Developing Networks of Donkey Caregivers

In the interest of getting caught up on what we’ve been up to, here is information on two other important contacts we’ve made. It is encouraging to meet and connect individuals who care about donkeys.

We had two visits with current veterinary students, who are in their final years of school at the Sidi Thabet Veterinary School in Tunis. They both speak English and are passionate about veterinary medicine.

The first meeting was with Shadi Henchiri, who speaks excellent english and is a very friendly young man. He is the chairman of the Animal Welfare Committee of the International Veterinary Student Association (IVSA) (www.ivsa.org)  and he is the general secretary of the Tunisia chapter of IVSA. He explained the mission of the animal welfare committee and said veterinary students in IVSA are looking for opportunities to participate in animal welfare activities. He sees potential for future collaborations between projects like ours and IVSA animal welfare members from many countries.

Shadi is very enthusiastic about his veterinary career, which may include studying in the United States. He's eager to learn more about public health and equine medicine so he had questions about our University of California at Davis Master of Preventive Veterinary Medicine program and our efforts with the donkeys here. He knows of local students who may be able to help us with our current project activities and perhaps assist in maintaining the efforts after we leave Tunisia. He is from Gafsa in  central Tunisia and suggested a good way to see many donkeys and their owners is at a sauk (once a week market place where the animals are bought and sold). Shadi is going to try to arrange a visit to Gafsa for us to look at donkeys and we’d like to provide him with some dental and hoofcare training.

A few days later, we met with Amine Sekrafi, another final year veterinary student who is from Medenine in southeastern Tunisia. Malek Lakhoua (olive oil farmer from Zaghouan) joined us for our conversation with Amine about the role of Tunisian donkeys in rural livelihoods. Amine is very  interested in equine medicine and he is very articulate in speaking English . He shared information about the lives of donkeys in his community. Even though the cost of donkeys has increased six fold in the last 10 years, they are still not valued like sheep.

The donkeys in the Medenine area are used primarily to withdraw water from wells (20 meters deep) and transport water to sheep in the fields. The donkeys do not receive medical care but Amine has the impression that they are relatively healthy and their hooves are okay. The donkeys are tethered and hobbled when not working. During the busy season of harvesting they likely get better care, but may be overworked. They donkeys are trained to know the roads of the area and can travel by themselves to deliver water to the shepherds who are tending sheep in the field. This investment of time in the training does increase the owner’s perception of the donkeys’ usefulness and these trained donkeys are unlikely to be sold. Many of the donkeys are kept and cared for after retirement. As far as he knows, the donkeys are not slaughtered for meat. We also talked about the many breeds of donkeys in Tunisia.

We had a general discussion about donkey welfare in Tunisia. Tricia and Jaber expressed their impression of the poor health status of the donkeys we have seen in the city streets and along the country roads. Tricia explained the United States animal control officer role under the law enforcement system. Amine explained he believes there are Tunisian animal welfare regulations but the police have many more important issues in the urban areas to deal with than city cart-donkeys. Additionally, the police cannot be spending time traveling to rural communities investigating animal welfare. It was also explained that rural villages often have no police because there is a system of crime control embedded into the small communities by the residents.

Amine offered to help us organize a visit to Medenine to see the donkeys in his community and is interested in hands-on training in dental and hoof care.

We were pleased to be able to make a strong connection with these young veterinarians, and to connect Malek with Amine. We are here for just a month and it is very important to us to not only provide some training in donkey care, but to also create the momentum for Tunisians to continue our work after we are gone. After these two meetings, our confidence level is rising that we are making good progress in developing a network of motivated animal caregivers.