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Correspondent Matthew Brunwasser sends a snapshot of life on the Kenyan island of Lamu, where the donkey is still the main mode of transportation.
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MARCO WERMAN: Next, we take you to another place with a distinctive identity. We’re going to the island of Lamu, off the Kenyan coast in east Africa. What makes Lamu unusual is its preferred means of transportation. It’s a traditional beast of burden. But the residents of Lamu give it a lot of TLC. The World’s Matthew Brunwasser explains.
MATTHEW BRUNWASSER: The old stone streets of Lamu are too narrow for cars. And it’s too hot for horses, so donkeys have been moving people and goods in Lamu for the last thousand years. Abdalla Rifai, the manager of the donkey sanctuary here, a UK-based charity, says that without donkeys, Lamu would come to a screeching stop.
ABDALLA RIFAI: They do all the transportation in this town, so the donkey will carry all the building materials and they will bring all the goods from the farms into the town. And also, some of the family, they keep donkeys just for riding, just to have fun with them.
BRUNWASSER: He agreed to show me around the free health clinic, which cares for the some 2,000 donkeys living on the island.
RIFAI: We’ve got stables in here where we keep serious cases. It has a fan in case it’s hot, a trough for the food, trough for the water. We use wood shavers to keep the place clean.
BRUNWASSER: Rifai takes me outside to see where most of the donkeys spend their days. Even in the shade of the stable, it’s sweltering. But the donkeys sure get excited when a staff member comes out with ground corn. After the trough is filled, there’s a lot of pushing and shoving.
RIFAI: Usually we keep most of the donkeys outside here, where they can move about. We treat them over here. For your safety, you put a donkey inside there, you close the gates, tie it over there, and then you can stand on the side to do the treatment.
BRUNWASSER: The sanctuary treats donkeys for a range of health problems. One common problem is stomach blockage from eating garbage. Males get into bloody fights over females. There are also diseases from airborne parasites and worms. Inside, Rifai shows me the small lab where they do the scientific medical work.
RIFAI: We’ve got a small laboratory in here, where we keep all the medicines, like a store of medicines. That’s the carrots there.
BRUNWASSER: Yes, carrots. There’s a whole pile of them on the shelf, next to the medicines. No sticks though. He says the stereotype about donkeys having a stubborn nature is nonsense. The problem is that people don’t train them properly. For the World, I’m Matthew Brunwasser, Lamu, Kenya.
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