Donkey Alina

Well-fed, well-groomed, friendly he looks. Not as skinny as so many others of his kind here. “He helps us a lot with our work. We love him and treat him well,” says his owner, a Baye Fall, a member of a Sufi brotherhood in Senegal. Environmental and animal protection is important to them. “What is ‘donkey’ in Wolof?”, I ask. “Mbaam mi Alina.” “The donkey’s name is Alina,” says its owner. I wonder if all the other donkeys and horses I have seen in Senegal have a name. They pull carts loaded with goods, people, animals and are often in a pitiful condition. Bloody flanks where their owners beat them with sticks. Dirty. Scrawny. Unkempt. Why that’s so, I do not know.

I have the impression that the mutton receives much more attention. Shortly after my arrival in Dakar, I see herds of sheep on every street corner. They are even carried into the sea, washed and scrubbed there. The great attention is explained by the fact that it is just before Tabaski. The more impressive the mutton a man buys for his family for the Feast of Sacrifice, the higher his reputation. And that of his family. Until the festival, the sacrificial animal is kept in the courtyard of the houses, properly fed, petted and then slaughtered. It’s bleeding out. The thought that on Tabaski all the bleating I hear around my home will probably be silenced within an hour makes me nauseous. But is killing with a slaughter gun more “humane”? After the animals have survived sometimes up to thousands of kilometres of travel, across Europe, crammed into a truck? “The lamb is happy to be sacrificed in honour of Allah and to make many people happy with its meat,” a Senegalese explains to me. And suddenly the flocks of sheep at the crossroads remind me of the many Christmas tree markets in the squares of Vienna before Christmas.

I see only a few dogs and cats on Dakar’s streets. Almost all of them are very thin, their fur unkempt. Pus-filled eyes, bloody wounds. They are shooed away when they approach children. Probably out of fear that they might transmit diseases to them, I think. And I remember my trips to India, where I observed something similar. There, as there, I also noticed the many emaciated people who from one day to the next do not know where and how they and their families are supposed to get a meal. For whom illness is a truly life-threatening catastrophe. Who only know “western living standards” from the cinema and TV. And from the demands that western tourists make on accommodation and food. That the thought of spending money on a vet to treat a sick dog seems absurd to them is not to be blamed. I think to myself. With all our love for animals.