The Good Samaritan.

My friend Karen and I always spend one day by the pool of Hotel l’Amitie on my visits to Bamako.  It  is a day of total indulgence involving lunch of delicious club sandwiches and chilled chardonnay  and the rest of the day just floating around the turquoise expanse of the fabulous pool  which  must be one of the best in West Africa...  and  gazing up to the sky through the palm trees, gossiping , laughing and exchanging news of Bamako and London.

As we lay under our palm tree Karen told me the story of how she had rescued a donkey... it is a sad tale, but I think it deserves retelling.

During my twelve years when I lived here in Mali I had several donkeys- they were working animals, pulling our carts for various tasks at the hotel. Sometimes there was a foal, and a donkey baby really is the sweetest thing imaginable.

But my fascination with the little creature would  rapidly wane and soon it was just another donkey- a creature that held no real interest for me. We treated them well of course but little by little I adopted something of a utilitarian attitude to working animals. This did not include my horses, which I loved.  

Many Malians treat donkeys extremely badly- they belong to the lowest ranks in the animal kingdom. When they die they are just thrown onto a piece of waste land to rot. Even before they die- if they are sick they are often just abandoned to die. 

Karen is passionate about animals. She went walking in the country side by Siby to the south of Bamako with a friend about a week ago when she came across just one such sick donkey, lying in the burning sun, unable to get up and clearly very sick. The kindhearted Karen could not abide the sight of it and asked a local woman passing whose donkey it was.  The woman just shrugged her shoulders and said ‘its been there for days. Isn’t it dead yet?’ then she moved on down the path.

This callous response awakened Karen’s  heroic instincts.  She insisted to her walking companion that they drag the donkey into the the shade of a tree at least... (the donkey looks as if it has the plague, and I am frankly not surprised that the locals were unwilling to step in to help in the rescue...) To drag the poor animal  to the tree proved quite a feat: an immobile donkey is very heavy.  But by now Karen was unstoppable and she  somehow found some water for it , then  went to the main road where she hailed a three wheeled moped taxi . With a huge effort they were able to hoist the sick animal onto the small vehicle, which then transported  it on a journey of many miles back to Karen’s house in Bamako(!)

And there it lay panting  in her garden  for several days while she fed it and it was given injections and treatments by the vet who looks after her dogs. When we were at the pool yesterday the poor donkey was still alive and  Karen was overjoyed: she had found an  NGO that rescues mistreated animals: https://spana.org/about-us/our-work/ourcorecountries/mali and they had promised to come and pick the donkey up this morning.

Alas, the poor creature will never experience the care and attention of this sanctuary. Today Karen  informed me with great sadness that it had died during the night... but surely the little creature will welcome her in paradise when she makes her triumphal entry?