MAWO Tanzania

In December I had the possibility to work with MAWO (Meru Animal Welfare Organization) in Tanzania. It was the second time I worked with them after I travelled their in 2015 the first time to help with their veterinary work.

This time I decided to use my money from „travelling_vet“ and „Donate a Postcard“ to buy rabies vaccinations and medicine worth 1500$. So the next days where ruled by catching dogs and donkeys, treating their wounds, deworm them and vaccinate them.

World wide every 10 minutes a person still dies from rabies. Unbelievable if you consider that you can easily save a life with a vaccination every year.

Catching the donkeys was quite easy because they are used to the people who work with them. Catching dogs on the other side was something totally different. Dogs in Tanzania stay with the herds and in the villages and protect them from wild animals, but most dogs are not used to be touched by humans. The people were able to bring some of these dogs to our mobile practice but most of the people were to afraid of their own dogs to hold them. So we needed to use ropes, muzzles and hand nets to catch the dogs and be able to treat them. Most of the dogs thought we are trying to kill them as soon as we started to hold them and used everything they had to get us off. To calm them down before and afterwords we treated them with dog food that I bought in a supermarket. It was totally new for both humans and dogs, as most of the Maasai don’t feed their dogs.

Johnson told me that their is a village where normally every year 6 people die from rabies. Since they started the rabies vaccinations of the dogs no one ever died again from rabies. I call that a success.

If you are interested to work with MAWO, just contact them on Facebook or per email.