A woman leads donkeys with loads of firewood at Nessuit in Njoro, Nakuru
County on October 7, 2015. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
In a remote village in Narok, water scarcity is as old as the
community’s culture. But as long as the rural folk have beasts of burden
to haul water to their homes, the scarcity isn’t as tragic.
At
dawn, women and children would guide their donkeys to the nearest
watering hole and drive them back home comfortably as the animals lugged
the water cans.
Then, about two
years ago, donkey theft crept in and became rampant, robbing the village
of its convenient means of transporting water and other goods. And now,
women and children must carry water by themselves as they trek miles
under the scorching sun to deliver the commodity home.
INCREASING LIBIDO
“It
is very tiring and we can only afford to carry one jerry can at a time,
so we have to make several trips,” said Nancy Sintoyia, a resident of
Nkareta village.
Like in Narok, the
theft has spread widely across several parts of the country particularly
in remote areas, which naturally had high numbers of the animal. Bomet,
Nakuru, Baringo, Machakos, Kirinyaga, Embu and Kitui have been reported
as the worst-hit counties.
It is estimated that the number of donkeys in the country has dropped by half since 2009 to 900,000.
Animal
rights activists attribute the decline to the burgeoning market for
donkey hides in China. From Kenya, the donkey pelts travel thousands of
kilometres to China. Many of them end up in an eastern town called
Dong’e, where most of the world’s ejiao — a traditional medicine made
from gelatin extracted from boiled donkey hides — is made.
Ejiao
was in the past prescribed primarily to supplement lost blood but,
today, it is sought for a myriad uses, ranging from delaying ageing and
increasing libido to treating side effects of chemotherapy and
preventing infertility, miscarriage and menstrual irregularity.
And
the demand for ejiao has been rising recently — fetching around $400
(Sh40,000) per pound (454 grammes), up from $9 (Sh900) per pound.
Having
wiped out their donkeys, Chinese traders are turning to Africa in
recent years to meet the demand for donkey skin, a move that has
increased theft and cross-border smuggling of the animals in Kenya.
RURAL ECONOMIES
In
Kenya, three Chinese-owned companies have so far opened donkey
slaughter houses in the country: The Zilzha Ltd Slaughterhouse in
Nakwaalele, Turkana, Goldox Donkey slaughterhouse in Mogotio, Baringo
and Star Brilliant Abattoir in Naivasha, Nakuru.
Mr
Fred Ochieng, regional chief executive of Brooke — an international
animal welfare charity dedicated to improving the lives of working
horses, donkeys and mules — reckons that the impact of donkey theft and
slaughter is proving even greater than initially thought.
Brooke
also found out in a survey that 4 in every 10 donkey farmers had lost
donkeys in the last six-months while 8 in 10 farmers reportedly knew
someone in the community that involuntarily lost donkeys in the six
months preceding the study.
“Alarming
reports have been coming in from Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa, and
it’s clear that it is affecting the people who rely on donkeys to
support their livelihoods,” says Mr Ochieng.
He
says that donkeys remain crucial to rural economies, where they are
used to transport food, water, firewood and farm produce. Moreover,
donkey owners earned Sh213,979 on average, annually.
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