WE flew into Bulawayo through a blinding tropical storm.
“We” were Jeremy Hulme, chief executive, and Simon Pope, director of communications with SPANA, and myself, travelling incognito with SPANA (the Society for the protection of Animals in North Africa) now operating not only in that part of the world and the Middle East but also, with the Donkey Protection Trust, in Zimbabwe. It is the work with donkeys that we have come to see.
The common cry is that, “You should be caring about people, not bothering with animals.” That sad misunderstanding fails to recognise that in much of Africa the donkey and the mule are to a family what the car, the delivery van and the tractor are in the United Kingdom.
In a country like Zimbabwe, where whole village communities are literally scratching a living from sun-baked soil and at the very edge of starvation, the health of the working animal can make the difference between life and death. We were met at the airport by Ian Redmond, co-founder of the Donkey Protection Trust (DPT). With the country’s financial infrastructure now in tatters, he devotes his life to the work of the trust.
The track to the Trust’s headquarters has been reduced to mud by the rains. We find a modest bungalow and stable housing some 40 donkeys and a number of horses rescued from repossessed white farmsteads.
DPT employs four people. Two manage the animals at base, the other two are out on the road stopping donkey-drawn “scotch carts” and examining the animals for signs of ill-health and maltreatment.
The two-wheeled carts are usually drawn by two or four donkeys and frequently heavily overloaded with firewood. Harnesses and tack are primitive. Wooden shafts wear into the animals’ backs and collars made out of old car tyres and wire eat into the neck and shoulders.
With veterinary care and medicine scarce and expensive, disease and infection are common. When the travelling DPT team finds a maltreated or sick animal, they confiscate it with the consent of the owner and take it back to base. This is not a rest home but a hospital for animals that will generally be nursed back to health and returned to their owners to continue their working lives or, in extremis, humanely destroyed.
A little goes a long way…
The cost of this work is funded by Ian himself, by donations diminishing in a country now dependent on foreign aid, and through SPANA. In Africa a little can go a very long way but much more is needed if the working animal is to be seen through better times. Without them there will quite simply be nothing left to rebuild upon.
We teamed up with Lisa and Keith, two young veterinary surgeons, members of ZNSPCA (Zimbabwe National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) to investigate reports of ill-treatment and maiming of donkeys.
Our first stop is the centre of the town where a significant number of working animals have been corralled for examination. The wear and tear of the effects of poor harnesses, overweight loads and disease are evident and the vets get to work. One animal is pulled back from certain death and with antibiotics and a little care will live to draw another cart.
Worse to come. In the fields on the outskirts of the town we came across our first case of a deliberately maimed donkey. The animals, at the end of their working day, are set free to forage in the hay. Inevitably they also sometimes eat the vegetables planted illegally on public land by farmers. Loss of crops turns into violent anger and the “farmer” takes a machete to the animal.
Nine-inch wound
The first of these we saw had a nineinch wound across his back and a small but similar cut across his rump. The gash was deeply infected and pouring pus. A local injection dulled a little pain and Keith then plunged his bare hand deep into the hole to scrape out the mess. This was then sluiced out with diluted iodine and antibiotics administered. The otherwise healthy animal may now survive.
There is a brighter side and a treat at the end of the day. In the next 24 hours Lisa and Keith are due to anaesthetise some 15 lions in order to take blood samples and test them for tuberculosis that affects so much of the big cat population.
Just before dusk we are invited to watch as the first lioness receives the injection applied on the end of a pole through the wire of the management cage. It takes about 20 minutes for this huge and proud beast to lie down and sleep. Then the professionals get to work, the samples are taken, other drugs are administered.
Across the park another lioness, Lulu, is nursing her six-week-old cubs. A new generation prepares to take on life in the worldwide jungle. “Awesome” is the cliché that springs to mind.
