Abdul and Liz

camel with broken right shoulder

camel with broken shoulder selecting devils claw

apothecary Mo and Dr Ackmed

Camel Healing in the Sinai Desert

I have just returned from a working trip with the Jebeliya and Muzeina Bedouins in the Sinai Desert. I was invited by The Makad charity in the UK to help heal the camels. We aim to set up a camel station and animal apothecary in the next coming years. On this trip I created helpful topical remedies and food sources using the many medicinal indigenous plants available from the desert and from my own apothecary.

Camels are falling prey to many ailments due to a scarcity of plant material and water. They play a vital role in nomadic life, travelling long distances transporting people and provisions, this amazing animal also provides wool from which Bedouin women weave tents in which to live in with their families. With very little vet care available to the tribes I hope to cultivate plants that camels can forage as a food source and help keep them in good maintenance and share with Bedouin tribes how they can protect their traditional culture. It was a I can appreciate and learn from their traditional wisdom and the remarkable relationship between the environment and the human spirit.

The Muzeina tribe were fascinated how the camels self selected specific plant material to self medicate themselves. The camel in the picture had fallen down the mountain and broken his right shoulder six months ago. It has not been treated and there is no vet for some 500 miles. Camels are so sacred to the tribe they will not intervene and wait for Allah to decide their fate. As there is no predator to a camel this can be a long process.

I was allowed to treat this camel and you will see it is self selecting my devil’s claw which is a root of a plant famed for it’s analgesic and anti inflammatory properties. The camel responded well to my other herbs and a topical lotion made of wintergreen, (from the willow tree which makes Asprin) aloe vera and yarrow. I felt an enormous amount of responsibility as I was being judged on my ability to help their camels; thankfully the tribe have asked me back as they felt their camels had benefited from the treatments.

Amazingly I met Dr Ackmed a revered herbal medicine man on Mount Sinai who appeared with Kate Humble on episode three of the Frankincense Trail aired on BBC2 the other week. In the picture he is giving me a 300 year old pestle and mortar as a gift for my work with the tribe’s camels. I gave him and the sheiks gifts of woven horse hair braided with beads. Wow, Iris, Betty and Dancer kindly allowed me to use their own hair for the occasion. Dr Ackmed commented that he thought Allah had sent Wow to me. He sure did!

Climate change has reduced the rainfall in the Sinai desert to such an extent over the last 7 years that orchard gardens in the mountains are dying through lack of water and wells are drying up fast. As the water table had dropped dramatically many Bedouin are keen to look at new ways to sustain themselves and their animals. A small working group from Leeds Metropolitan University is involved with the Nawamis community project to build a Bedouin School, and a community well. Also my students and I will be returning to Sinai to continue our healing work in 2010.

I prepared for this trip by working with a camel called Mohamed who is based at Glyndebourne. He lives with 500 alpacas on the estate and the gamekeeper is enthralled with the vegetation he self selects and browses. Mohammed is a Bactrian camel originally from Mongolia. Unlike horses and cattle which graze plants and grass down to the roots, camels are economical feeders that never overgraze the vegetation. They keep on moving while feeding. No matter how rich or how poor the quality of the vegetation, camels take only a few bites from any one plant before moving to another and camels actually conserve the desert vegetation.

Legends have been born in this landscape and it is the home of prophets and three major world religions. I am thrilled to be helping out and giving something back. Serving beyond the self and learning more about the spiritual values of other cultures and how we can embrace a greater understanding of each other and our animals.

Warmest wishes Elizabeth

Healing Animals Organisation trip to ACE

Animal Care in Egypt , October 2010
by Maddie Darnton BA MHAO

In September 2010 I received a telephone call from a friend of mine who had recently qualified as a veterinary surgeon from Cambridge. She was embarking on a three month voluntary trip to Egypt to work for ACE – Animal Care in Egypt, predominantly an equine charity set up to provide free veterinary care to working horses and donkeys. I have spent the majority of my life riding and working with horses and having always wanted to volunteer with a charity like this, I contacted Kim Taylor, founder of ACE, to see if I could join the trip and help in some way.

A year previously I graduated from Elizabeth Whiter's Diploma in Animal Healing, and in addition to this knowledge I had partaken in a number of similar animal charity trips abroad. I never feel more at ease than when I spend time with horses and hoped I had something positive to offer. My background is in project management and design – a world away from caring for animals and most of my colleagues thought I'd lost the plot when I announced that I would be taking a months unpaid leave to help save donkeys in Luxor…

The first thing that hit me when I arrived was the heat. It was 38C and rising. Some days it went up to 42C in the shade. I was drinking water like it was going out of fashion – only later did I learn that often, the working animals here are not given access to any water during the day as some owners believe that allowing them to drink whilst working will be fatal. Of course this is an utter myth, but it is beliefs such as these that make the work of ACE so invaluable through education.

Luxor is a tourist destination; thousands of people flock there every year and a popular money-maker for the locals is caleche (or carriage) rides in horse drawn vehicles. I often worry my horses are getting tired after an hour or two hacking out – these horses are often not even untacked and remain strapped to their carriages around the clock. It became clear very quickly that these animals were not treated as living things but as machines.

Having been lucky enough to travel a lot throughout my life I know that these attitudes and opinions are not something we can come in and be judgemental about. I feel that too many holiday makers waltz into countries they know nothing about and pass an opinion based on western values – when working abroad you simply cannot do this; all you will meet is resistance. You have to understand when looking at these horses and donkeys that they are someone's lifeline, their income.

They don't want their animals to die any more than we do; the difference is they do not have the knowledge to care for them effectively or have the same relationship with them as we do with our pets – for precisely that reason - they are not pets they are working animals.

This was all rather difficult to fathom when one of the first cases I dealt with was Betty, a mare with a two week foal at foot. Betty had been the victim of a house fire. Many horses are kept in annexes next to people’s homes and if a fire begins it often spreads and traps them. In this case the roof had collapsed on her back and the results were devastating. I have never seen anything like it – her entire back was red raw with burns and bleeding, her skin had tightened so much her mane had been pulled right down her neck. I was then told this had happened 6 weeks previously and was healing well. The only reason Betty was still alive was because she had given birth to Farha (meaning happiness) her filly foal at the hospital.

I was working with five fantastic vets, three local and two English volunteers including my friend from home. Much of my time was spent assisting them, changing dressings, walking horses for exercise, grooming or administrating basic medication. The cases we encountered varied from malnourishment, lameness and tack wounds from badly fitting harnesses, through to the more serious tetanus cases, rabies victims and equines who’s feet had quite literally come off or legs were broken from road traffic accidents.

I would be lying if I said it wasn’t an emotional drain. The number of animals we had to be put to sleep was incredibly sad, but the reality of the situation was that owners would often ignore small injuries or illnesses until it got to the point where they could not physically stand let alone work, at which point it was often too late.
With bad always comes some good and we met some wonderful owners who truly loved and cared for their animals, regularly bringing them into the centre for treatment. One of my most moving experiences was meeting the owner of a small malnourished foal, which he had named Cinderella. To look at her you would have imagined a cruel, thoughtless man when in fact he wanted only the best for her and was desperate to have her home as he missed her so much.

ACE runs regular educational sessions at the hospital with groups of school children, teaching them how to care for animals and that animals do in fact have feelings just as we do. This is such an important part of their work and the only way we can start to change the more negative beliefs and attitudes of people in Egypt.

Before we left for Egypt we managed to raise over £1500 for ACE by completing a sponsored walk and ride across the South Downs in Sussex. It was so rewarding to be able to experience and witness precisely where this money was going.  In so many ways time is more valuable than money, if you ever have the opportunity to get away from your day to day life and take a trip like this I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Since Egypt I have spent a month in India and am soon leaving for South Africa to work with more animals.

To find out more about ACE and the work they do please visit www.ace-egypt.org.uk and if you would like to get in touch with me about this trip or have any other questions, opportunities available or need advice please email me maddie_darnton@hotmail.com