NAWA has had a busy 3 months since receiving its grant from AAA in July.
The NAWA donkey team attended to 109 equids. Amongst the vaccinations and tack and cart equipment that we laboriously attended to, we also administered wound treatment for a stabbing, a leg caught in wire and a bad burn, all of which needed intensive care and medication. Communities visited included Epikuro, Drimiopsis, Tsjaka, Witvei and Groot Aub.
We vaccinated 50 against rabies, and we administered parasite prevention for 72. The funding received assisted with restocking medication, vaccinations, disposables and sundries needed to treat basic wounds
Serious cases – Case 1: Rodney, a horse in Witvlei (160 km from Windhoek). The owner, Seddy Aiseb’s story is that he was bitten by another horse but we are not convinced. We treated the injury as though it was a burn and then warned the owner that when we revisit in November, and there is no improvement in the condition of both Rosemary and Rodney, we would need to contact the police to make a formal complaint and possibly remove both horses from him for rehoming.
Case 2: The sausage meat industry in Namibia is the reason that horses and donkeys are poached (sometimes from loving families who really need their working animals), slaughtered sent to informal butcheries in the cities for street vendors to sell as sausage. This young colt, Meddy, is now with his owner, Johannes Thomas, 24/7 because he was stabbed while the attempt to steal him was happening. NAWA was able to fully treat and afford medication to the owner for the days following.
Case 3: On a tiny homestead between Drimiopsis and Gobabis we saw a man riding this young horse, Maria. We stopped and found several horses there but were horrified to see the state of an injury to a back leg that happened two days before. We cleaned thoroughly and taught the owner, Fred Gamseb, how to manage the wound over the next 3 months. We left them with wound treatment and antibiotics and are hoping for a good result. We make phone calls weekly to check up and we will be in the area again in December and will check in. We hired a recently graduated Animal Husbandry student for our Groot Aub area and he is proving invaluable for our large animal work. Meet Uasuta Humgombe. He is proving to be great with equid handling, wound treatment and vaccinations, great with community education and great with new ideas and interventions. We think we will keep him! Equipment progress 48 yolk neck straps that that I designed for over the neck to attach to the neck beam pole, were prototyped last month and handed out on the long distance trip proved hugely successful as a fit, and we will follow up on neck wounds before the end of the year. The cost per item thus far is N$ 60 = AUS 5, and we have just designed and prototyped 50 neck beam poles that are much lighter and less likely to cause injury than those that we have seen but have not been able to confiscate yet. NAWA bridles and harness
