Our first donkey

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.

Getting the official authorisations to work

Today we had a meeting with Dr. Hajer Kilani Dequiche at the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture – she is responsible for information collection, communications and international inspections. She endorses our work with the donkeys and will send an email letter of introduction and support to the state veterinarians in the areas we intend to work. This will help smooth the possible conflicts with local private veterinarians.

Jaber made contact with Malek Lakhoua from Zaguan Olive Oil Farm (Malek's website) who is very interested in working with us. He is a medical doctor who has a few donkeys and would like to develop ecotourism in his region. His farm is about 2 hours away in the northern half of Tunisia.

Jaber made arrangements for donations of vaccine and dewormer from a veterinary colleague who works for a pharmaceutical company in Tunisia.

First contacts

Thursday afternoon we had a meeting with Dr. Ghalia Drissi at Allo-Veto Clinic. She is Jaber’s veterinary school colleague and a former volunteer for the donkey NGO we had planned to work with. She is very enthusiastic about animal welfare and wants to help us organize events and participate in activities for the donkeys. Community development is also important to her and she would like to introduce us to another group she volunteers with called Machrek Eshams. They have a meeting next week we can attend.

We saw a few animals as we drove around Ariana, a middle class section of the city. There were two horses with carts in the midst of automobile traffic in the business section as well as many free roaming neighborhood dogs and cats. In the hills on the city perimeter, there was a shepherd with about eight sheep grazing on the edge of an upper class residential neighborhood. 

Our last meeting of the day was with Dr. Olfa Abid at the Anivet Clinique Veterinaire in Menzah. She is Jaber’s former employer and had been very involved in the donkey NGO but recently left the group. She has contacts and data from previous veterinary service events and will share this info with us. The former NGO provided services to the donkeys but did not have an overarching agenda. She felt most of the communities she had worked with were very welcoming of outside help and we discussed the objectives of our project.

Olfa would like to continue serving the donkeys and offered her assistance in organizing, networking and delivering services and education. We all agreed starting simple with rabies vaccination and deworming would be the best way to gain trust. While we are providing these services we can be assessing the donkeys’ condition and begin conversations with community members as to what issues (either for themselves or the donkeys) they perceive as problems.

We discussed two specific locations that would be the most amenable to hosting an event. She emphasized the importance of planning ahead. The donkey owners that show up all want to be served so we have to make sure we have enough manpower to see all the donkeys in a day.

Our meeting went so well she invited us to dinner Monday night to review the boxes of records she has on donkeys from previous events.

First day of work

Today we are in Tunis at a cafe where we have a steady internet connection reviewing our original plan and veterinary networks. We are brainstorming our options to adjust to the on-the-ground reality and merge our project intentions with feasible actions.

We had originally planned to work with a specific NGO that Jaber has volunteered with. Shortly after we were awarded the Blum Center Grant, the NGO experienced internal management changes and we realized our project needed to expand to other stakeholders. Jaber has been contacting veterinary colleagues, other NGOs, and government officials. Our project proposal included training for the veterinary volunteers and database management of the NGO. Now that we are here, it is very important that we make solid local contacts and proceed diplomatically with the local veterinarians and pay attention to cultural context.