After I dropped the children off, I took Beehive straight round to the clinic. We had a very good Dutch doctor there who spoke excellent English. I explained what I thought the problem was and he took Beehive off to examine him. He agreed that my stable lad suffered from epilepsy and prescribed a medication I had given to children in the school I had taught in in England. We next visited the chemist and the cost of the tablets to last Beehive a month, was a fraction of the money that he had been paying to the sangoma or witch doctor. He was so thrilled and I felt that I had done my good deed for the day.
However, I had not taken into consideration the reaction from the sangoma, when he heard, as of course he would, and he was not pleased. I had deprived him of one of his best paying patients. A few days later, one of my first horses, called Kojak, had his mane and his tail cut off. The head stable lad, Hardstone, who I never trusted, told me that this had been done for muti [medicine]. He seemed to think the situation very funny. I did not.
I was sad about Kojak, as when Jeremy had first bought him in Gabarone, he had very little mane and tail, cropped to help avoid the ticks and so on when he had been used to herd cattle from the north west of Botswana to the corned beef factory in Lobatse. During the time Kojak had lived with us, his mane and tail had grown back and he was looking so much better, now his incredibly bad haircut made him look disheveled again.
As if that was not bad enough, a few days later, I noticed that Kojak had no energy, he was sluggish and seemed to have trouble walking. He was definitely ill, and I did not know what to do about it. Both Francistown vets were away at the animal border fences and were not due back for several days. I began to wonder if Kojak would survive.
lucinda E Clarke 