for another twenty minutes around the airfield, waving at terminal ‘E’ as we whizzed past the first time, before being dropped at terminal ‘F’.
There a couple of nice secret policemen checked all our passports in case we were trying to invade France illegally. Then we tried to make our way back to ‘E’, being told (gleefully), that the navettes (connecting buses) were probably on strike this morning – having a little go at Sarko and his new bride. Eventually we were dumped at the end of a cold, damp, grey concrete tunnel, to fight our way up and through the next security screen into the mythical Terminal ‘E’.
It all seemed a long way away from north Mali, forty-eight hours earlier. We were doing a check (following a formal evaluation) of the Para-Vet project around Tombuctou and Gao that we started about ten years ago.
There had been a long and bloody civil war between the Tuareg, ‘Arab’ nomads in the north – and the black, West African Malian government based in Bamako.
The UN persuaded the Tuareg to accept a peace deal, and in return they were to get some health-care, a few schools and some veterinary input. SPANA was already established in Mali, so we were asked if we could help.
Over the years since then we’ve trained over fifty of the local tribesmen – they all had to be registered ex-terrorists - provided them with an initial ‘bank’ of basic veterinary
Medicines, established a price scale with the people, and set them going. We still do free prophylactic treatment for the donkeys and camels and follow-up training courses, but apart from that the whole thing is self-sustainable. Of course there have been a few disasters, and unsurprisingly some of the men are better and more dynamic than others, but in general it’s made a big difference to the people of the desert, and along the river, who are totally dependent on their livestock.
This time, we first went to see a Tuareg camp, away up in the sand dunes north of Tomuctou. We had a film producer with us wanting to make a series about Working Animals. After worming some of the camels (they suffer quite badly from mange), we were eating the obligatory goat together, when Mr. BBC asked the Tuareg headman, if the camels were important to him.
He looked at me in amazement. Was this stupid foreigner completely mad?
‘Of course we can’t live without them. Most days we just have camel milk and yoghurt to eat. Any grain has to be transported back on them from town. We ride them up deep into the Sahara to bring back salt. They are our transport when we move camp, carry water, gather firewood, or if one of the women is sick. Then when they are too old we eat them. Without them there can be no Tuareg’.
I wish I could say the same about Air France.
Jeremy Hulme
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Mali and Paris - February 2008
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."
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
From the Pyramids to Petra
Writing this sitting in Frankfurt Airport. It’s five o’clock in the morning – just arrived from Amman, Jordan. My eyes feel like someone’s been pouring sand into the sockets, and my mouth has been a testing ground for a glue factory. But it’s reassuring to know that Germans are just as incompetent at running airports as the British.
We actually started out, via another overnight flight, landing at 4.30am in Cairo last Friday. I’m not a big fan of conferences, but I know, I’m a dinosaur, everyone tells me, and I must enjoy the networking opportunities and long-winded, jargon filled speeches. Yes, and it is, truly, a chance to meet up with old friends.
Then on Sunday we left for Amman in Jordan, and the Egyptians airport authorities are right up there fighting for the last place in the competence stakes. Cases lost or broken, flights over-booked, long delays with no information. Oh. Joy.
But it’s all quickly forgotten as we drive down to Petra. We are getting lots of complaints from tourists about the treatment of animals provided by the local Bedouin for the tourists. These are getting worse and worse as no-one seems in control or willing to enforce the bye-laws.
Riding horses are raced up and down the tourist tracks at breakneck speed as teenage riders show off their macho inferiority complexes to the visitors who at the same time they envy and despise. Saddle and girth sores, with swollen and skinned joints attest to the indifference of their owners.
There are a few carts for carrying tourists too fat or lazy to make the mile-long walk through the rock-cleft to the fabulous ‘Treasury’ at the start of Petra proper. These carts are whipped-up mercilessly, soaked in sweat, as they race back up the hill to the entrance gates with their grinning passengers - the soonest back get another load.
And once past the treasury, children hawk their donkeys to carry fat visitors up a thousand or more steps to ‘the Monastery’, for a stunning view across the whole ruined city. Why can’t they just walk up?(And the vista seems even better for the little bit of effort involved.) Clearly, donkeys were never designed to carry the huge American lady we watched, as the little creature struggled to carry her. I wonder how much Mary weighed when she road down to Bethlehem. Not a hundred and twenty kilos, I bet! Depressingly little SPANA can do as we don’t have a project in the area, and it’s a hundred and fifty miles from Amman.
Still, apart from that, it’s impossible to visit Petra without being almost overwhelmed by the whole place – the sheer enormity of the task the Nabateans took on – carving whole cliff-faces into temples and tombs. And the colours. Pink, red, purple, ochre – hard to describe it as the sun moves and changes the light and tones. Let’s just leave it as unique and unforgettable. Certainly something everyone should try ‘to see before they die’.
After all that a good night’s sleep would have been welcome. Instead, the Saudis in the room next door threw an all-night party, with girls and Black Label – after all that’s what they come to Amman for, but it was too much for us, and finally at four in the morning we admitted defeat and moved rooms, two floors up. Could still hear the singing and screaming – what on earth could they be doing in there?
Then for our sins, in the morning it was over to the SPANA clinic in Wadi Al-Seer to spend a happy few hours fighting over the budget.
Then via the Education Centre – amazing how tiny saplings grow in a desert when you chuck on a bit of water now and again, and down the long hill to the clinic in the Jordan valley. There we treat the animals of the field workers who toil amongst the little plots of strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes and other winter goods – doubtless heading for Europe – but also the donkeys and livestock of the Bedouin shepherds who bring their flocks down from the freezing hills into the warmer valley – and watch over them diligently.
As we climbed back up the steep road to Amman in the dusk, we could see the lights of Bethlehem twinkling away across the river in the distance.
Happy Christmas.
Monday, 17 December 2007
Fingerless in Mauritania
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.
