The Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust
Fighting Poverty- Feeding Families
Registered Charity No. 1096814

Autumn Newsletter 2008

It seems that 2008 has not been the best of years for a great many people and we too have faced some challenges. The loss of Stella, our co founder, has been a huge blow and everyone has had to work extra hard to try and fill the gap because Stella had the energy of three people. However, despite the difficulties there have been some very positive events and we have managed to make excellent progress.

Amadou and Momodou came over to the UK in the summer to learn more about veterinary nursing, hospital management and Amadou learnt a great deal more about laboratory work. We are extremely grateful to Colin Tait and The Equine Veterinary Hospital in Arundel for giving them the opportunity to study there, what a wonderful opportunity it was for them. We are also indebted to The Donkey Sanctuary for showing us around their magnificent premises. All the animals looked so contented and it was fascinating to see that every aspect of their care is catered for including their psychological and emotional welfare. The Donkey Sanctuary also does a great deal of work for donkeys world-wide and has been very helpful and supportive of our work and we would like to thank Andrew Trawford and his team for a fascinating and memorable couple of days.

We would also like to thank The Animal Health Trust at Newmarket for showing us their premises and The Thoroughbred Breeders Association for letting us attend their Seminar on African Horse Sickness and West Nile Virus. Finally, our thanks to Di and Martin Brooks, Lucy Meehan, Chris and Andrea Dawson and Ali Schwabe for their kind hospitality in putting us up and helping to make it all possible.

Electricity comes to Horse and Donkey

In August a team of students and staff from Strathclyde University came to install solar power to our laboratory. They also installed power to another 2 local schools. The weather was extremely hot when they were there and they worked valiantly to achieve all that they had come to do despite heat that actually melted the soles of their shoes as they worked on the hot tin roof.

Strathclyde have already installed solar power into Sambel Kunda School and the Alexander Village Clinic and their help and support has been invaluable to us all. Our newly installed power meant that we could show our College students DVD's on dentistry and anatomy and make use of the electric microscopes that we have been given. Thank you ALL.

Our College Students complete their next Modules

Further modules of the equine training scheme were undertaken in July and a team of 4 trainers came over to The Gambia from the UK. In addition to our students, we also had 3 members of the President's Cavalry Unit participating as well as some of our own staff members.

Thanks to Royal Canin and Dodson and Horrell, every student was issued with a stethoscope, a thermometer, a watch and a weight tape.

It was immensely rewarding for me to see the enthusiasm and dedication of both the students and the teachers. The yard was buzzing with activity and everyone worked incredibly long hours. The trainers were impressed with the enthusiasm of the students and the students enjoyed the teaching, the practical demonstrations and the teaching methods of the trainers.

I would like to thank everyone involved as it was a resounding success, but I would particularly like to thank The University of Liverpool Veterinary faculty and The Gambia College for enabling us to hold this very exciting course.

Horse and Donkey Happenings

Our staff and the volunteers work extremely hard with very limited resources and manage to achieve incredible results. One of the most spectacular is the story of Molly, a little filly who was badly burned when she fell on a fire. Half her face and all one side of her neck was not only severely burned but also badly infected as we did not see her until some days after her accident. Luckily our team of training vets were here at the time and Colin Tait of The Equine Veterinary Hospital in Arundel worked for hours to clean her up. The pictures of Molly are too horrific to publish, but thanks to the training given by Colin and to the dedication of our staff, Anna and Samba in particular, this brave little filly has made an almost complete recovery and continues to improve day by day.

Lucy is another miracle, found in a severely emaciated state as her owner had died and the family who inherited her did not have the resources to feed her. She is an older mare and has made a slower recovery, but is much improved and is doing a wonderful job keeping the hand reared fillies in order. Hope, the little foal who was bought to us last year on death's door and who had to be rehydrated intravenously and picked up when she lay down as she was too weak to rise on her own, is now a plump little bundle of trouble who looks for all the world like a Welsh Section A pony.

We have many more stories like these, as well as the heartbreaking ones where our staff have given their all with their care as they did with little Eeyore whose mother died at birth. He bought so much pleasure in his short life and my heart went out to Catherine and Anna when I received their tearful and heartbroken phone call to say that they had lost him. I would like to say a very big thank you to each and every member of the Horse and Donkey Staff for all their hard work in very difficult conditions.

Calum's Road

Although Stella achieved a great many things in her life, she still had so many more things that she wanted to do. On Christmas night last year as we flew her back to hospital in England she told me of the things she had planned to do but had been unable to complete and asked me if I could see these projects through to completion. I gave her my undertaking that I would do my best to make sure we finished what she had begun, though it was not without some trepidation as one of these projects was to build a road!

This road runs from our community of villages to the nearest hospital, the nearest secondary school, the local market and to the rice fields, so it is heavily used, but for 6 months of the year it is submerged. In the rainy season people have to remove their clothes and wade waist deep through the water. This is dreadful if you are sick and children going to school have to board for weeks as they are unable to get home. The many horse and donkey carts that traverse the road to take goods to market suffer terribly and we see many injuries

When I made initial enquiries I was appalled and very disillusioned as the cost of the project was enormous and much more then I felt I would ever be able to raise. However Max Murray, one of our trustees, told me of a book called Calum's Road which tells the inspiring story of how one elderly man from near Skye built a road on his own using a shovel, a wheelbarrow and a Victorian book on road building. On my next trip to The Gambia I spoke to the community and told them about Calum and they were so impressed that we have resolved to build the road with labour provided by the community. We shall still need to raise a considerable amount of money to hire the machinery and lorries that will be needed to bring the materials to the site but we are on our way.

There have been many almost miraculous happenings concerning the road. When he heard about it, Roger Hutchinson, the author of the book Calum's Road, came out to The Gambia and has written an article which is due to appear in the November edition of Readers Digest.

One of the local Peace Corps Volunteers managed to make contact with an organisation called Engineers without Borders and they have volunteered their assistance providing funds can be found to get them there. On a personal level one of the loveliest things for our family is that a lady in Scotland, Mairi Leach, read about Stella and her dream and has written a very beautiful tune called "Stella's Dream" in memory of Stella and for the building of Calum's Road in The Gambia. We hope to record "Stella's Dream" together with the Strathspey called Calum's Road and sell the CD's to raise funds for the road.

Au Revoir to World Horse Welfare

As we write this, World Horse Welfare are coming to the end of the final module of their five year training programme. As a result of their training we have at least 40 new farriers and harnessmakers in The Gambia. We are extremely grateful to them for the training that they have provided and would like to thank them for their support of our work.

HELP - Dentistry Equipment

We recently lost ALL our dentistry equipment when the boat carrying our staff back from a clinic was capsized by a freak wave. The bucket containing the gags and floats is now at the bottom of the River Gambia. If any one has any equipment surplus to their needs or knows of any equipment that may be for sale at a reasonable price, we would be most grateful if they could contact us.

A Ceilidh for Calum's Road will be held at the Lord Todd Refectory, Weaver Street, Glasgow G4 0NP on the 22nd November, 2008. Tickets will be £15 to include a light supper and admittance will be by ticket only. These are available from the address below. It should be a fun filled evening so please join us if you can.'

"As a result of our work in and around Sambel Kunda, we have been privileged to meet some very exceptional people. One of these is a "Mama Africa" alias Helena Clybouw, who is from Belgium. Helena does a huge amount of work for the people of The Gambia with numerous projects. She was a very good friend to Stella and is fundraising tirelessly for Calum's Road. Thank you Mama Africa."

The Horse and Donkey Annual Show

As we go to press, we are making final preparations for the annual Horse and Donkey Show in Sambel Kunda and we would like to thank everyone who has donated trophies and money for prizes. The show is a month earlier this year, which does not give the competitors much time to get their animals into condition after the rains and the farming season, so we may not see quite the standards that we have seen in previous years but it will be interesting nevertheless. The heat, humidity, flies and mosquitoes together with the fact that what grass is available is 90% water, at a time when the animals work their hardest (the farming season) means that this is probably the time when the animals are at their poorest.

This year there are a total of 15 volunteers coming out to assist us and help with the judging and they will be stewarding, assisting in the veterinary tent, handing out headcollars and bits and giving advice to the owners.

Some of them will take the opportunity to have a few days down at the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Trust camp, called Badi Mayo and combining their equestrian interests with wildlife conservation. The classes are judged purely on condition and handling and as much as possible is explained to the audience.

The Donkey Project

We have reluctantly decided to call a halt to the donkey project for the foreseeable future. The donkeys that are on the scheme will naturally continue to be monitored and cared for but we shall not be seeking any more sponsors for the time being. We have discovered that these donkeys are requiring a far higher level of supervision than we had anticipated but recognise that this is vital to the project. We wanted to give the wider community the opportunity to be part of this scheme but doing so has meant that the staff involved have to do a lot of travelling to visit the donkeys.

We now have staff permanently assigned to the project but they are so busy "doing" that there is very little time for report writing and we hadn't anticipated the amount of administration involved in not only getting the information and pictures but also getting it back to this country.

There are some wonderful partnerships, 'Spot' the little donkey who leads his blind carer around, 'Lucky' the donkey at Jessidy School, who lives up to his name and is cherished to the extent that he even has a whitewashed stable and is possibly one of the few donkeys in The Gambia who needs to diet! Moses, who is the pride of his boy carer's life. He took such excellent care of his donkey last year that he won a 'donkey ambassadors' medal.

During the course of the year Heather has visited almost all of the donkeys and has spoken to the carers. The donkeys are used for transport, carrying goods, firewood and water, for ploughing and as ambulances. She has heard many heart warming stories and seen for herself the new houses that have been built as a result of the extra income the donkeys have bought to the family. These donkeys have made a very real difference to their families and until we have sufficient suitably qualified staff to monitor them, wherever they are placed, it would be irresponsible to take on any more of these hardworking animals

WANTED

We are looking for volunteer area representatives who would be willing take in and keep the tack collections that people donate until we can arrange for them to be collected and who might be able to organise fundraising groups for us. If, for example, a group of 12 people got together, one might hold a coffee morning/cake sale/car boot or similar event per month. This means that each member only one does fundraising event a year but can call on the support of others if need be. Any help that you could give us would be much appreciated as we shall need all the help we can get if we are going to survive this credit crunch.

Volunteer desperately needed in the Dorking, Surrey area to assist with office administration on a part time basis for us. An organised person with office experience preferred to keep Heather on track!

Christmas Cards in support of our work

We have a wide variety of Christmas Cards and other blank cards for sale in support of the work we do in The Gambia.

'Going Home', the card with the family with the donkey cart, can be purchased with 'Seasons Greetings' inside or plain for your own message. There are 10 cards in a packet at £4.00 per packet, plus postage and packing. The proceeds of the card will go to The Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust and towards The Sambel Kunda School Sponsorship Scheme, which has enabled over 300 local children to attend school.

We also have for sale several cards painted exclusively for the Gambia Trust by Anna Pugh, who is a well known British artist. These include the cards shown here although there are many other designs available These are blank for your own message. The cards come in packs of 5 and cost £2.50 a pack, plus postage and packing. Other designs of cards are shown on the website and all are available from the address shown at the bottom of the page.

Thank you Ros

In July Ros Harris and her friends (who included a Labrador wearing a horse and Donkey T Shirt) embarked on another sponsored walk. They had hoped to raise £2000 for The Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Project and Horse and Donkey and they finally managed to raise in excess of £3,000. Momodou, Amadou and I went to welcome them home after their walk and as if she hadn't done enough, Ros went on to feed us all including the other members of the group and their families. We are absolutely in awe of your energy Ros and thank you ALL so much.

Progress

I thought I was seeing things when I looked out of the window and saw a tractor ploughing in Sambel Kunda. The Horse and Donkey Trust and The Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Trust provides a great deal of employment in our area and as a result of this and the Skills Centre, built by The Chimp Rehabilitation Trust, Glasgow students and Future in our Hands as part of Stella's vision for the economic development of the villages, the village ladies have also been able to earn some extra money.

The increased productivity of the animals may also have played its part and now, 6 years later, some of the community were wealthy enough to be able to hire a tractor to plough for them. This is real progress!

Sadly the recent global economic crisis has subsequently had an impact, and people in the provincial Gambia lucky enough to be employed, can only expect to earn about £20 per month. Rising food costs mean that a bag of rice, which is the staple diet and feeds a family for about a month is about £23.75. This means that there is not enough to feed the family, let alone pay for schooling, health needs or feeding the working animals. It seems that our community takes one step forward and two steps back!

With your help we have been making a real difference. Please help us to continue our work at this very difficult time for us all.

On behalf of everyone at "Horse and Donkey" we would like to wish you a very happy Christmas and a peaceful, prosperous and healthy New Year.

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