We stopped to get diesel for the truck close to Jaber’s home
on our way to meet with another veterinarian. Surprise! We saw a man walking
next to his donkey pulling a cart. Tricia is still not used to such sights and
asked Jaber, “Can I take his picture?”. Yes, of course. The first shot was from
afar so as to not disturb the man, but as soon as he saw me with my cell phone
camera, he waved and stopped to pose. Then he left the donkey hanging out and
he went across the street.
We walked over to say hello to the donkey and check out the
cart. The small donkey had slits (fully healed) extending up from each nostril
and moderately long hooves with chips. The man came back and had a conversation
with Jaber. He told us the slits were to help the donkey breath better and be
stronger. Tricia asked, “How old is the donkey?” and the man spread the donkey’s
lips to check his teeth, and pronounced “ not very old!” However, Tricia
thought otherwise based on the grey hairs, sunken eye orbits and the aged
incisors but kept her opinion to herself.
Tricia’s been here only a few days, but it is obvious
language lessons are in her future. Jaber is a great translator and information
collector but it is frustrating to not be able to speak up. Smiles can only get
you so far.
How exciting! Good luck with the language lessons. I know how frustrating it can be not to know the language.
ReplyDeleteThe pictures made me think of something that I just saw in Tanzania. I think that all of the donkeys I had seen in East Africa were a light grey, but then I saw a darker brown donkey in one of the villages where I was working this time. I asked a community member about this and they said that it was an exotic donkey from France as part of a breeding program. (Most of the other expats I saw in the community were Italian, but I'm not sure who was running this program.) I've seen a number of exotic chickens, cows, goats and sheep that were mostly there to increase how much milk, meat or eggs they produced, but were always more susceptible to local diseases and often kept in zero-grazing units. I'm wondering what advantages exotic donkeys might offer.
Hope you're having a great time!