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Donkeys in Ethiopia live only 9 years

Posted on , Updated on by Elias Kifle

This means Woyanne donkeys Addisu Legesse and Kuma Demeksa are living on borrowed time.

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The Wisdom of Donkeys

By Roger Lewis, telegraph.co.uk

My donkey Emily was murdered. Well, I say murdered – perhaps it was manslaughter. My brother was having a house built; a ditch was badly fenced and Emily fell in. She was hauled out and reprimanded for being too inquisitive, which I thought unfair.

The next day – the ditch still unprotected – she fell in again and drowned. I was abroad and to this day I haven’t forgiven those involved for their negligence.

I loved that donkey for 30 years – as did my mother, who kept a watercolour diary of Emily’s life. Emily had her own canary-coloured cart, was a fixture in nativity plays, would be put in fields with highly strung horses as a calming influence, and was served with a noise-abatement order by Bedwas and Machen Urban District Council because her bray could be heard for four miles.

When, with a £100 legacy from my grandpa, I bought her as a foal, she could be carried like a pet lamb. Not otherwise temperamental, when introduced to a potential suitor she’d kick the living daylights out of him.
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Therefore I can completely understand Andy Merrifield’s besottedness. When he rhapsodises about his donkey Grebouille’s swag belly, thick fur and the dung that smells of bran and barley, it all comes back to me.

Donkeys, says the author, can have a “profound presence”. Merrifield would spend hours watching them graze: it was “a sort of meditation, hypnotic and addictive”.

Before long, in the manner of Robert Louis Stevenson, who rode a donkey in the Cévennes, or even Our Lord, who rode one into Jerusalem, Merrifield has taken his sacred beast to rural France. “We ponder, we wait, we meditate,” he says.

A lot of meditation goes on – but not much else, unfortunately.

The inscrutability of the donkey is praised again and again. “You can’t make a donkey walk faster. We have to learn to go at its pace.” The animals are patient, sensitive and intelligent. “It is hard to forget their innocent gaze,” we are told. A donkey has “the gravest and most reasonable eyes the world has seen”.

Apparently donkeys can get depressed and die of grief – or possibly of embarrassment should they read this book, with its pretentious imputations and fortune-cookie philosophy.

Merrifield pictures himself as a medieval troubadour, plodding around the Auvergne, with its fragrance of camomile mixed with wild lemon and thyme.

Apart from the fact that he’s “in serious need of a wash” by the end, we don’t know how long he’s been away – it could be weeks or a single afternoon.

In my experience, people who go in for the Confucian sage stuff, and are out to praise silence and slow time, are on the rebound from an impatient existence. So it proves.

“I’m no longer the same person I was before this trip,” confesses Merrifield. Until recently, he was an academic in New York (details are irritatingly vague), who has cracked up over “an iron in my soul”. He says that in his daily doings he “was nasty and rude and I enjoyed being nasty and rude”. Life became “too much to bear” – crowded sidewalks, pollution and screeching sirens. Merrifield was sunk in “a world gone awry, a world I’d already decided to shun”.

So he exchanges it for church bells, birdsong and the sainted, chocolate-brown donkey, which eats dandelions, thistles and “everything that stings”.

The book is at its best when outlining the history of man’s relationship with his ass. Though donkeys have been domesticated for 8,000 years, we have not treated them well.

In the Bible donkeys can speak with a human voice and see angels, but normally they “take the brunt of human ridicule” – and violence. Because they have a high pain threshold, people beat them mercilessly, trying to get a reaction.

While in the West donkeys can live to be 40, in Ethiopia, on average, they seldom live nine years, and in Egypt 11; in Kenya, Mexico and China they are lucky to reach 14. Owners use poorly fitting harnesses and heavy loads, which leave donkeys raw and bleeding.

After a life of slavery, the creature is tipped on to a rubbish dump “and the village dogs have torn its guts out before it is cold”. In one horrifying episode, a farmer cuts a donkey’s ears off for eating a neighbour’s corn.

As Merrifield says, it is good to know that the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon campaigns against such treatment.

# If you are concerned about a donkey’s welfare anywhere in the world, call the Donkey Sanctuary advice line: 01395 578222.

18 thoughts on “Donkeys in Ethiopia live only 9 years”

  3. I think Abraha Belai of Ethiomedia has overstayed his political age, but his demise is around the corner! Time to pack and go to Dedebit land to expire in oblivion for nobody would give a rat’s ass about this closet Weyane. I sure as hell don’t!

  8. ere elias tew yenen asteyayet kerchateh eyebelaw techegerku. yehem web page hono mekoratu new. aye yena neger. bele ekaka ke guadenocheh gare techawet.

  9. WHAT MAKES ME SADE IS 17 YEARS STAYED IN POWER THE DONKEY OF
    WEYANE DOING NOTING SEPARATED ETHNIC GRUOP AND KILLING. THOUSENED OF INOCENT PEOPLE AND SELLING OUR LAND TO THE
    NEIGHBORHOOD COUNTERY. AT THE SAME TIME, TAKING A LOT OF DONATION FROM DEVELOPED COUNTERY AND BUYING WEOPEN TO KILL
    CIVILIAN PEOPLE INESTAD OF BULDING OUR COUNTERY THAT IS WHAT THE DONEKY OF WEYANE DID 17 YEARS.

  10. HI Eli, let the donkeys worry for the donkeys. It is their fate, you can not do any thing to change them, they can not live with out being humiliated, harassed, torchured and finally killed. It remindes me of a joke that if you want to load a donkey more you just put a small pack infront of it so that it thinks there is only small left meantime you load it more and finally lift the small pack and load it, if it can not move give it a kick and there you have it, the nature of donkeys, always accept to be loaded with trouble. So when a human being act like a donkey and don’t want to change what can you do let them be kicked because they have accepted. That is our difference with them.

  11. Eli
    Would you please look at ur mirror first. Then will you see a mule (you know a daughtor of a donkey). Last time when you posted your Photo with Dr. Bire, it took me some time to tell you two from a mule and hippo conspiring.
    Ha ha ha LOL. Eliye

  13. After being advised painstakingly, if they settled their choice to have donkey’s life of the kind in Ethiopia, then so be it and let them blame their fate. When those who are aware that there is better life, including longevity, are advising them, then they got to listen and act according to the instructions given by the emancipator. Thus, they can be a different donkey with much better freedom. Don’t argue with me for I know the cycle goes on uninterrupted, but, and every time there is fresh beginning of the cycle, they must strive to reach at qualitatively better life standards—not to do so is foolishness.

  14. Is there someone who can take this guy to the Hospital.
    No Peace No war policy on Eritrea will be continued!as sechduled.
    We will bring to to you kneel down up to the last.
    You are on the last moment when you cannot grab nothing these days
    Dont worry we are on the west while you are on the east and
    east while you are west.
    Banda Shabea!!!!!!! you dont go anywhere though.

  17. Donkey is a hard working animal, not an opportunist. Donkey is a symbol of hard work. Why do you think the Democratic Party in the US chose the donkey as their symbol?

  18. I realy don’t care becuse most Big donkes of Woyane are
    Aba dula Gemeda,Brhanu Nga, Addisu Leges ..etc.are the most
    “GEBATA” leving Donkes are thear.

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