- A heart-rending dispatch from Ethiopia reveals the plight of donkeys

A heart-rending dispatch from Ethiopia reveals the plight of donkeys

Mail on Sunday - October 25, 2008

The family donkey, which is lying in the centre of the garden, exhausted, fetches water for them every day, and takes the liquor Birke brews to market. The family lives in one room, half of which is given over to the donkey and a cow. The girls only eat one meal a day of sweetcorn; the animals get the husks. I ask Birke what her donkey means to her. 'If the donkey lives, we live,' she says simply.

The Brooke has already made improvements here. Small ones, such as persuading people to use wider, kinder tape to tether limbs; and big ones, such as an educational programme in schools, an euthanasia initiative for animals too exhausted or sick to work, the phasing out of the reliance on old 'remedies', such as treating wounds with battery acid or ash. Read More.