Donkey in my heart, 06.08.2010

A story of the flood by Karola Kostial

Torrential rain woke me up around midnight, I closed the windows. The pouring continued for some hours, sleep caught up with me again. Only in the morning over breakfast the awful news hit me like a hammer: cloudbursts and flashfloods had caused the worst disaster that ever hit Ladakh. Many houses washed away, people killed and missing, roads impassable, bridges down, no more phones, internet, electricity, airport, shops and restaurants closed - deathly silence everywhere.
A friend accompanied me as we slowly walked down Changspa Road into the main market. No cars, just padding feet, heading down in the direction of the New Bus Stand on the left side of the road. The people coming back from the devastated site were quiet, shocked, with solemn expressions on their faces and on the other side of the road, going back home.

People watching in shock

What we saw took our breath away, shook us to the core. Debris everywhere, people digging in ruins for the missing, chains of volunteers passing rocks, buckets of mud and sand to help free the trapped, tourist girls with backpacks, young men, locals, heavy equipment in between. Houses, shops, business, the entire new bus stand had disappeared.

Destruction all around

I felt numbness creeping up my spine and finding its way into my mind, encasing me like a heavy coat, bending my shoulders. We kept on walking because we wanted to see if one of our employees, Thugjay, and her family, living close to the struck area, was okay.
As we stumbled over stones, mud and debris, our four volunteers came up the road and waved. They had already looked after Thugjay and everybody was fine, but for a wall in the house that suffered some damage. Just as we were standing in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, on top of tons of mud of what was a heavily use d road yesterday, Lama Padma, a friend of ours, came to meet us. The building he lived in had been filled with mud in the first floor; everybody was working to clear it. He took us to the second floor to offer us some strong black tea, welcomed refreshment. We watched his brother prepare his Tsampa meal and left with many Jullays.

Destroyed buildings

Just as I stepped out of the house I looked across the road and there it was: A very young donkey, full of mud, limping heavily with his left front leg, it was obviously fractured. He stopped and I hurried over and cuddled his dirty neck, stroked his mud caked nose. He did not object, just rested his head against my arm. He must have been swept away by the flashflood, lost his mother and was wandering around in shock now.

"We need to do something for him, can anybody help?"
I shouted for help several times, people gathered around us, brought water and poured it over his head to clean, tried to give him to drink.

When some of the mud was washed away, I discovered a bad gash right above his left eye and it seemed that his leg was broken right close to shoulder, giving him no support. The numbness left me, compassion directed to this helpless little animal flooded in, forced me into action. More people gathered, I asked if anybody could help get him to the Donkey Sanctuary. I had visited this place last year and found it full of donkeys that had been astray and starving. They were taken care of in this place and fed. I had brought some carrots and got acquainted with the whole bunch, as they stampeded me for a piece of the vegetable, I held on until one bit me in the arm, then I withdrew, fighting them off laughing about my stupidity.

Somebody managed to get a jeep; we carried the little one in a blanket, some young tourist and a Kashmiri helping me. The jeep driver took us to the vet clinic; there was no way of getting through to the Donkey Sanctuary. But the vet clinic was closed, so what to do?
Through one broken little window pane we got into the vets office and got some disinfectant material, antibiotics, painkiller. Our helpers knew how to administer shots and as they were working on him a little boy brought a bunch of carrots. As the donkey smelled them he revived and ate heartily, chewing the pieces we fed him. His leg was severely broken, bones sticking out in the inside of his shoulder, bleeding. What to do with the animal? Most of our helpers had left, it was just my friend and the Kashmiri left. We tied the animal in an upright position to some poles seemingly erected just for this purpose, supported by a blanket under his belly and under his neck. This way he could stand and did not have to use his hurt leg to support himself. After a ton of carrots he fell asleep. We left him agreeing that we would come back three hours later to feed him again and check on him.

Safe and secured, that's what we thought

When we came back, we saw dog paw prints in the mud and our heart stopped. We never thought about the danger the wild dogs posted for our little friend. Thank God, the donkey baby was alive, but the fear of the dogs must have propelled him to struggle himself free from the blankets, he was laying on the floor. We had brought a bag of fresh grass from our hotel garden and a bunch of carrots, a feast for the animal. He did not know where to eat first, seem enthused, just munched and munched on. Suddenly he stopped, and rushed into a corner of the room, the dogs were here again, he had smelled them. We chased them away and found out that we could not leave the donkey in this place overnight; the dogs would have access to it, no matter how safe we would barricade it. What to do now?

The last picture

My friend spotted a man across the street washing his clothes. We asked him if he could drive us to the donkey sanctuary. Ten minutes later found us on the road through the mud of Leh, the donkey in the back, lying there quietly, me holding his head, fumbling his nose, crying all the while. As we finally reached the Sanctuary, it was totally flooded; all the donkeys had been released because of the flood. That was it, I thought. All we could do was to send him off with a prayer of protection, hoping the dogs would not find him there. One last picture, he wandered off slowly.

Flooded donkey sanctuary

We did not know that the care takers of the donkey sanctuary did find the animal, brought him into a safe room, and took care of him. But his condition and the fractures finally did take him away: He died peacefully four days after the flood, another victim of the worst disaster that had ever hit Ladakh. He remains alive in my heart and on the pictures we took of him.

Karola Kostial, 06.08.2010