Mares Zimbabwe October 2022 Report - Part One

What a month October was!  With temperatures over 38 deg. we searched for large canopies of trees where we could do the outreach in Mabale and Jembwe.

MABALE OUTREACH

With the rains almost upon us we made sure that all the donkey owners in the 5 villages in Mabale  had their padded harnesses.  We were faced with a challenge when 3 of the donkey owners asked how they could use our harnesses for ploughing with their donkeys.  Cattle are mostly used for this so we have modified the swingle tree to attach the swingle trees to the carts with a mountain clip so that they can be removed from their scotch cart and clipped onto the plough.  We showed them that when ploughing with donkeys they do not need to use the yoke.  We also educated the donkey owners to use only 2 donkeys at a time.  This way they can plough for a couple of hours, then rest the two donkeys and use the other 2 donkeys.  That way we showed they could plough for many hours if they rest the donkeys and give water in between.  On our outreach in November we will check that they have followed this practice. 

We went back to Mabale the following week where Chief Dingani Awarded us 10 000m2  to not only build a recovery sanctuary for any injured donkeys in and around Mabale but enough land to grow what is called "miracle Fodder for donkeys" which is actually a very hardy grass called Bana grass.  We have sited a very good area to sink a borehole to feed our sanctuary by solar power to irrigate the bana in the dry winter season and be able to not only feed many of the donkeys with protein rich green grass in winter but to show them that they can plant the same grass around other water sites.   As we are already about to get into the rainy season, we shall only be able to plant once the 10000m2 has been fenced securely to keep other animals from eating it. 

JEMBWE OUTREACH

We managed to give every donkey owner and cart in Jembwe our padded harnesses and swingle trees in the past 6 months, except for three donkey owners whose carts were completely broken down, with hubs needing to be repaired.  Once they have repaired their carts they will receive their harnesses which we left with Veronica and Charlie from Greenline Africa.  We will now be earmarking the next village in Jembwe but as it is under another chief we have to seek permission from the chief first.  After our September outreach where we observed that a couple of donkeys were being used in harness that were under 3 years, the Greenline Africa ladies purchased 4 donkeys which they have kindly loaned to the donkey owners who will rest their donkeys until they turn 3 years in about 6 months time.  We think this was a very incentive idea and we thank Greenline Africa for making such a valuable contribution.

 With the aid of Animal Aid Abroad we are organising to send 400 bales to Jembwe to assist in feeding the 139 donkeys until the rains arrive. 

Part two covering Victoria Falls and Bulawayo outreach projects are to follow soon.