Resources

Print this page

Add to Favorites

• An Eye-Opening look into Anna Saillet's time as a volunteer in Gambia 

 
Can you think on your feet, stand on your head and rub your belly all at the same time? I think that's what it should have said on the advert to volunteer for Gambia Horse and Donkey for a year!

Living in a tiny remote village without electricity and hot water is the easy part, and eating a meal which doesn't contain rice is a huge treat with indescribable pleasures! Routine is out of the window. Whilst we have a basic outline of a routine, involving going to local 'lumos' (markets) every Saturday, Sunday, Monday and every other Tuesday, the days, weeks and months all merge into one. Time takes on a whole new dimension, somehow going fast and slow all at once!

This is not the place for the faint hearted or the indecisive. Every day is filled with decisions to be made, whether it is a call of life or death for a sick animal, a decision on which staff members should go trekking each day, or simply what we can have for dinner with such a limited selection of ingredients!

With 14 trained Gambian staff working at GHDT the yard is always bustling and each day has its own challenges. There are several regular programmes which we undertake, one being the school education programme. This involves traveling around to 10 local schools to teach Grades 5, 6 and 7 about how to care for horses and donkeys correctly. Conscious of not wanting our classes to be 'just another boring lesson' we often find ourselves dressed as donkeys crawling around a classroom floor, doing puppet shows with soft toy horses and donkeys, and regularly clearing up donkey droppings from a classroom floor when our real life demonstration animals decide to deposit a small and entertaining present for the class of giggling children. Watching the mayhem ensue when we had a 'real life' (dressed up classmate) tsetse fly in the classroom trying to 'bite' his fellow students ended in great hilarity when one girl got so frightened of being 'bitten' that she jumped clean off her seat, straight on top of the Headmaster who had decided to sit in on the class! Our last lesson before Easter confirmed that our rather 'different' lessons had indeed been a great success. On doing a quiz with each of the classes I was more than a little overwhelmed to see almost every hand in the class go up to answer each question, stretching higher and higher in the hope that they would be given the opportunity to answer the question. And even when the correct answer was given hands still stayed stretching upwards for the chance to expand on the answer to prove that they remembered more than their friend. I am by no means a teacher, and to get such a wonderful display of understanding, of lessons which I have written brought a tear to my eye.

The weekly treks to Lumos are hot, busy, difficult and rewarding. Treating sick animals on the basis of physical signs only is difficult at the best of times, let alone in the blistering heat! Thankfully some of our staff are trained in the use of the microscope, so are able to look at the blood of horses and donkeys to confirm whether or not an animal has Trypanosomiasis, which is a very common and dangerous disease here. It is not uncommon to be presented with horses and donkeys with severely fractured legs asking us to fix them. The things that have been achieved here make me seriously question just how many horses are unnecessarily put to sleep in the UK, as we have living proof in our horses and donkeys at GHDT that they can recover from broken bones, horrendous wounds, horrific burns and even diseases which cause temporary paralysis. The general conception here is that Allah will decide whether an animal should live or die, and this means that often an owner will not allow us to humanely kill a sick animal, and instead we have to do everything we can to save the animals and limit its suffering. This at times can be heart wrenching, but when I see our stallion, Tallah, galloping around the paddock totally oblivious to the fact that he ever had a broken leg it gives me the strength to just keep on trying our best, with the little that we have.

The house at GHDT is a busy one. It's certainly not the place to be if you're the sort of person who likes to finish work and relax at 6pm! If there's not a member of staff around asking for one favour or another, then it may be someone from the village begging for a lift to the nearest hospital perhaps for a lady going through a difficult birth or a child with a broken arm. If you're lucky this call will come around 8 or 9pm; if you're not so lucky it is more likely to be around 3 or 4am! And of course, with a yard of often sick horses and donkeys it's inevitable that from time to time there's the odd one that needs someone to stay up with it all night, to nurse it through to the daylight hours; that's without taking into consideration the night time feeds for any orphaned horses, donkeys, sheep or goats that happen to fall into our lives! Then you have the odd night in which there are no dramas. No knocks on the door, just a nice cold shower and an early night. It takes a while of living at GHDT before you are able to get a good nights sleep however. The nights you most need a good sleep are undoubtedly those in which the animals create a cacophony of noise; donkeys braying, dogs howling long into the night, hyenas laughing, cows mooing, bush babies screaming and crickets chattering away to each other in their morse code language! Once you're habituated to it, it becomes quite normal and I rarely find myself being awoken, other than to have the odd chuckle to myself as Rocky (our puppy) tries to fit in by singing with the big dogs, but she is so obviously tone deaf that it's adorable!

We are very lucky to have vets from the UK to come out four times a year to teach some students from Gambia College about equine medicine. Our staff (including myself) are extremely lucky to have been taught how to do injections, stomach tubing, and stitching amongst other important procedures. The house comes alive with people during these periods, and also at the time of the Annual Show. Last year we wondered where we were going to squeeze 19 visitors from the UK, but amazingly we managed it and had two of the most hilarious weeks of my time here. It seemed a little daunting to share the house with an extra 19 people, but it could not have been more enjoyable!

Amongst all of this I have helped to put out a bush fire, managed to rescue a vehicle from being totally sunk in the mud of the rainy season, attended some wonderful local entertainment programmes, carried tree trunks on my head, taught some English lessons, organized the day to day running of the busy yard, and so the list goes on.

Life here is not for the faint hearted. You have to be flexible yet rigid. For some of the very gory scenes I have witnessed or been part of I am thankful to be blessed with a strong stomach. Above all, this place gives you a great sense of adventure and achievement. On a good day it feels as though I've climbed a thousand mountains and taken in the beauty of the view at the top of each and every one. On a bad day it feels like you're sinking to the bottom of the river, but these are few and far between, and anyway... wouldn't life be boring without a challenge!!

This poor little foal got burnt. They light fires at night to keep the animals warm and occasionally, as in this case, it backfires. Anna who wrote the article has invested all her love and time into this little one and has in fact kept it rather than send it back to its owner. The owner was in no way to blame, it was an unfortunate accident.

With her usual modesty, Anna 'forgot' to mention how she saved the lives of a boat full of people when the boat capsized on the river in a freak storm. After ensuring that everyone was safely holding onto the capsized boat, she swam through strong currents and ran barefoot for several miles through dense bush to seek help. No lives were lost and Anna is deservedly something of a local heroine - THANK YOU ANNA!

The Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust was set up by Heather Armstrong and her sister, the late Stella Marsden OBE founder of The Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Trust in the Gambia. Their mission is to reduce rural poverty by increasing productivity of working horses and donkeys through animal welfare and management education in The Gambia.

The Gambia is one of the smallest and poorest countries in Africa with a population of 1.5 million, most of whom are peasant farmers. In the last 30 years, donkeys were introduced into the Gambia for use as working farm animals and their numbers have increased considerably in the last ten years or so. Many of the 27,500 horses and 40,000 donkeys are suffering appalling treatment and conditions simply through their 'carers' lack of knowledge. The main concern of the Trust is malnutrition which aggravates problems with parasites, infection, lameness and disease. There are also the problems of Ill fitting or inappropriate harness and little or no knowledge of farriery which often compounds the suffering.

The Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust is going to alleviate these problems by:
*Educating the farming community.
*Training Extension workers.
*Liasing with appropriate agricultural agencies.
*Providing hospital and mobile treatment facilities.
*Employing a Gambian veterinary surgeon and team of assistants.
*Making full use of locally available medicinal plants e.g. Aloe Vera.
*Making use of voluntary expertise from abroad to provide specialist training e.g. farriery and harness making.

There is a dedicated team of volunteers who work tirelessly to achieve these aims but back home there is much that can be done to raise funds. The Trust is in need of pony and cob size head collars/bridles and 4" and 4.5" bits, these are sent out to The Gambia to replace the makeshift bridles that are crudely put together. Or perhaps you or your local club could hold a fund raising show or sponsored ride. 

Source: http://www.gambiahorseanddonkey.org.uk

Back to Top