The Troyeville Family’s Weblog

..its another Sunday evening. We are back from a lovely (vegetarian) lunch at the local Spaza Art Gallery. The gallery is open again for lunch and we are delighted. There is a shortage of decent food places around here where you can go for a nice weekend lunch or a “fika”. We hope they will continue this good idea. We had the owner over to look at our newly built braai stand and give us an idea of how much he would charge to make something arty with mosaic for the table. We will now have to wait for his quote and see whether we will get an hart attack or not Neurens dad was away in Pretoria all day visiting Ouma ( Neurens grandma). She has finally agreed to move in to a home where they can give some proper fragile care and I think it is a relief to everybody involved since she been fainting constantly and hurting herself in the fall. I understand it is not easy to admit you are old and need help, hey I suppose we will all end up there one day unless something happens along the way, but it is also not easy on the family. Up to now she has been staying in a so called granny flat with Neurens aunt but them being away working all day it was difficult to keep an eye on her. Especially since she refuge to let the maid or any other help in. I know she can be frustrating sometimes but I cant help it, I like the old lady a lot. I think she is so cool.

I was away briefly last week for a Transport Campaign together with a collegue of mine. We packed our bags and set of to the small town of Ermelo in Mpumalanga for a week. There we were supposed to work together with the police stopping animal transports along the main roads. When we arrived at the police office on Monday we were told there were not really any transports going through Ermelo but that we could work together with the Stock theft unit and inspect the salesyards etc. Mondays there are no sales going on so we set out to find us some work ourselves. We found an abattoir to inspect as well as a municipal pound (where the municipality keeps stray animals like cattle and donkeys etc). On Monday night my colleague felt very sick and I had to take her to the hospital in town with help from the people working at the lodge. She spent the night and day and was released in the afternoon for us to head back to Joburg. Before we left the wire for the clutch broke on my car but luckily I was in town and Ermelo being pretty hilly I could roll downhill and turn in to a Ford garage where they changed the wire for me and we could set back home without any incidents. But yes, thats what can happen in Africa I suppose We are leaving again soon for another transport project further south and I hope we will be more successful this time.

Otherwise South Africa is mostly about politics at the moment. Maybe you have heard about Zuma, the president for the ANC (the ruling party) being charged for corruption etc etc. He challenged the charges and this week a judge ruled in his favor, stating that the President, Mbeki, amongst others have been meddling in the process. This basically means that the prosecutors (state) needs to come up with new things to be able to take him to court. The judge made it clear that this does not mean Zuma is innocent but that it has not been handled correctly. Of course this created an uproar within ANC and Zumas people who do not like Mbeki (who is also ANC) whom in fact was the one that fired Zuma (from being vice president) when the charges got known. Now they want Mbeki to resign and so Mbekis people (ministers etc) are threatening to resign as well if he has to go. Mbeki has  said he will resign once it is in line with the constitution. Mbeki is going to address the nation live on TV in half an hour so I suppose I should go and watch it. Interesting times. I always say that politics in Africa is far more interesting and intense than for an example back home in Sweden We also have the so called power sharing agreement in Zimbabwe. Where Mugabe will remain as President and Tsvangirai as prime minister. Ok, I do not want to be too pessimistic about things and  I wish nothing else than a peaceful solution that will bring better days for the Zimbabwean people but i cant but wonder how Tsvangirai is going to be able to rule together with Mugabe. Together with a man who has murdered so many of his supporters and whom will never be charged for that or the massacre against the Ndebeles in the 80’s. We must just wait and see but as I understand it they have clashed already over appointing ministers to the new government.

Tjing!

Friday evening, finally. I have been working solid for two weeks and can’t wait to sleep in tomorrow morning. I have been to Eastern Cape for 8 days joining my colleagues at the “Community Outreach programme”. In short the Outreach is about visiting underprivileged areas around the country to assist the people with their animal care. During the week we set up a temporary veterinarian clinic in a public hall in the little town of Cala. The first day we drove around talking to people and asking them to send their dogs (and a few cats) with us to our clinic for sterilisation and vaccination. It took a day for them to start trusting us I think but when more and more people witnessed that we actually brought their dogs back in the afternoon they started to approach us instead. Some dogs were also ill and most of the time the owners asked us to put them down or they might not have understood it was ill at first but then agreed to put them to sleep. We did it all for free of course and the demand was overwhelming. We could have stayed for weeks. We worked 12 hours per day and still the dogs kept on coming in. I was really amazed by the positive response and by my more experienced colleagues who handled aggressive 50 kilos dog like it was nothing. We are talking about asocial dogs that even wanted to bite their owners! I also learnt how to vaccinate dogs and, sadly, how to put down dogs as well. A sad reality, but rather that than leaving them to suffer. The main problem in the area was a dog decease called TVT, which is like a contagious tumor decease and spreads via dogs mating. It attacks the sexual organs and I saw one poor male where the most of the penis was rotten. You can imagine the pain when trying to wee, poor dogs. Every evening I came home to our Bed & breakfast feeling like I was full of dirt, flees, doggy hair, blood (from operation) and wee.. It was hard work, stressing around fetching dogs, carrying and handling aggressive ones but it felt rewarding at the same.

So I have now been working for about a month and I am still learning a lot every day. I will be a trainee for another two months until I write my entrance exams. It is different from the animal welfare work I did in Sweden on a local authority. This is a non governmental organisation but still we have more powers to act instantly and we also work more with animals “hands on”. In Sweden you demand the owner/farmer to call in a veterinarian. Here their might not be any around or people might not be able to afford one. We got the powers to take an animal away if it is urgent or we can put them down. Yes, that is the negative about this job. We have to learn how to put animals to sleep ourselves. During catastrophes or decease outbreaks for an example, SPCA is even called out to cull (put down large amounts of animals). At the moment there are a lot of fires happening around the country and some colleagues are out there ready to assist any animals caught in the fire. Putting down cats and dogs are with injections which I find a bit easier to do although it always sad. Now since I will be working with farm animals we do not use needles but instead we put them down by slaughtering them in a humane way. That means we first stun them (to make them unconscious) and then we must bleed them out. I have not yet done it myself and I am worried about doing it myself, of not doing it correctly etc. Luckily we do not have to do it on a daily basis. Most of the work is about inspecting farms and abattoirs (slaughter houses) to make sure the animals are treated in a humane way. SPCA is about animal welfare, we are not activists in anyway. We do not mind the slaughter of animals for an example as long as it is done in a humane way and the animals are cared for. A lot of people think we are against meat eaters etc but after talking with them for a while they usually understand what we are doing and why. Having an inspector background will certainly make the job a little bit easier although this is a different culture and I think the language might be a challenge sometimes. A lot of farmers are still white Afrikaners speaking and they might sometimes be stubborn and refuse to speak English although they know it. This could also be a good opportunity to learn a little bit of Zulu. I gave up on Nbebele in Zimbabwe but Ndebele being related to Zulu hopefully I could pick up something easier

Otherwise the guest bedroom is almost done now, only a few minor things to finish off. At least it is not pink anymore and Philip got somewhere to sleep. Troye found a way out from the property the other day so at the moment we got builders here putting up a small wall and a gate towards the ridge so we can close the dogs inside the garden should they find another whole to escape through. Troye did come back home again but I am always worried since we got a busy road below us. While the builders are here we decided to also build a Braai stand and Neuren is very excited by the idea of having a Braai in time for the National Braai day on 24th September haha.

Ok now it is time for my favorite show “Friends” so by for now!