Worldwide Veterinary Service

A Taste of the Morocco

I have a kind of ritual when I travel abroad. I like to arrive, check into my chosen place of residence and have a beer. I’ve managed it in most countries I’ve visited, even very Muslim ones at ridiculous hours of arrival, but in Casablanca I have to admit I failed utterly. Not only is Morocco a hardcore Muslim country but it was also Ramadan. Ramadan – as far as my limited grasp of it goes, is a harsh one in terms of self discipline as devout Muslims aren’t supposed to eat, drink, smoke or have sex between about 4am and 5.30pm everyday for a month. As far as I understand it, and I may well be wrong, the Koran stipulates they only have to actually do this for ten days of the year but since no one is exactly sure when those ten days are they do it for a whole month. The month also varies from year to year i.e. it isn’t exactly a twelve monthly cycle, so basically, as far as procuring a beer goes – I’d mistimed things.

Anyhow, I had flown into Casablanca with the intention of heading up to Rabat where I planned to work with the animal charity SPANA (Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad) and despite an epic plane journey sitting next to the standard airport weirdo for 8 hours of delays, I was elated at the prospect of some hardcore veterinary work rather than the tedium of administrating equine flu and tetanus jabs I’d become so accustomed to giving in the UK.

It didn’t take me long to hook up with SPANA – it could have been easier as well had I arranged my adventure prior to just deciding to head out to Morocco in a free week but then that is what being a member of Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) is all about – volunteering yourself and your free time to do some veterinary work where it could really count. Being pretty much pathetic at foreign languages, I scrabbled around with French words I drudged up from a GCSE 9yrs ago – attempting to jibber out something comprehensible which would invariably get me a train ticket, a croissant or a hotel room with a strange look thrown in. Surprisingly this was adequate, mainly due to the kind nature of the Moroccan people I met who tolerated my general ineptness at communication and before I knew it I was wading through the medina in Rabat.

The fleapit I located in the medina (the old medieval part of the city) was something special but at less than £3 a night what do you expect. Obviously there was no shower or toilet in the room, and I’m still not sure where the shower actually was in the whole building despite assurances from the man downstairs that it was there somewhere. I love the flavour and the taste of a cultural atmosphere. By all accounts Rabat isn’t the business if you visiting Morocco and people say the place to go is Marrakech which I’ll have to check out for myself next visit, but centre of the medina in Rabat with mosque outside my window and heaving masses of Arabs thronging the streets was a great cultural experience and I was loving it. The next best thing, which deserves a mention, was the décor of my room – a stunning bright pink, certainly a deterrent for getting a hangover during Ramadan.

It was from this luxurious base of operations that I roamed around Rabat, weaving between the throngs in the market outside the front door and ducking into various alleys to catch my breath and re-orientate myself as I explored the labyrinth of alleys dissecting the medina. Spotting the surf school I tried to get a surf lesson, as it seemed a good idea at the time, the building was clean and smart and the employees very friendly. Unfortunately, they painfully and patiently explained to me (finally) – in a mixture of French, English and Arabic (there were several employees trying to convey this to a very ignorant pasty white Englishman) that there was no surfing during Ramadan (since no eating or drinking prohibits hard exertion) so that was that, undoubtedly a blessing in disguise for all concerned as I can’t surf anyway and the waves did look quite ferocious, but apparently if you can surf it’s supposed to be a great place to do it when you are visiting the city.

I left the surf school, with much bidding goodbye from the employees (who were probably sorely tempted for a drink at that point), and disappeared back into the medina centre to find a telephonique and contact SPANA. It didn’t take long and after a battle with the telephone sucking up my change, another garbled conversation with the man behind the telephonique kiosk counter, I managed to phone up the base of operations of SPANA in Rabat (their administration centre). No one there spoke any English but luckily for me their technical director – Gigee Kay – was heading back to Rabat the next day and they gave me her number. Luck followed luck and after a few more calls I spoke to Gigee and arranged to meet her 9am outside the old fort gates the next day.

The mosque next door to my lodgings certainly made good use of its pre-recorded Arabic calls to prayer throughout the night, but no complaints as I had a fair bit of trouble sleeping post my first taste of Moroccan mint tea anyhow – keeps you awake for an age, the caffeine hit is out of the league of the tame Earl Grey I’m used to. I made the rendezvous with Gigee without a hitch and within three days of leaving England I was in the SPANA headquarters in Rabat meeting the local staff.

Gigee was excellent. A really nice lady who has a streak of steel in her to keep things in line as she manages the various centres that SPANA has dotted around Morocco. I was a little tired from the night before because aside from offered copious supplies of drugs and women offered to me by friendly locals around the hotel, the mosque next door had an issue with the pre-recorded message calling muslims to prayer. Not only did this seem to eminate from the speakers above the mosque (next to my window) at a volume close that at which my ear drums would start to bleed but also at an alarming interval of what seemed 3 or 4 minutes. I have to be honest and say the novelty value did wear off at about 3am.

Gigee gave me a tour of the facilities and introduced to the local staff. Hamid was the Moroccan vet employed by SPANA to run the Rabat refuge. Like all the staff there he was really friendly and welcoming. My stuttering French was a bit of an issue but luckily the universal communicator of laughter and a ready smile did the trick and Hamid kindly invited me back to his pad to stay there instead of lurking in my chosen medina fleapit. In fact Gigee had also offered me use of the hospital flat that volunteers can stay in if they wish but after a tour around the hospital, Hamid drove me into town, collected my kit from the ‘hotel’ and we headed back to his house.

The emphasis of this particular charity seems to be based on a two-pronged approach. I was lucky enough to meet the director as well of a few of the trustees of the SPANA whilst I was visiting and Jeremy Hulme, Chief Executive of the charity, explained to me how the SPANA operates. The first prong is focused on providing free treatment for abused working equines, this is facilitated by daily trips to markets by vets and technicians. They are made in a horsebox, which aside from ferrying the necessary equipment, also serves to transport the very sick animals back to the hospital free of charge to the owners. The second prong focuses on education of the Moroccan children and seeks to raise the moral perception of animals in the culture. SPANA facilitates the latter by sending out a coach which goes to different schools everyday and transports them to the hospital where they see the animals, learn about their problems and receive education about horses, donkeys and mules – often in the form of stories so as to promote empathy of the species.

At first light, after I’d spent my first night at Hamid’s, we went back out to the hospital and I accompanied two of the SPANA technicians to a souk (local market). It was here we rendezvoused with a private Moroccan vet who SPANA pay to attend the clinics with them. At each different souk and different local vet attends and is suitably compensated for his or her time (in this way the charity is also seen to further support local people and not just it’s own employees). Aside from complying with the law, this provides a local person treating the animals and someone with whom the locals can relate to. Having said that within the first half hour and not being able to speak a word of Arabic, I was absolutely mobbed by locals thrusting their animals forward for my attention.

The pictures best depict the situation and environment in which I found myself immersed. The plight of some of the animals would tug on even the toughest heartstrings and the attitude that some of the people seemingly had towards their animals were achingly sad. Viewed as utilitarian creatures, albeit ones upon which the livelihood of their owners is often dependent, the moral perception of them is exceedingly low. Treated in much the same way as we would look after our bicycles, the animals often work in emaciated body condition pulling overloaded carts along smooth tarmac roads which have about as much grip as an ice rink.

The conditions seemed to vary along a theme. Foot conditions and lame donkeys were two to a penny. Sometimes because of shackles which are more often bits of rope that once tied around the fetlock of the animal and attached to a post, serves to prevent it wandering. The ropes bite into the animals flesh and the wounds quickly fester in the hot environment. In fact, although I didn’t see any amputees in Morocco I have seen them when working for a charity in Israel where the ropes haven’t been loosened and the joint has disarticulated, leaving the animals discarded with three legs and a suppurating ulcerated stump.

Grazed knees were in much abundance because the animals slip over on the smooth roads under the fantastic weight that they have to cart around. More often than not though, the foot problems resulted from penetrating objects and bad shoeing. I pulled a three inch nail embedded in one mules frog but realised that that was only part of the problem for its crippling walk. The end of its shoes had been bent down in order to give it more purchase on the roads. The trouble was that it raised the heels and distorted the weight-bearing surface of the hoof so that massive inflammation – synovitis – had developed around the fetlocks of both its front feet. The jarring up the leg from being worked all day with its heels raised must have been very uncomfortable.

You can only implore the locals to change their views and it was depressing to see that particular mule being whipped into a trot and made to pull its cart away just moments after I had removed the nail from its foot. The risk of infection tracking into the joint from a wound like that is unfortunately quite high and will result in the mule becoming hopelessly crippled. The only way to treat it is to flush the infection and give the animal lots of antibiotics and rest. Sadly rest is the one thing the working equines are unable to have – irrespective of how their owners feel about their lame animals the simple fact of economics means that a short-term solution is the only viable one. Of course resting the animal and making it better before working it again will mean it will work better in the long term, but a quick fix with pain killer and a moderate amount of lameness will do in the short term and might mean a family won’t have to go without food for a week because they can still get their goods to the souk.

The time spent at Rabat with SPANA was excellent and I really felt that I was doing something worthwhile albeit a drop in the ocean and only for a very short period. My admiration for the good work that SPANA does soared as I saw how hard the dedicated staff work and the organisation required to run the charity must be immense. It was on the second day of working in the refuge that one of the saddest cases was marched into the stocks. I was busy doing something with a box of bandages when the animal appeared. A local man and his two sons accompanied it, almost having to drag it along – which wasn’t beyond their strength because the animal was skin and bones. An air of apathy and depression emanated from the animal and one of the technicians asked me to have a look at it and gestured at his stomach.

First impressions were those of bewilderment that an animal so dehydrated could still be walking. I pinched the skin on its neck and the tent remained there for about twelve seconds – the normal being one or two max. No gut sounds, no faeces in its rectum, it was dull with an increased heart rate and slight temperature, although no toxic rings were obvious on the animals gums it was blatantly in trouble. In an English equine hospital this sort of case would be treated with intensive care and hourly checks before being admitted for surgery after stabilisation. The most likely thing for this animal was that it had somehow eaten a plastic bag that was lodged in its guts causing it to ‘colic’. I remember wrestling with it to get a stomach tube fed up through its nose so it would drop down into its oesophagus and pouring a mixture of water and liquid paraffin into it, I managed to get two bottles of saline into its vein, some pain killer and a shot of antibiotic on its way before the owners, pleased with the effect of the pain killer refused to have it hospitalised and led it off into the baking afternoon and back onto the tired hard concrete.

Although the treatment was inadequate and the animal should have undoubtedly stayed in the hospital overnight there was a possibility the paraffin would flush whatever might have been lodged in its guts through. The sad truth is that I saw the same animal on my third day. I had gone out to a souk 20km away from the hospital and once again the heat was oppressive. Crowds waited with their animals harnessed to homemade carts and a line of patient faces impassively observed us clambering out of the lorry. I noticed a cluster of twenty or so people gathered under a tree looking at something but I couldn’t see what. Bouchichi, the technician walked over to the gathering crowd while I had a look at a mule with an abscess under its’ jaw. As I began to flush the wound, Bouchichi came up to me and tugged my arm pointing at the group from which he had previously joined. Quickly giving me a hand to finish off the abscess mule, he lead me over to the group of locals and sure enough, 20km from where I had seen in yesterday lay the colic animal.

It was completely flat out and didn’t even raise its’ head as I examined it. No gut sounds and hugely sunken eyes. I implored the owner to let us take it to the hospital but he was having none of it and requested another ‘injection’. I knew he was referring to the painkiller and although I longed to give it I couldn’t. All that would happen was that it would get worked for another couple of hours before once again succumbing to a painful end.

Asking the Moroccan vet to have a look he agreed we couldn’t give the animal the painkiller and the owners, poking it with a stick, made the animal get up and walked it off to give it a ‘tonic’. Very sad and an ethical dilemma I found difficult. Talking to Gigee later on she said that the other week she had seen a donkey with a broken pelvis and the owners refused to have it put down – they smacked it until it got onto a trailer where they drove it off.

Clinical situations like that are difficult to resolve.

Although there are often cases like this and much worse that vets such as Gigee have to deal with on an everyday basis – there is also the sense that you are doing some real good by alleviating the pain of animals that are in dire distress. I wish I had planned to spend more time out with the charity and SPANA generally encourage volunteer vets to go for three months (you can move around the centres) – aside from the fact it would help on the foreign language front the actual experience to be gained is potentially tremendous. What is excellent is that Worldwide Veterinary Service enables vets, nurses and active support members to help charities such as SPANA and other organisations and through them there is the means to help a huge variety of species and people in developing countries throughout the world.

I fully recommend looking at the WVS website links that go to other animal charity websites. WVS has an ethos that it isn’t a closed club to members of the vet profession (thankfully) and there are conservation projects and neutering trips that active support members can get involved with. As for vet students – WVS are always looking to sponsor and help develop clinical research projects, for example wound management in working donkeys or zoonotic disease prevalence in a population of feral cats and if you have the inclination to do these sort of studies as part of an elective then get in touch. SPANA are listed on the associated charities list and you can volunteer to do exactly what I did.

I almost had to have a reality check when I finally arrived back in England. I would never have believed it possible that you pack so much into such a short time and only the fact that my bag had not made the return trip back with me made it plausible. I was mildly concerned this was because my pack was full of bags of dried herbal mint tea that might have been mistaken as something else but thankfully it rocked up a couple of days later with the herbal bags of tea and belly dancing CD intact so no harm done. The only problem I face now is that, providing my craving for the herbs doesn’t become too addictive, where on earth do I go next holiday…