The Brooke in a Mayan Land

The young man picks up the reins of his horse and turns toward the forest. His trusted lean bay horse is packed with food and water, ready for the day’s work. His mother glances at him as he leaves. She knows she is blessed with a son of special skills. Since the terrors of the long civil war when her husband disappeared, she
has relied on her boy to provide for their family. She is humbled that their village has chosen to honour him in a strangely modern way.

It is hot and humid, typical of a summer day in Guatemala. The dirt track that threads through the remote village leads around homes built of wood and palm thatch. The air is thick with the pungent scent of harvested allspice berries that have been laid outside the homes to dry. Elsewhere, there are stacks of freshly cut wood piled for fuel and stashes of vines which the villagers use to make furniture.

As the young man and his horse walk on, they skirt the ruins built by the once-powerful Mayan people, his ancestors. All his young life, he has lived in the shadow of the ancient temples and the observatory. Travellers come and wonder at their deep, mysterious heritage. But to the young man, the ancient stone monuments and the worn staircase are the stepping stones of his culture that has known both brilliance and brutality.
The edge of the village gives way to the lush tropical forest alive with its vibrant diversity of plants and animals. A Keel-billed toucan with its comically oversize multi-coloured bill and black and yellow body flaps overhead while exotic rainbow splattered butterflies and crickets rise up from the forest trail. His horse startles at the sudden rustle of leaves as a heavy-bellied tapir scuttles off nimbly on its short legs. He pauses, patting his horse. This is, after all, the jungle of the jaguar. Then he moves toward the allspice tree and starts to pick the almost ripe berries....

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This summer, Bill Swann, an eminent British veterinarian and Director of International Development with the Brooke Hospital for Animals, travelled to Biosphera Maya, a renowned natural reserve within the Peten region of northern Guatemala in Central America. In the remote village of Uaxactun (pronounced
‘wah-shak-toon’) where less than 200 families live and work, Dr. Swann met Jesus Gualim, the 18-year-old Q’eqchi-Mayan horse worker.

“Jesus has worked horses since he was nine years old helping to transport corn from the family field in a forest clearing,” said Dr. Swann. “His passion for these
animals is obvious and he has been nominated by his village to train as a community based animal health worker. Jesus will learn to treat skin wounds caused by the saddle packs, to de-worm animals, and give vaccinations and first aid.”

The work of the Brooke Hospital for Animals, which offers free veterinary care to the working equines in the world’s developing countries, is legendary. Founded in
London, England, in 1934 (featured in the Jan/Feb 2002 edition of the Canadian Horse Journal, “A Lifeline for the World’s Working Equines”), the Brooke, with
over 500 field staff, operates in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and Kenya, reaching half a million horses, donkeys and mules each year through their unique resources of mobile teams, field clinics, and partnership arrangements. The Brooke has now expanded its equine relief work to Central America where it has begun a three-year partnership project with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in the Biosphera Maya. In this remote region, horses are essential to the people of the forest communities.

“Without horses, Uaxactun could not survive,” emphasized Jesus who not only harvests allspice berries with his horse in July and August, but in the winter harvests chicle, the latex resin from the sapodilla tree (Manilkara zapota). For decades, the latex has been used to make chewing gum. The forest resources are cash crops and the sequential nature of the harvesting seasons gives Jesus and all the villagers a steady year-round income while moderating the demands on the forest, keeping the resources fully sustainable.

Annual incomes, though, rarely exceed $2,000 and some of the income from timber is used cooperatively by the village. Recently, they worked together to build a
small wood and thatch school which is visited a few days each week by a teacher. More than 75% of the villagers are illiterate but Jesus is learning English and
Spanish to complement his native Q’eqchi Mayan language.

Tropical forest living, though, can be tough on horses. “The horses in Uaxactun had a high incidence of eye lesions, which need to be investigated further, and other welfare issues such as dehydration and problems associated with pack-saddle use,” said Dr. Swann. “Jesus will work with his community to develop improvements in husbandry practices and he will mobilize the community to problem-solve. One of the problems is that of vampire bat bites, which can rapidly debilitate horses.”

Another problem that was solved was the persistence of loose horses grazing in the corn fields. Villagers had resorted to stoning horses to drive them away or,
worse, attacking them with machetes. The obvious solution was to fence the cropland. The Brooke provided grant money and, with the HSUS, erected a wire fence around the fields, then underplanted it with a living fence as a permanent barrier.
Future plans for the Brooke in Guatemala include helping many people like Jesus and his family not only in the forest villages of the Peten but throughout Central America.

“We hope to mobilize veterinary expertise in the universities and national veterinary associations to help in diagnosis and risk assessment of the major welfare issues identified,” said Dr. Swann.

In an age of jet aircraft, fast cars, and space travel, many of us forget that the vast majority of the world’s people still depend on equine transportation and power to travel and to go to market. There are over 80 million working horses, donkeys and mules contributing to the global economy. The number is growing. With a horse,
a person can transport people and goods, and support other small businesses such as harness and cart makers. With a donkey, a farmer can till more soil, grow
more crops, and take more produce to market.
Supporting many of them is the Brooke with equine expertise close at hand to help owners like Jesus care more compassionately for their animals and improve their lives.

Read Margaret Evans' column "In The Shadow Of Equus" each month in The Pacific & Prairie Horse Journal