News - September 2007"BAMBA ZONKEY!" Our matriarch donkey, Biscuit, mother of the evil Crumb, has revealed a secret life..... having puzzled me intensely by falling pregnant again despite no man in her life, her tiny, fuzzy black foal appeared in the early hours of the morning, sporting zebra stripes! The mystery was solved - the dashing zebra stallion who strayed into the Sanctuary many months ago had talked Biscuit into a walk on the wild side! Our little zonkey is adorable - he loves to play and to be cuddled by visitors, but a mid-morning nap on the lawn is essential. Thank you to Sarah Cornish of Preecepoint Trading for being such a generous and kind friend to our treasured donkeys, and to the Hobbs family. Marthe Kiley-Worthington has made it possible for our farm animal rescue project to continue to operate this month and I am truly grateful for this assistance. Sadly our beloved old donkey, Spike, has been very unwell. He went from being the life and soul of our famous chidrens birthday parties and pursueing his literary ambitions by eating the covers off the books in the curio shop, to being a very frail old chap. He is responding to treatment and takes his medication in a slice of apple pie each morning. A visit from the Bikers cheered him up immensely this weekend - he spent all day polishing a very expensive BMW road bike with his tongue, much to the consternation of the owner! Sheila the baby baboon is thriving, and now sporting rather alarming blonde eyebrows that look like she's been at the peroxide (SO not a good look....). She is remarkably independent and potters about the Sanctuary gardening and helping with the laundry (taking things off the line as we hang them up). Credit for Sheila's progress must go to her carer, Collen Mwatupa who feeds, baths and entertains her every day and does an excellent job. She is generously sponsored by Steve Curle, who also supplies our predators with wonderful Sunday dinners! Many people have called us recently to enquire if we are still operational. The answer is an unequivocal "YES"! Our restaurant and bar are open from 9am to 5pm every day except Mondays and it is not necessary to book in advance. Monkey feeding is at 10am and Predator feeding is at 4pm. Despite the many shortages of food, fuel and other basic commodities, we have not compromised our mission to provide the Bally Vaughan family with the very best quality of life possible. Our predators are still fed a large and nutritious dinner every night, our donkeys and other rescue farm animals tuck into hearty breakfasts and dinners and the monkeys, marmosets, civet and blue duiker still get a plentiful choice of fruits, cereal and other tempting morsels. We are still taking in new residents too - Tel One Technicians fixing a telephone fault in the area found a barn owl with a broken wing and brought it to us. We have named the owl "Out of Order", in honour of his rescuers, who despite their eco-friendly approach to wildlife, which we greatly appreciate, have failed to fix the Sanctuary telephone line since 16th of December 2006. The sourcing of food is becoming a full-time job. Last week I literally drove all week, back and forth from the Sanctuary to various destinations to queue and cajole and dial the same numbers endlessly on my cell phone and wait outside the back of supermarkets and down alleys to hand over wads of money and containers for everything from milk to cooking oil to stockfeed and chickens. Standing ankle-deep in the trailer of waste fruit and vegetables in search of monkey food outside one of the more upmarket grocery stores, I had to laugh somewhat hysterically at the myth of a glamorous career in wildlife ! Having discovered that nothing smells worse than rotten cucumbers, I then set off for the chicken farm to load sacks of faintly green mortalities for the smaller predators. Fortunately I have a strong stomach. (Having fallen INTO a deep-freezer which we were clearing out of noxious bits of predator food last week, nothing could be as bad as that experience.... members of staff who were foolish enough to express mirth at this mishap will not be moving up the career ladder...) We collected a horse that had died of colic later that day for the lions (stopping off at the Spar en route to queue for bread rolls and feeling a huge sense of truimph at amassing 22 rolls AND a loaf of bread) and then spent three hours driving round an immense pig farm collecting dead pigs from various locations. Hardly the ideal day for a vegetarian, but needs must! As the donkeys normally assemble in an ominous mass outside my gate each morning at about 4am, bellowing and hooting for their breakfast, it is always easy to make an early start at the Sanctuary - the next morning saw us speeding through Harare with a truck load of ostrich bones, on to await the delivery of five tonnes of donkey food. A trip to the bank to check our account balance, writing cheques with a murmured prayer, a call from a sponsor with a load of hay to donate, and another barn owl with a broken wing to collect from the other end of town. A stop at the Twenty Four Hour Veterinary Surgery - the owl needs attention, Kevin the greyhound needs de-worming, and its the time of year when we stock up on fly repellant for the lions. Someone has left a box of veterinary drugs and bandages for us, and an envelope of cash from the Verhey family for Helmut the monkey means we can buy ten kilos of kiwi fruit and a pocket of oranges and a sack of sunflower seed. The marmosets have put in an order for chocolate -coated peanuts. At the fruit kiosk on the Enterprise road we find sugar- coated peanuts (but no fruit). Scarey the Matriach Marmoset will be cross because there is no yoghurt available either. We get a call that there is milk at a nearby supermarket. Off we go - greyhound, groceries, owl, the lot, to check out the queue. Too long to wait with animals in the car - anyway, we are planning to canoe down the river a couple of times a week to buy milk directly from a farm, once we repair the donkey-hoof-shaped hole in our canoe! We really are going back in time - cooking over open fires, using canoes and bicycles to run errands (I thought of harnessing up the donkeys, for one brief moment, and then abandoned that idea - heading down the Shamva road at full tilt at the mercy of the machiavellian Biscuit and Crumb was a horrible thought) Harry the house caracal is doing his bit to help out with the food shortages. He has taken to killing and eating the miniscule, brightly coloured birds that have always frequented my garden, unmolested until now. He usually devours them under the bed with a great deal more growling and crunching than such a minute morsel could possibly call for. The Inscrutable Strauss, so-called domestic cat, has taken it a step further. Slaughtering our little friend Squirrel Nutkin and leaving his tail on the carpet like some sort of macabre Mafia warning is taking self-catering too far. I had an entertaining experience
queueing for bread rolls in Borrowdale a couple of weeks ago. Having
called ahead and asked the bakery to keep us 6 dozen rolls, I finally
gained entrance to the shop, having queued for two hours in a very brisk
early morning breeze, and asked the manager for the order for Bally
Vaughan. When I got home and examined the receipt it was made out to Mrs Burly - I think I preferred Curly Torn. At this time of dire shortages, only a true friend would part with half of her cooking oil stash for the Sanctuary, as well as enormous pork roasts and other essentials - heartfelt thanks to Carol Hobbs who is always there to help us out so generously. Thank you as ever to Dr Vinay Ramlaul, and the Twenty Four Hour Veterinary Surgery, who takes care of us all, Waylon Lewis who continues to promote awareness of the Sanctuary and put together desperately needed fund raising activities with his usual aplomb, Leslie Ives and Diane Twiggs - constant volunteers and friends, and Sylvia Carter, my mom, who does so much for me and probably worries about me now far more than she did when I was little. I think her greatest fear is that I will be eaten by one of my charges. She has endured years of cars pulling up at her gate, with me lolling pale and usually very dirty in the passenger seat uttering the words "Hi Mom! I'm fine but....my nose/ankle/finger is broken. I have been attacked by donkeys/owls/parrots. I have malaria/concussion/blood poisoning. I have been at the police station/hospital/down a mine shaft...."and so on. I find it is better to tell her things face to face after the unpleasant incident where I tried to explain over the telephone that I had sprained my ankle after a lion fell on it and the only words she chose to absorb were "lion" and "Trauma Centre". Her anxiety levels after that little chat were on a par with telling her that I needed to get to a doctor urgently as it was highly likely I had contracted anthrax after giving mouth-to-mouth rescucitation to a large leopard.................. We said a sad goodbye at the end of August to Tom Dugan, our American volunteer, who spent several weeks living and working at the Sanctuary. Tom was a great asset - hardworking, innovative and totally laid-back about the unexpected and sometimes alarming challenges that face us at the Sanctuary every day, from troupes of maruading baboons to bush fires, power cuts and food shortages. Thanks to Mike and Tom Dugan for generously supporting our efforts, and to Matthew and Josh Middleton, who also did great work at the Sanctuary, and the Middleton family for their constant support and encouragement. We are truly grateful, as always, to Rudolph de Wet and Seldex Fleet Management for maintaining our vehicle and supporting Sanctuary operations so generously, Miles Peech of Green Park for fruit and vegetables for our ever-growing herbivore family, Nicky Kelder who so kindly lends us her horse box, Debbie Lewis who allows us the use of her truck and bakes delicious things for us, Sue Roberts who donated hay, Jon and Chooks Langerman who brought an emergency "Red Cross" parcel from South Africa for the animals, Karen Gent who takes such good care of Kadiki the lioness (and me), friend, sponsor and updater of our website Steve Watt, Emma Robinson - friend to little Arthur the caracal, our friends far away who continue to support the Sanctuary in so many ways - Anne Marie Witkowski, Mel Phillips, Catherine Carter, Anna Jones (Lee Gold), Cora and Mark Ruck who do so much for Khan the leopard and Mac the Lion, Wendy Boshi who sponsors Getti the monkey, Whelson Transport for engine oil, Signature Images for our stunning new signs, Rob Greebe who has sponsored Sweetie the Serval for so many years, our loyal sponsor Dave Adams of Radiator Services and Belts 'n Hoses, Richard Vaughn who helps us out every month and the Cameron family of Hamish Cameron (Pvt) Ltd who are so good to our bird family and blue duikers. During this time in Zimbabwean history when we are all coping with so much stress and uncertainty, I feel it is a tremendous testament to the spirit of the Zimbabwean public that they continue to support our mission to provide refuge for all kinds of animals at the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary. I believe this proves that hope and optimism are not unfounded, and that there is a better future ahead for us all. On the 1st of October 2005, I signed
a lease on the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary. Two years later the words from
Hans Andersen's "The Snow Queen", come to mind: How true that has turned out to be. Every day is a lesson - some lessons are so hard it is difficult to comprehend why we have to go through these times, some are heart-breaking or disillusioning, but then some are so uplifting and joyful that it makes sense of everything suddenly, and that is why we carry on, every day, doing the best that we can. Please continue to visit and support the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary. We cant do it without you! With love and thanks to you all Sarah and the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary Family
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