BlindLove - April update on Grahamstown Working Donkeys

BlindLove is Animal Aid Abroad’s newest partner group, and we recently read about the background of BlindLove’s outreach project for working donkeys in Grahamstown. Now we bring you the update as of April 2023:

We were super excited when out of the blue towards the end of March we received a phone call from the donkey owner Malibongwe who had been trained as a Donkey Champion by F.A.C.E as couple years ago! He was back in Grahamstown and still very eager to be involved in the program! Turns out the reason for his ‘disappearance’ was because he had been ‘called’ by his ancestors to undergo training as a Sangoma! All which made for very interesting listening! This also means he has a wealth of knowledge regarding the healing benefits of local plants.

We informed the vets at the Grahamstown Veterinery clinic that he was back in town and we decided to all meet up and discuss what next, as his role in establishing trust with the donkey owners would be invaluable to us, being a well respected member of the donkey owning community himself.

We took through the donkey harnesses that NAWA ( Namibian Animal Welfare Association) had sent us to show him and also for him to take out and show the donkey owners. He was impressed with the design and mentioned he had also in the past met with Dr. Peta Jones who developed the Power Set and she had in fact given them weaving workshops with the aim of developing humane donkey harnesses. Sadly this all stopped when F.A.C.E closed down. We have also decided over the next couple of weeks that he will hand stitch some harnesses for us to start with!

Going forward, we collectively decided (together with the Grahamstown veterinary clinic) that our Director Philippa Du Toit would start going out into the donkey owning community at least once a month with Malibongwe, meet the owners and develop a good working relationship with them.

Running along similar lines as our cart horse outreaches, we will record all owners contact details, all donkeys will be given a body condition score and checked, then treated for internal and external parasites, and any minor wounds treated. Harnesses will also be replaced / repaired as soon as we can be happy that the prototype works well. Malibongwe will chat to them at these outreaches about welfare issues and concerns and what they can to to improve the lives of their working donkeys.

First on the list is getting the 10 donkey stallions castrated! The vets have wanted us to wait until the weather gets a bit cooler so hopefully towards end of May, because of the flies and less risk of infection. We are still going to hold the 3 big veterinary day drives and been approached by the local Feral Cat project to turn these days into bigger ‘community events’ with a market and stalls to raise awareness and get the entire community involved.

Although it felt like nothing really tangible happened in April, we do feel like real progress was made!

The meeting up with Malibongwe and the vets a couple of times during the month to figure out the best way forward, as well as our decision to start hand stitching harnesses here and there lays a solid foundation for the upcoming months!

Large donkey murals can be seen around Grahamstown and just show how much the donkeys belonging to the disadvantaged donkey owning community have become part of what Grahamstown is ‘known’ for.

Sadly however these owners are extremely poverty stricken, the donkeys often just roaming the streets and causing accidents and breeding indiscriminately, hence the concern and much needed reason for intervention and assistance.