Tales from a Wild Vet

by Jo Hardy

  I explained that it was important they use rubber gloves when handling goats’ bodily fluids – especially after-birth – as the bacteria brucella is common in Uganda. It is a bacteria that may well not manifest clinically or obviously in the goat, but that transmits to humans and results in undulating fever – one with highs and lows that is hard to get rid of – and can affect the reproductive organs and cause miscarriages in pregnant women.

  When the bags had been distributed people came up and thanked me warmly, and the feasting afterwards went on for some time.

  That night, happy with the way it had gone, I slept well, until I was woken at 3.00am by someone playing ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ unbelievably loudly. A Christmas carol in February seemed strange enough, but in the middle of the night?

  In the morning I asked George about it, half wondering if I’d imagined it. He told me that a local man had died a few days earlier, when he crashed his motorbike into a cow that was standing in the middle of the unlit road. The way that people mourned was by playing loud music – African music as well as the carols – all night long, on festival-strength speakers which they hired, for a week. He explained that many African songs were deeply meaningful in their lyrics and helped people deal with their lives.

  I felt desperately sorry for the man’s family, but also rather worried that I might not be getting much sleep for the next week. I got used to it, though, and a lot of the music was African with a strong, deep beat. In the end I found it almost soothing.

  There was little to do in the evenings but sit and talk, and I enjoyed walking, especially in the cool of the night. George, realising this, would invite me to walk with him, and we would talk as we walked. One evening, about two weeks into my stay, George told me his remarkable story. He had been born to a woman who wasn’t married. She hated his father and didn’t want her baby, so she instructed someone to go and throw George into the Nile. As this person carried the baby to the river, an aunt had stopped them and insisted that she would take George. But despite this kind offer, her family did not treat him well. They fed him and clothed him, but they didn’t pay for him to go to school and they treated him like a slave. And when he had a bad infection under the skin of his feet they wouldn’t take him to a doctor, so he had been left with deformed feet.

  Knowing that he must manage alone, from the age of seven George started providing for himself. He wanted so badly to go to school that he picked wild fruit, sold it on the side of the road and used that money to pay his own school fees.

  As he got older, he started planting some of his own crops and selling them. By the time he was around 13 years old he had saved enough money to buy a pig. He killed it, cooked it, and sold the cooked meat, which made him a lot more money and allowed him to become completely independent from his aunt’s family.

  One Sunday, his teacher at school wanted to go to church, but he was going to be late so he ordered George to take his seat in the service and save it for him so that when he arrived late he would have a seat. George had never been to a church before and he found it really interesting. When the teacher arrived to take his seat, George stayed on.

  One day soon after, George became very ill. His aunt said she would take him to a witch doctor, but George was dragged there kicking and screaming and ran out, saying that the church had said he could be healed by Jesus. George recalled that as he broke away from the witch doctor’s house someone in white greeted him, then everything went blank and he woke up on the ground with people peering at him. When he got up, he was completely healed of his sickness.

  From that moment on he knew he wanted to work for the church, and gradually he made his way up the ranks of the Anglican Church, starting as a reader and then worship leader and finally a preacher. He got sponsorship through the church to go to Bible college and now he was not only leading his own church but was head of a large parish that incorporated about 40 others, and was highly regarded and honoured by a lot of people in the north of the country. When he lost his two eldest children in the car crash, even the President of Uganda paid his respects and made a donation to him to help with the funeral costs.

  Having known such suffering and loneliness in his childhood, George grew up determined to help others and since he made that vow he has never stopped. I was fascinated by his story and filled with admiration for his courage and determination, even as a small boy, to survive against the odds.

  I knew that paying all the school fees for his own children and several others was a struggle for him. He wanted to provide all of them with a chance in life, but it wasn’t easy for him.

  The school was built of brick, but it was still very basic. It had no glass in the windows, there were 60 children in each class, sharing the 30 desks, and there was no electricity or running water. But despite this the children were cheerful and well behaved. Some of them walked miles to get to school, but they went because, as everyone knew, education was the key to a better life.

  I didn’t get to know George’s older children well, but I did spend time with Joshua and I really enjoyed talking to him. He was bright, kind and very caring, like his dad. He would walk several miles by himself to the local shops to bring back shopping for his mother.

  Everyone I met in Uganda had a very strong faith. The two predominant faiths there are Christianity and Islam, although there are a few tribal faiths as well. When I accompanied George to the local Anglican church one Sunday, I asked him why there was so much belief in Uganda.

  ‘In England you have everything you ever wanted or needed,’ he replied. ‘When you are in trouble you have the health-care system or financial help, so it takes a long time to get to the point where you feel the need to ask God for help. In Uganda the people have nothing and the only way to cope with life’s hardships is to turn to God and their faith.’

  The conversation left me thinking about how much I take for granted, the luxuries I have always had and not recognised as such, and how grateful I was for all that I have been given.

  On another Sunday George asked me to take a look at a bull kept by one of the reverends at the church. It was a confusing system – there seemed to be four or five reverends and I wasn’t at all sure how things worked at the church and who was actually in charge, but it all seemed to be perfectly amicable. One of these reverends had some cows that he kept at the church, along with a bull that had been tethered by its horns with a rope and was now injured.

  I went to the land behind the church to have a look. The rope had cheese-wired its way deep into the bull’s skull – the poor creature must have been in a lot of pain. I had to cut off the rope and it left an incision half an inch deep all the way around both horns. I cleaned the wound and sprayed it with antiseptic, then told the reverend to give the animal antibiotics for a few days and asked him if he could please find a kinder way to tether it.

  Life was taken much more lightly in Uganda. It had to be, because death was everywhere. Everyone had lost family members in road accidents or to illnesses like HIV or cancer, conditions that often might have been helped had there been more medical funding and facilities.

  One day George took me to the local hospital to see his cousin Sophie, who, in her late thirties, had terminal cervical cancer. I was shocked at how basic the hospital was. It was housed in several separate buildings, the surgical suite had plastic strips over the door and patients where wheeled from the outside straight into surgery. In Sophie’s ward there were beds crowded down the sides and more in the middle of the room, end to end down the aisle. Some had two people to a bed. It reminded me of films showing hospitals in wartime, with casualties piled high.

  In another part of the hospital George’s sister’s baby, Tulita, had been admitted with malaria. She was in a smaller room, with her mother and auntie, and to my relief they said that although she still had a fever she was doing well.

  The nurse who looked after Sophie said that they had done everything they could and it was now in God’s hands, an attitude whic
h pleased George. A few days before I left Sophie was discharged into George’s care. She was able to walk with aid, and sat under the tree cracking nuts with some of the other ladies. It seemed a much nicer way of spending her last days than being stuck in the overcrowded ward.

  By the time I was in my third week I was used to the routine of life in Owiti. I enjoyed my early-morning starts with Maurice and had got to know many of the people in the community. Every now and then I went to say hello to Anna and Pasca. Anna grew weaker each day, and I worried about what would happen to Pasca when her mother died. Children in Africa have to be resilient and resourceful, but would she really be able to live alone, at just 12?

  Richard, the elder I had met on my first day who had treated me to a soda, was also a friend, and it was at his house that I discovered what I came to think of as the ant-bite dance – something I became horribly familiar with during my four-week stay. I was worming one of his cows and, as usual, the cow was tied between two trees. Maurice was holding the rope around the back legs and I was trying to inject the cow, while the cow was trying to wriggle free. Suddenly I felt something stinging inside my clothing. I looked down and saw a trail of red ants making their way along the ground and … up my trouser leg. They had got as far as my top and they were biting me. Red-ant bites really sting and, as I might have mentioned earlier, I am not at all keen on ants, let alone when they’re all over me.

  For the next few minutes I jumped about, banged my legs with my hands, shook my T-shirt and twisted this way and that, all the while shrieking hysterically, ‘Oh my goodness, get them off me! Aaargh!’

  When finally the ants were gone and I had calmed down enough to straighten my clothing and pick up the syringe I had dropped, I looked up to see Maurice standing the other side of the cow, a big grin on his face.

  ‘I see you have discovered the ant-bite dance,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Africa.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A Better Future

  ‘We have got some very nice goats.’

  George sounded pleased. He and Richard had been to the market in Lira to buy 34 new goats with the money donated by World in Need. They would be given to members of the community who hadn’t yet received one as part of WIN’s ‘Give a Goat’ project, but there were far more people hoping for a goat than there were goats to go around.

  ‘How will you decide who gets one?’ I asked George.

  He looked grave. ‘The community leaders have decided this.’

  ‘Shouldn’t the people who have no goats at all get one before those who already have a goat of their own?’ I asked, thinking of Michael and Susan, the young couple with only a few chickens – one fewer since they’d given me one as a gift.

  ‘No, we will have arguments then,’ George said firmly. ‘The leaders have said that every person who has not had a goat from World in Need, even if they already have a goat they have bought, may ask for one. And as there are many more people asking than there are goats, we will choose the winners from a hat.’

  And that’s how it was done. Each goat had a number painted on its side in pink, using some leftover paint from George’s house, and then correspondingly numbered pieces of paper were put into a hat. Each person who was eligible would be able to pick out a piece of paper, and if they were lucky enough to pick a number between one and 34 they would get that numbered goat.

  The evening before the lottery George asked me to check over the goats that he and Richard had bought.

  ‘We got the finest goats in the market,’ he said. ‘But they are not all young healthy females, as we would wish. There are one or two I am not so sure about.’

  In fact, he had done pretty well. Ideally the goats needed to be young females that hadn’t yet had a kid, and there were quite a few of these. Some of the goats they’d bought were a bit older than we might have wished, but only three were actually sub-standard, and one of those had been injured when it fell off the back of the lorry as they drove home. It had dislocated its hip, which I managed to put back. I hoped with rest and pain relief it would be fine. Another had an infection of the jaw bone, known as lumpy jaw, and again I was able to treat the goat and was pretty sure it would recover, even if it was left with a malformed jaw. The third goat was the biggest problem; she was an old doe that might not have many years left to breed, which would mean she was of little use. At least she had milk streaming from her udder, a sign that she’d had a kid recently and so wasn’t completely infertile yet. A few of the younger does needed worming, and then I was done. The goats were ready.

  That night the goats were tethered to trees and Kochas agreed to sleep with them to make sure nobody stole them.

  As people gathered for the giving out of the goats the next morning there was a real air of anticipation. Dozens of people had come to try their luck and it was thrilling to think that 34 of them would receive a gift that would make a real difference to their lives and to the wellbeing of their families.

  Before we started George asked me to explain to everyone that the goats were of different ages and standards. I did, and I also told them how to tell how old their goat was once they got it, by looking at its teeth. It’s really very simple; a goat is born with the potential for four pairs of incisors along the front bottom jaw. The upper jaw is just gum. They start off with growing baby incisors and every year they lose a pair and grow an adult pair. So if they have one pair of adult teeth and three pairs of baby ones, they are one year old. After the age of five the goat’s age can only be estimated by looking at the amount of wear on the teeth, and as goats living on rough, coarse diets will wear their teeth away faster than goats on more refined diets, it was a bit of a hit-and-miss method.

  As I demonstrated the process on one of the lottery goats, 50 people squatted around me, absolutely amazed that it was possible to tell that the goat was two years old. Behind them were 50 more people, peering over their shoulders.

  By the time the draw was to take place, there were closer to 200 people. George held the hat and told everyone to pray as they drew their numbers because it was up to God who received a goat. They lined up and took out their piece of paper, and each time there was a winner there would be a whoop of joy.

  Eventually there were 34 very happy people, each with a goat. To my delight, Susan was one of them. She had drawn a very good-looking, healthy young goat and she couldn’t stop smiling. She and Michael led their goat over to me and told me their plan. They would sell the kids the goat would produce to buy cattle, then use the cattle to plough their small piece of land and use the money from the crops they could then grow to pay for their children to go to school. It was a perfect illustration of what a difference having a goat could make to a family. The first of their children, they told me, was on the way, so it couldn’t have been better timing. As they were about to leave, Susan turned back. ‘This goat will have a name,’ she said. ‘And the name is Jo Hardy.’

  What could I say? Some people have stars named after them, some have goats. And personally, I prefer goats (but then I would, wouldn’t I?). It would always make me smile, thinking that in Owiti my lasting legacy was a goat with my name.

  The following day, George told me that he’d overheard some people at the trading centre saying that it was funny how all the people who got goats were those most in need of them, and four-fifths of them were those who didn’t already have goats. It seemed the prayers had worked.

  There was a second piece of wonderful news that arrived at the same time as the goats.

  World in Need had also donated the money to dig a borehole to provide clean water for the community and, 10 days before I left, the work started. The man in charge of the whole operation, Bosco, good-humoured and outgoing, promised me that I would taste the water before I left. I didn’t believe him; how on earth could a borehole be organised and drilled in 10 days when they hadn’t even decided on a site?

  The next day the surveyors arrived and located the best position – near rock on land belonging to Geo
rge’s neighbour. Rock means very clean water, so that was good news. The day after that the drill arrived and work began, with Bosco supervising the drilling team. The water was deep, they said, so they were going to have to drill a long way down. It was a tense wait to see if they could reach it.

  While the drilling went on, I carried out my last few days of rounds with Maurice, visiting each of the groups with the aim of seeing everyone’s animals before I left. The houses we had left were few and far between and the last couple of days were exhausting – we often cycled for an hour to reach a house on the outskirts of the community.

  Two days before I was due to leave I heard that Anna had been taken to hospital. One afternoon I went to see her daughter, Pasca. I gave her a bracelet to let her know that I was thinking of her. I couldn’t imagine being a girl of her age with no family at home and no money for food. The following day, Anna died. George paid for her coffin and friends came to help Pasca with the funeral.

  I was deeply concerned about her. How could a 12-year-old, grieving for her mother, survive alone? George had told her that she would be welcome at his house any time and I knew he would do his best to help her, but his resources could only be stretched so far; I knew he couldn’t pay for her to go to school and I couldn’t help wondering what would become of her. George assured me that orphans in Uganda were common and the community would rally around her. Even so, I decided to talk to David Shamiri to ask what could be done to help her.

  On my final day in Owiti the pump was fitted in the borehole and, true to his word, Bosco presented me with a cup of water. It was amazing – clear and clean and so good that it tasted just like bottled mineral water.