One of their duties was to monitor the surrounding community of the Masai and their cattle which are adjacent to the National park.
They had done various Tuberculin skin tests on the cattle and had some 20 suspicious cases that turned out positive. On our daily tour to the community they had the job of negotiating with the Masai to purchase their positive cows to be taken to market where they could do autopsies and take Lymph node samples to send off to the diagnostic laboratory for confirmation.
The Masai are wonderful friendly and colourful people that worship their cattle as their prize possessions and signs of wealth. They live with them 24/7. I always envisioned the Masai as very tall thin people as I was indoctrinated by African movies growing up. In fact they are quite short. I was so impressed that the government actually pays them for the cattle and then try and get some re-compensation at the abattoir.
Tuberculosis is a very nasty disease transmitted to cattle and the people and could be devastating to the community if it spreads, also its transmissible to wildlife.
After many days we went to collect the cattle and load them up for the 2 hour trip to the nearest town Narok. Thank God for the paved road, which made the trip more tolerable.
On arriving at Narok we decided to have lunch at a restaurant This is a very busy and buzzing town full of commerce and all types of vehicles shuttling around. As we were eating on the second story I looked out the window to see a person breaking in the back of our vehicle by opening the canvas flap. In a second Fred was down there and detained the man. To my amazement the by standing crowd started to be very abusive to the thief and started to beat him violently. If it were not for the police that arrived shortly that man would have been killed. This is called street justice.
I had no heart to go to the abattoir and witness the slaughter of the cattle so I remained in town at a local hotel since they would not start the process until 8 pm that evening. I awoke 3 hours latter full of welts from biting bedbugs. Not a experience I want to have again. We arrived back at 2 am in the morning only to be awoken at 6 am to go to a wounded elephant call.
The 10 days there were exhausting. I take my hat off to these dedicated individuals and their selfless sacrifice to save these wounded animals. There area of operation in huge and quite often we had to travel for to 4 hours on sand roads to arrive at our destination. I can tell you this is back breaking and skull rattling torture.
One day Dr Dominec decided to give 5 Masai maidens a ride into town. I was the only one in the back seat and moved over to accommodate them. They were very excited yelling and shouting and laughing all the way. The all started to feel me up grabbing my hair and my backside and feeling my chest. I did not know what to do but I know I was not cold as my cheeks were blushing all the way. Different cultures can be sometime surprising. The adventure continued…
