Mzungu Vet

By Jacqueline La Grange-Mostert

"From home in Zimbabwe, to a wildlife orphanage in Chobe. From a black rhino project in the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, to veterinary school in Morogoro. From contented solitude, to love. From loved ones lost and back again — the Lord led me through it all!" ~ Jacqueline La Grange-Mostert.

 

Join Jacs as she shares the wonders of travelling the continent the "African" way; making life-long friends, meeting her husband to be, and the pain of losing a loved one, all while negotiating the rigours of vet school in a developing country context. From strikes to fire-fighting; tackling pigs, cattle and pharmacology; running from rioters and bachelors, to bucket-bathing and surviving typhoid. Her fortitude is sure to inspire anyone with a dream in their heart.

 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: YesPress
• Release date: Jun 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223991724

Book preview

Introduction

You studied Veterinary Medicine where?

The response seems to be the same whenever I tell people that I obtained my Veterinary degree at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania. I suppose these reactions can be forgiven. It certainly was an unusual journey.

To say that I was naïve when I arrived in Tanzania would be putting it mildly. In many respects, my experiences during my five-and-a-half years there blew all of my preconceived notions about life right out of the water. Collectively, though, they made the experience so unique and rich that I was blessed beyond comprehension.

A large portion of this book will cover my university years and recount incidents I’ve remembered, including details pulled from letters that I wrote home, twice weekly, throughout most of my five years of study, along with a few particulars gleaned from the odd, inconsistent entries in my personal diaries.

There was much that the university prospectus did not cover: fighting veld fires on government-owned cattle ranches; dealing with a prostitute ring in a neighbouring dormitory; literally running for my life from ransacking students; laughing until I cried with fellow students; and building friendships so strong that they would stand the test of time.

Neither did the prospectus warn of the four-hour Pharmacology lectures that would make me want to poke my eye out with a needle; or that I would drop nearly half of my body weight as a result of typhoid – or that I would ultimately fall in love. Those experiences simply could not be anticipated.

I often meet people who would either like to study Veterinary Medicine one day, or who regret never having followed their dreams of becoming veterinarians. There are, surprisingly, many such people in each group. It is not that unexpected, then, that Veterinary Medicine studies seem to have become increasingly popular, but entry to these courses has become even more difficult, requiring exceptionally high academic standards. Despite this, students with a passion for this science are stretching their minds and ‘reaching for the stars’, in order to earn a place that will allow them to follow the desires of their hearts and fulfil their dreams.

I was particularly fortunate to be able to gain significant, necessary experience and training during my years working towards university, which helped me to secure a place in the veterinary course at Sokoine University of Agriculture. It is my pleasure to share with you experiences that came my way en route to becoming a vet, and a few thereafter. I hope my story encourages those who are tempted, for whatever reason, to give up on their dreams and to instead continue to pursue them fervently. NEVER give up!

Jacs La Grange-Mostert

Harare, 2019

Chapter 1

My childhood in Zimbabwe

I was born in 1979 during the Rhodesian bush war in what was then Salisbury. Of their three children, I am the second born to Mike and Cathy La Grange. My mom was a third-generation Rhodesian; the original family had come over the newly created Christmas Pass from Umtali in the early 1900s.

My dad, like many of his countrymen during those days, had been a soldier, but he was later employed by the National Parks Authority. You could say that my mom was a housewife, although she was so much more and everything else in between. My early years were spent in the centre of what was then Wankie National Park, where my dad was stationed as a section warden. Thereafter, he formed the first National Parks Game Capture Team. During that time, we were based in northern Zimbabwe, but travelled extensively.

My father’s position in the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority allowed me and my two siblings to grow up in some of the mostly untouched wilderness areas of Zimbabwe, revelling in nature and all that she had to offer. We were afforded the unique opportunity of camping for weeks or months at a time at a number of remote locations, with no electricity or running water, creating matchless experiences that were far removed from what could be considered a ‘normal’ childhood.

The three La Grange offspring were homeschooled until the age of eight, and ‘home’ was the caravan wherever my father was working in the bush. Our days began early, almost before sunrise – a trend that has continued even now for all three of us and our own offspring – and then early to bed.

School days were certainly not boring. Most often, there was no classroom involved, just a thick canopy of leaves above us and the view around us – out of this world! Our chairs were cooler boxes with no back support, and a folding, metal, camping table was our desk. Another metal table served as a nature table which was constantly groaning under the weight of our daily collections from the bush. At night hippo and other nocturnal feeders walked through our ‘classroom’, and on occasion during the day wild dog chased impala right among us – while our teacher-mom (a different creature entirely from mom-mom) reprimanded us to: Concentrate!

As far back as I can remember, I beleaguered my parents with my love for, and keen interest in, all animals. One incident stands out in particular: one of my tadpoles had an injured tail, so I took it to my mom, who could fix ANYTHING. She told me that nothing could be done for it. I remember thinking there and then that simply wasn’t good enough! Sometimes, even tadpoles need help, and I was going to become a vet so I would know what to do.

From dissecting desiccated frogs, equipped only with a school protractor and a blunt pair of scissors, to hand-rearing nests-full of featherless bronze manikin chicks, I had an insatiable fascination with the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of the animal kingdom.

Life in the wild

One of the places to which my dad was frequently assigned was Mana Pools in the north of Zimbabwe. The word ‘mana’ means ‘four’ in Shona and is said to refer to the number of main pools in the park. As kids, we would play in the numerous seasonal, shallower, sandy-bottomed pools – taking our chances with the stinging water beetles and bubbly, stringy, green slime – all the while keeping an eye out for approaching crocodiles.

Many afternoons found us fishing for bream in the Zambezi River with my mom. My brother caught his first fish there – a little squeaker. Basking in the warm, golden sunlight… the continuous plop of fishing lines into the slow-flowing water… fish eagles calling and catching their food, with pods of hippo lounging opposite us in vast heaps… those were typical days of our lives.

At Mana Pools we would either camp on the banks of the Zambezi River, waking up to sublime sunrises over a stretch of slow-flowing water, or near huge, seasonally dry river beds that were frequented by elephants. We would watch those massive mammals for hours: solitary bulls or whole family herds, digging for water in the riverbed sand and quenching their thirst from the pools they created. Their routines usually extended to covering themselves in wet sand and mud thereafter.

Our evenings were usually spent around a campfire, and between chatting and sharing stories from our day, we listened to the sounds in the dark beyond the light of the fire: fiery-necked nightjars, the call of hyenas, or a sentry baboon barking his warning of a prowling leopard; our laughter punctuated or momentarily stilled, depending on how close the sounds were. At the time, that was the only life we knew, but now, as an adult looking back, I realise that we took many of our experiences for granted. It was an amazing area and, intermittently, a wonderful ‘classroom’ for a number of years.

Huge albida trees dot the Zambezi River bank, and the orange apple-ring pods are prized by wildlife. There are also the solid, evergreen Natal mahogany trees that provide excellent shade. The caravan, a few tents, a long-drop toilet shelter, a ‘bathroom’, a food preparation area and the vital fireplace-come-dining-space-come-classroom that made up our camps were usually established beneath one or more of these beautiful giants.

Sometimes baboons roosted in the trees we were camped under and when I was seven, I remember trying to write a school story about the baboons’ dung dropping on to our caravan roof at night. My mom was hanging up the hand-washed clothing some 50m away at the time, so I walked over to her and asked how ‘baboon’ was spelled. Mom told me. I scampered back, but by the time I had sat down, I had clean forgotten if the word had one ‘o’ or two. I ran back to Mom and asked again (she preferred that we not shout to her). Patiently, talking through the clothes pegs in her mouth, she spelled it out again. I returned to my book; a small river stone keeping the pages from turning in the wind. I tried to write the word, but knew I’d missed a letter again, so I revisited my long-suffering mother. That time she spelled it out for me with a note of impatience (how could anyone be such a dunce?). My awareness of her growing annoyance meant that I forgot how to spell it before I even got back to my ‘desk’. Why I didn’t just take a piece of paper to her and write it down there and then, I do not know. My apparent complete lack of focus must have been the final catalyst. When I walked to her uncomfortably and asked her yet again, she marched me back to the desk and spelled the word out for me while banging my head against the side of the caravan in time to each letter. B-A-B-O-O-N!

Perhaps it was an unconventional method of teaching someone how to spell, but in her defence, I have never to this day forgotten how to spell ‘baboon’, and at quite an early age I became rather proficient at spelling!

Baobab trees grow throughout the park. One particular specimen grew beside our camp, near the Nyakasikana Gate. It had a large opening near its base. One hot afternoon, while our parents napped, my younger sister and I decided to investigate that hole to see how far it went into the sizable tree trunk. Armed with a long, sturdy stick, we began to poke around. We soon discovered that the hole went deep into the trunk, then appeared to widen. Only once we were fully committed to our mission – sweaty, grubby little faces close to the opening, arms fully extended inside – did a leguaan (monitor lizard) come hissing and twisting out of it at a furious rate! Amid much shrieking and falling over one another, we evaded any harm. Having achieved our objective, we left the poor reptile to his peace and quiet!

We would also collect clay from specific areas along the river’s edge. Thanks to my mother’s artistic flair, we fashioned anatomically correct farm animals, farm vehicles, and feed and water troughs, among other items. Before going to bed, those models were lovingly and reverently placed in the coals of the fire and then left overnight. In the morning, our resilient, waterproof, baked-clay creations would join the myriad others we had made. Our flocks and herds would bring us endless hours of delight as our imaginations ran wild.

In the mid-80s, when we spent a significant amount of time at Mana Pools, the area was teeming with black rhinoceros. It is a testimony to the greed and corruption of man that this is sadly no longer the case, with not a single animal remaining there today. Back then, the Zimbabwe Conservation Association used to sell T-shirts, which we kids often wore. I remember one design clearly (adults always found it incredibly amusing, much to our bewilderment): it had a picture of a rhino’s head on it, bordered by the words, Save a Horny friend. I now find it funny, too!

The cullings

When the rhino poaching began in earnest in Zimbabwe, my dad became involved with moving many of these animals to ‘safer’ areas. Over time most, if not all of them, were poached in their new locations. The capture and relocation of rhino out of the valley provided much of the work for National Parks personnel. So did elephant culling.

It was all a matter of ecology, which is the science that studies the interactions between living organisms and their environment. After many years of accumulated data, it was extrapolated at that time that the elephant numbers were increasing at an alarming rate and negatively affecting the ecosystem, prejudicing many other species. In the past, the elephant populations had moved seasonally, unhindered between African countries and wildlife areas. However, an increase in human populations and settlements, conflict and poaching pressure, among other things, had caused them to remain in relatively small areas. As a result, the environment in those areas had not had a chance to recover. If nothing was done, irrevocable damage was inevitable. There was only one viable solution: controlled annual elephant culls.

The men involved in the culls were exceptionally well organised and experienced, and the operations were carried out with military precision. As children, being squeamish was not an option. At many of these culls, we were right in the thick of the activity. We would only enter the scene once all of the elephants were down.

We were familiar with all of the stages: skinning; evisceration; the removal of tusks; the jointing of bones and the removal of the meat. We would remain at the site until most of the meat had been collected. I have to say that although it was a rather wretched experience, it was carried out very professionally and nothing went to waste, and most importantly, no animals suffered. The units worked like a well-oiled machine to complete the task as humanely as possible and in a relatively short period of time.

Although we were well accustomed to the procedures, it did not detract from the emotive experience that each cull proved to be. Unfortunately, they were a necessary evil. Once the meat was trucked back to ‘camp’, it was processed through the night at a makeshift ‘butchery’.

Quite a large percentage of the meat was made into biltong (salted, seasoned and dried meat) owing to its high sinew content and a limited amount of refrigerator space. This dried meat was bagged and sold through a farmers co-op as an affordable protein option. It provided an excellent source of protein and could be eaten dry or rehydrated. The rest of the meat was collected fresh by the neighbouring communities.

A project ran alongside one of the culls at Mana Pools, to dry copious quantities of elephant liver, which would then be ground and fed to trout populations in Nyanga. I became enthusiastically involved in the activity. Almost daily, after lessons, I could be found up to my elbows in blood, chopping the livers into thin slivers and laying the pieces out on the vast stretches of wire-mesh drying racks. A number of veterinary and biological studies were also carried out during those culls.

As expected, owing to the large amount of drying meat in and around our camp, predators abounded. Almost every other night, our sleep was disrupted by sorties with vehicles and spotlights, who attempted to discourage lion, hyena and the odd opportunistic leopard from cashing in on the ready-made meals and terrorising the staff. Later, when we attended school, we sometimes wrote about these experiences in our school work, and our teachers would write comments on our work, like: Such imaginations!

Multitalented Mom

Apart from being the teacher, launderer, and camp cook (not just for our family, but for the numerous ‘cling-ons’ that such operations attracted: vets, pilots and researchers), my mother reluctantly became the camp nurse, too. Lacerations on hands from skinning knives were the most common injuries, but by no means the only ailments. One man arrived at her daily ‘clinic’ with a stick protruding from his eyeball… and it moved when he looked from left to right and prevented his lids from closing. There were also cases of malaria and diarrhoea, rashes, boils and blisters.

Prior to her gentle attention with Dettol (chloroxylenol) or warm iodine baths, painkillers, ointments and careful dressing ministrations, staff had had battery acid poured on their open wounds, and little else!

Ghona-re-Zhou National Park, where we also spent considerable time in my early years, is located in the south-eastern corner of Zimbabwe, in Masvingo Province, south of Chimanimani, along the Mozambique border. The vibrant Chilojo Cliffs on the Runde (Lunde) River are a major attraction in the park. We could often be found playing in the sandy riverbed, backdropped by the cliffs, with elephants in the distance.

After ‘school’, my mom would have a seemingly endless supply of ideas for arts and craft projects that featured natural elements. We would collect various wild flowers (and press them), pods, seeds, dried leaves and grasses. Those were then sorted into their various shades of browns, oranges, greens and maroons then crushed and glued on to cards, along with the seeds and pods, to make pictures.

Card and board games always came out after the evening meal, lit by hissing tilley lamps and punctuated by bugs flying into them. Even though we were by no means a perfect family, we were very close and spent a lot of quality time together.

When not in ‘the field’, our base was at Nyamaneche Game Park, near the farming town of Mvurwi in northern Zimbabwe. Our house, which is now the National Parks headquarters for that area, was very old-fashioned. It had three spacious bedrooms, a lounge, dining area and office, all of which came off a central courtyard in which a palm tree grew. There was also an enclosed veranda from where much of the large, sprawling ‘jungle’ garden could be surveyed.

The crocs

Well concealed in this understated paradise were four, spacious, stone-walled enclosures housing enormous adult crocodiles. Many of them had been captured and translocated from human-wildlife conflict areas. Their pens had been masterfully designed, with ponds bordered on one side by overhanging plants; multiple tree species and long grass; wide basking rocks and sandy sections, creating a comfortable existence for the reptiles.

During a morning exploration when I was six years old, my darling brother threw my plastic doll over one of the stone walls into a croc pen. Typical boy! Unperturbed, I scaled the barrier and went in to rescue Dolly, oblivious to the grave danger I faced. Dolly and I made it out unscathed, but when my parents found out, I received a proper telling-off.

Another morning, one of the large crocodiles escaped its pen. It was only after it surfaced in our ‘swimming pool’ – a ground-level reservoir in which my brother and I had been swimming at the time – that its whereabouts were discovered. We vacated that pool with a dash of speed, almost walking on water. The reptile was trapped and returned to its run.

The family menagerie

A beautiful black Labrador called Rex was our childhood friend. He then covered a friend’s pedigree Ridgeback bitch. Once weaned, we obtained one of the ridged male pups, who we named Spudge.

We would play with those dogs in the garden all day, and go on numerous walks together to the river. We were not only dog people though, and the day we returned home from Harare with my newborn sister, my folks also procured two kittens: Sooty (a very original name for a black cat) and Smokey (equally original for a grey cat). We were very inexperienced cat owners, and in a short time, our male and female cats and their progeny had produced enough offspring to suggest a commercial enterprise. Even now, as penance for that, I feel it my moral duty to sterilise any cat that crosses my path!

There were very few times when we didn’t have baby birds or mammals to hand-rear and then rehabilitate. There was a female warthog with no tail called Hogwash, four elephant calves, and bushpigs.

A visitor once brought to us two, tiny, African wildcat kittens he had found on the road. They were ‘plugged’ on to one of our lactating cats, and she took the new additions to her litter very good-naturedly. The pair were a male and female, and as they grew, it was fascinating to note the vast behavioural differences between them and the domestic cats. For example, the wildcats would follow our domestic cats up trees and on to the roof, but they simply could not figure out how to get down. They would sit there yowling until someone assisted them. They would also destroy any soft toy or garment they found! Added to those, our menagerie included many tadpoles, then frogs; rabbits, chickens, geese and ducks. There were also two horses who were used to herd the disease-free buffalo into their night pen in the evenings and to the plunge-dip once a week. One of the horses had a particular fettish for sugar sandwiches which, much to his delight – and the eventual demise of his teeth – we supplied regularly.

Our family did not own a television set until I was in secondary school. I do believe that that was one of the main reasons why we remained so naïve of worldly attractions.

A change in lifestyle

The year I turned eight, I was sent to boarding school in Harare. Thereafter, our bush excursions were restricted to some weekends, and always the entire school holidays, when we would accompany our parents to whichever national park or safari area their work took them.

My zeal for wildlife and its care did not abate, and at primary school a few friends and I decided to do our bit to raise some funds for rhino conservation in Zimbabwe. After lessons and sport, we poured our energy and creativity into making bookmarks, pompoms, cards and junk-holders, which we would sell for next to nothing. It was hard work, but in the end we raised 50 Zimbabwean dollars! That was huge – almost 18 months’ worth of pocket money! We sent it off and received a certificate with our names on it, thanking us for our interest and input. It was around that time that I decided in earnest that I wanted to become a veterinarian one day.

In April 1989, when I was 10 years old, my father left the employ of National Parks and began his own game capture company, Game Management Africa, based 30km north of Harare. We rented a lovely old farmhouse with a courtyard. The house was situated on a corner of the well-managed Lowdale Farm, owned by Mick Townsend. We added to it by constructing a large workshop area, as well as some extensive game quarantine pens.

Owing to the nature of my dad’s business, we had even more direct contact with wildlife and the capture, translocation and management of them thereafter. This simply served to increase my affiliation with animals. The game captures also attracted a number of veterinary researchers who were keen to collect samples. Rubbing shoulders with these professionals I started thinking along the lines of one day specialising in wildlife veterinary medicine.

The family orphans

As was the case at our previous home a considerable number of diverse wildlife orphans passed through our house, most of which would be successfully rehabilitated: from common duiker, to warthogs, bushpigs, genets and an assortment of birds.

When I was 11 years old and home on vacation, a tiny, female bushbuck lamb was orphaned during a capture. I was told that I was to become her carer! That animal, named Ramzi, captivated me, and when I was home, I spent every waking second with her. When I returned to school, I fretted and stressed about her wellbeing. She did very well, and my confidence was boosted when she was later returned to the bush as an adult.

Nungu, the little, orphaned female porcupine, also provided much entertainment and affection, until she was successfully rehabilitated to a small game park. Two small spotted genet kittens required much attention, too. In turn, they taught us some amazing lessons about dealing with wildlife. They finally returned themselves to the wild in their early adulthood.

Then there was an otter that joined our family in the mid-90s! No other animal enamoured us quite like that funny little mammal. She was a Cape clawless otter, less than a month old. Despite the fact that she would require a lot of attention initially and that none of us had any experience with otters, we were definitely game to hand-raise her. Thankfully I had left boarding and was then in secondary school, which meant I had every evening and early mornings at home. With a little less sleep and some more discipline I could juggle her and my scholastic responsibilities.

Although she loved the dogs and cats, she was sometimes a little overzealous. As instigation for a game of rough-and-tumble, she would climb on the pets. The otter would take their frantic attempts to escape as a willingness to partake in her game. She established her midden on the verandah right outside our lounge, and the mess she created stank, so we named her Frot!

Frot and Whisky, our wire-haired Jack Russell, hit it off almost immediately, unlike the other dogs. Whisky was unbelievably tolerant and had really fast reflexes. The cats bristled and hissed to no effect and unless they clambered to an elevated position of surveillance, they soon fell prey to the otter’s humour and exuberance.

Frot graduated from a bottle after