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Luangwa Valley Dispatch
by Jake da Motta
With the lack of large wild mammals to gawp at in Lusaka, it seems
the perfect time to rekindle a barely touched upon passion in my
life: the gentle pursuit of horsemanship. Despite a lifelong
fascination with horses I have only once, for a few short years, had
the opportunity to work with them and then, in far from ideal
conditions, beset with Tsetse Fly and their parasitic passenger the
trypanosome responsible for the fatal disease Sleeping
Sickness. In a place where the only word in the local vernacular for
‘horse’ is the Portuguese cavalo, which almost certainly
dates back to the 17th Century when the last stupid
“Porkandcheese” (like me) tried to conquer the Luangwa Valley on
horseback and promptly lost his mounts to fly. We never did …
largely thanks to the invaluable assistance of local staff from the
Regional Tsetse and Trypanosomosis Control Program (RTTCP) who were
delighted to have domestic animals to work on. However we spent so
much time taking temperatures and blood samples, watching for the
slightest signs of illness and husbanding the horses in the absence
of veterinarians, farriers and even grooms that somewhere along the
way I forgot to learn how to ride the damned things. Eventually we
sold the horses to a farmer’s wife in Malawi packing up the lancets,
microscopes, thermometers and barely used tack, and remounted our
Toyotas. It was like most things equine, a thoroughly rewarding and
financially debilitating act of folly.
In
readiness for the first stage of rekindled horsemanship, the
purchase of a totally inappropriate, overpriced, congenitally
defective, bog spavined, ewe-necked, goose-rumped, wall-eyed,
sway-backed beast intent on my demise; I recently attended a
workshop on horseflesh and how to recognise the right stuff. Here I
was reminded of all the ridiculous and unlikely components that make
up the creature and the inherent design faults that have plagued our
relationship with them. Their eyesight still remains largely a
mystery to mankind. We have just about found the gene for
immortality, sent a probe to Mars and split the atom but when it
comes to knowing whether the beast from whose back much of human
endeavour has been orchestrated, has the faintest idea where it’s
going, the jury is still out.
Apparently horses can see in colour though not as much colour as we.
Research in New Zealand suggests horses may be able to distinguish
blue, green and yellow but the colours at the hotter red end of the
spectrum appear as monochrome. Other research concludes that it is
red and blue that are best detected and the yellows and greens are
seen as shades of grey … which has got to be pretty dumb way for
your eyes to work if you eat mostly grass. Many other long running
theories about horse sight stem from the fact that they have two
sorts of vision. The equine (like the Italian soldier) is a flight
animal. The position of the eyes on a horse’s head allows for
independent monocular vision from both sides with something like a
320 degree arc of view (great for predator detection) and an
overlapping field of binocular vision at the front which provides
three dimensional perception, an ideal tool if you run away from
things at high speed. Unfortunately this arrangement results in a
large blind spot at the rear causing them constant surprise when
they turn around and find someone sitting on them. Because they have
big noses (horses…and coincidentally Italian soldiers….but don’t say
you heard that from me) they also have a small but rather crucial
blind spot at the front which means they cant really see
where they are going and thus should never leave home without a
driver on board to steer them safely around obstacles. Despite the
fact that horses do possess a corpus calosum (the bit of
brain that collates the information from left and right eyes) they
seem reluctant to use it and horse-folk will tell you that they will
spook at an apparently “new” object seen with one eye even though
they may have seen it every day of their lives with the other eye.
How’s that work? Does this mean that if you suddenly decide to mount
your horse on the right side it will behave as if you have never met
and start crying “Horse thief!”? All in all considering we have
galloped headlong through history on their backs this is most
disturbing.
I
suggest that perhaps a more sinister agenda has been played out for
centuries. It is no coincidence that the horse has been our partner
in every conflict in mankind’s history. That the horse has led the
charge (and still continues to do so in places like Sudan) is no
accident. Is it a fluke that from Genghis to Goebbels, on every
battlefield from Agincourt to the Little Big Horn, from the Boer
Wars which took the lives of 75,000 people and 350,000 horses to The
Great War where an estimated 8,000,000 horses died, this animal has
been in the thick of things?...no! This monster that cannot see
further than its own nose and thus can charge into the maw of a
canon with no more trepidation than it would approach a carrot, that
needs someone on its back to tell it where to go and yet cant even
be bothered to acknowledge the person at the controls without
looking sideways at them and then hasn’t the courtesy to tell the
other half of its brain about them. This abominable creature which
far from feeling abhorrence at bloodshed arguably can’t even see the
stuff. This animal so prone to lameness, lunacy, injury, disease and
eating the wrong grey shade of vegetation and dying of mild
indigestion that it constantly needs to be mollycoddled by humans.….has
been using us for centuries to achieve world domination!!
Millions of humans have died in senseless wars and what is the
outcome? Borders move back and forth, political philosophies come
and go, and who is left grazing smugly in the meadows where poppies
bloom on the graves of our fallen comrades? Bloody horses that’s
who!
And I’ll probably still spend more on them than my kids’ education
in the next ten years without thinking twice and think I’m
holding the reins.
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February
2007