Donkeys and poo

Botswana has donkeys. Lots and lots of donkeys. There are grey donkeys, brown donkeys, black donkeys and a few mottled ones. I am sure there are other colors as well. They wander freely about, munching on vegetation. The idea of a fenced yard is not to fence anything IN, but to fence things OUT. So good stout fences surround every house, with gates wide enough for vehicles. But the gates remain closed until specifically opened for a purpose. You can hear the donkeys early in the morning, and in the evening. During the day they mostly sleep, unless they are harnessed to a donkey cart. One of my pictures has to be the quintessential donkey cart. It may be a trailer like structure, it may be a wooden box on some sort of tires, but my favorite looks like the back portion of a pick-up truck.

Because they are not fenced, donkeys wander about on roads and highways. Motswana drivers automatically slow down when donkeys are sighted beside the road, because it is typical that they will wait until a large and noisy truck or bus appears and then decide to join their bretheren on the other side of the road. I have been a passenger on a major Sceini-cruiser type of bus, and seen donkeys lying in the middle of a busy highway, and they don’t move as the bus screams past. Why there are not legions of dead donkeys on the roads I do not know, but they are rare.

I am captivated by the baby donkeys - their hide is a long, baby fuzz. There is one in my neighborhood that is coal black - not a speck of white, and I want to take him home with me. Except by then he will be a grown up donkey, probably cranky, and transport will be an issue.

Needless to say, donkeys leave brown evidence of their presence. So do the cows and the goats. I shudder to say I can now identify which brown piles are from what sort of animal - ain’t the Peace Corps educational?

What I find interesting is the walking habits of Batswana in this environment. I am used to giving such piles a wide berth, wrinkling my nose as I go. But natives here stride straight ahead, and miraculously, they don’t walk in it. They may miss it by only millimeters, but miss it they do.