I recently spent a week in Zimbabwe working with SPANA. SPANA (the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad) is a charity for the working animals of the world, with clinics across Africa and the Middle East that treat hundreds of thousands of donkeys, horses, mules, camels and livestock every year. I travelled with the local SPANA mobile veterinary clinc, to the Manicaland Province (some 500km away from Harare), where we camped without luxuries such as electricity. This is what Erick and Andy (the two SPANA veterinarians who I was with) do for at least 2 weeks every month, leaving their families, friends and comforts of home behind so that they can travel to the areas of the country where they are most needed. SPANA provides free veterinary clinics for everyone in these remote communities who wants to come. In many cases, these people would otherwise be very unlikely to have access to this kind of help for their animals. The SPANA staff worked with local VEA's to teach them how to treat the animals, so that they are able to provide assistance in between the mobile clinics visits.
I felt privileged to be involved in documenting the important work that SPANA, and their local partner organizations are doing in Zimbabwe, and wanted to share of few of the photos from the trip:
Case studies, stories and more detailed info from the trip will be published over the coming months through the SPANA website, magazine, blog and other media outlets. I will share links on this blog to where the stories end up. For more information on SPANA and their work, have a look at their website.