Donkey Double

I apologise, it's been so long since I put up any travel tails. There really haven't been too many in recent months, so I'm giving you a double! I'm working in Islamabad, Pakistan and there are a few creatures around the place, but I'm not allowed to get out very much to see them. But I've seen monkeys by the side of the road that leads up into some hills (apparently if you walk up the tracks you can see more of them), and foxes that run across the road at night. And I'd even seen a few donkeys pulling carts along the side of the road. Of course cruising past in a 4WD does not a good photo make.

I noticed these donkeys from the roof of our office, helping with a construction site that has apparently been going on forever. There are about six donkeys that cart dirt up from the big hole in the ground to a spot behind a brick fence. If you stand there long enough and watch them (which I do when I need a break from my computer) it becomes obvious that the donkeys are pretty cool. They stroll down the ramp unassisted to where the labourers are picking away at the dirt, and wait patiently to be loaded up. Then the donkey totters back towards the ramp and makes it about half way up. It just stands there for a while, not sure of what to do next, and the labourers are so busy with their shovels that they don't notice it hasn't quite made it. Eventually one guy will walk up behind it and give it a slap on the rump, and off it will go. It becomes more amusing when there's a donkey pileup on the ramp.

Perhaps now they've brought the donkeys in the building might actually get finished!!

After my wonderful safari in Kenya I spent a week on the island of Lamu, at the far end in a quiet little village called Shela. There is apparently one car on the whole island, but by far the most popular form of transport is the donkey. The walk between Shela and Lamu town takes about 40 minutes, and during the stroll you get passed by men riding donkeys at break neck speed (all calling out a very helpful "excuse me ma'am" just in time to allow you to get out of the way) and other donkeys that are laden with all sorts of food items.

The streets of Shela are narrow and mostly sandy, and around almost any corner there are donkeys. I liked the little ones.

Startled

The city of Chittagong in southern Bangladesh is home to a thriving port. The busiest trade in the port area is shipbreaking, an horrific practice whereby gigantic ships are taken apart bit by bit to be sold as scrap metal. The horrific part is that this is done by the hands of men, not machines. Men who are paid peanuts and who are not given personal safety equipment. Many of the beggars on the streets of Chittagong who are missing limbs formerly worked in the shipbreaking yards.

While this isn't a particularly fantastic photo of the animal, it does give a bit of scale to how big some of the ships are that come into the yards. It's a noisy business, and as this dog made his way along the beach, he was startled numerous times by the sounds of banging metal.

Cat nap

If I believed in reincarnation I'd want to come back as a domestic cat. I can't imagine a more blissful life than napping 6 times a day, getting back rubs when I wanted them, scratches under the chin and on the side of the face. Yep, life would be pretty sweet.

And that's how it seemed for this cat in the Philippines. I spotted him just minutes before I came across gigantor-pig. He seemed very happy to be stretched out on the side of the sink, not caring if he left orange hairs all over the clean dishes, and staying cool in the shade. While I was still feeling the high of such gorgeous surroundings, I couldn't help but wish we could trade places, just for forty winks or so.

Monster pig

One of the most remote places I visited for work in the Philippines was a place called Kalamansig, which was a four hour drive from the office, then an hour on a boat, and then a short trip on the back of a motorbike. Following a very smoothly run food distribution, I ventured off to find a bathroom, which is when I stumbled upon the giant above.

I remember writing a blog post about this pig, which went along the lines of "I saw a tail swishing from around the corner. It was too high to be a dog, but too low to be a cow. I walked around the corner and was greeted by the sight of the most ginormous testicles," which I then compared in size to the bull statue on Wall St in New York (it's a big statue).

This pig was a monster; it was about the size of a large Shetland pony, or a baby hippo with an overactive thyroid gland. I wish there had been something around to provide a better sense of how big it really was. This photo was taken around the time that there was a lot of talk about H1N1, the swine flu, and I imagined that if this guy was a carrier, that the whole island of Mindanao (the 19th largest in the world incidentally) would be infected by him, single hoofedly.

He's with the band

Here is another great dog I came across in Kathmandu. While wandering through narrow streets, winding towards Durbar Square, a flash of red caught my eye. I noticed the red jackets, then the euphoniums, the blue door, and the broken pink chair.

And then I noticed this dog, curled up in the doorway. I wondered if he was the mascot for the marching band, but he didn't really strike me as the energetic type.

A lucky kid

The ongoing conflict in Mindanao has displaced over 200,000 people. Many of these families have taken refuge in temporary camps, with a lucky few being moved into longer term barracks or structures. I visited one such area, which was situated on top of a hill, which had a spectacular view but no access to water, and the land was not fit for agriculture. People had to walk a few kilometres to access clean water and some how transport it back up to the shelters in the containers you can see in the photo. Some families had managed to save their livestock, mainly chickens, but I noticed a face poking out at me from around the corner of one of the shelters; a lucky family had managed to save their goat.

The Story of Mangy

I hadn’t planned on telling the story of Mangy so early on, but in light of recent events, I thought I should share a success story. When I moved to the Philippines I was very lucky as a staff house had just been established; my colleagues had spent previous months (and in some cases years) holed up in a nearby hotel. I’m not entirely sure how the cat family came to be part of the household, if they came with the house or just smelled the food, but Grandma, Mum and the kitten soon became part of daily life. Grandma and Mum were named for obvious reasons, but it took a little while to decide on a name for the kitten: Mangy. She was a pathetic looking thing, I was initially scared to go anywhere near her because she looked so terrible. But sure enough, I caved in, and would spend a lot of time curled up on the couch outside on the patio with Mangy curled up beside me. I started giving the cats milk every morning, and my leftover dinner every night. Soon enough, it became clear that Grandma was pregnant again, and then there were another three tiny kitties to admire. Well, as is the way of life, two of the kittens didn’t survive very long, which was very sad indeed…particularly as I found one of them one lunch time. Throughout all of this upheaval, Mangy became more and more outgoing and interested in the world around her, and became stronger and healthier and much less ugly.

Mangy is one of my happiest success stories...I don't know where she is now, but I hope she's thriving.

Bathing Buffalo

Water buffalo are a precious commodity in Mindanao, the largest island in the southern Philippines (and the 19th largest island in the world). Buffalo can plough land, drag heavy loads, and produce milk. So, people take care of their buffalo. The west coast of Mindanao has been plagued by a long running conflict for many years now. I worked there for a few months and was lucky enough, even in an insecure environment, to be able to see a lot of the area while observing food distributions.

The area on the opposite side of this river was experiencing shelling on the day this photo was taken; we could hear mortars exploding in the distance, probably only a few kilometres away. We were conducting an assessment on food needs for people who had left their homes on the other side of the river the week before, and were now living in makeshift shelters, with bamboo frames and walls made of sarongs or old rice bags. We could tell these people had already been displaced by fighting before, as many of them already had rice bags marked with the logo of the agency I was working for. I heard stories of people who'd been forced to leave with only the clothes on their backs, and perhaps some cooking utensils if they were lucky. A number of women told me that their husbands had returned to their homes to try and save the livestock, and they were worried that they wouldn't make it back to safety.

This man had managed to bring his buffalo with him, and it was obvious how precious they were to him as I watched him brush the water off their backs after their bath.

Flat Out

It can get quite hot in Bangladesh. I lived in Chittagong, located in the south east of Bangladesh for a year. My housemate and I went with a friend on a boat trip down to Rangamati, part of the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, which has suffered from sporadic fighting in recent history, along with a rat plague every fifty years or so. We didn't actually get as far as Rangamati, as special permits are required to enter the area, and the border police stopped the boat.

It was February at the time of this photograph, which was the end of winter. I remember it being quite warm in the middle of the day, and our friend jumping in the river (complete with his BYO life jacket) for a swim, but that it cooled down dramatically in the afternoon and that I wrapped my thin orna (a scarf) around me in a futile attempt to block out the breeze.

This dog must have spent the whole day running up and down the river bank, enjoying the sunshine, which as we all can imagine would get pretty tiring. So what better place to have a nap, than a dug out little spot in the mud in the shade, complete with headrest.

Horsing around

Kolkata, or Calcutta as it was formerly known, in India is most commonly thought of in relation to Mother Teresa, and ergo, poverty. I went there for a long weekend while I was living in Bangladesh, and to me, the poverty wasn’t as apparent as it was in the city I was living in. I actually found Kolkata to be a little piece of paradise – I could easily order a beer, and have bacon for breakfast. If people didn’t speak English, I could use the Bangla I’d been learning to get around, winning favours along the way. My first taste of India wasn't one of being overwhelmed by the sights and sounds and smells as it is for many tourists, but one of comparison and a feeling of slight superiority that I wasn't so overwhelmed.

It was during a stroll on the first morning that my friend and I stumbled across this horse. While you can see a motorbike and a truck in the background, that doesn’t truly represent how busy this road was. Cities in India are busy, noisy, places. There are buses and trucks and motorbikes and autorickshaws, and in Kolkata, the fabulous old yellow Ambassador cabs. And there, amongst it all stood this horse - no reins, no rope, nothing to bind it to any one or any place – fast asleep.

Where it all began

I met this wise old dog at the Swayambhunath Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal. There must be hundreds of steps to reach the top of the hill (apparently 365 according to Wikipedia) which are lined with little stalls selling jewellery and knick knacks. Otherwise known as the Monkey Temple for good reason, little monkeys dart in and out and around.

After reaching the top of the hill, and doing my best to avoid all the hawkers, I saw this dog; so calm and serene among the madness. He stayed in this position for as long as I watched him, until I was disturbed by a man wanting to realign my chakras. This old dog has inspired me to seek out other animals on my travels, and I wish I could give him a scratch on the belly in thanks.