“I’m delaying motherhood to rescue donkeys”
Animal welfare worker Freya Dowson (right) is putting off starting a family to raise awareness of the horrific plight of coal mine donkeys
Dehydrated to the point of exhaustion, an eight-year-old donkey called Sudher stumbles while carrying heavy sacks of coal. He falls against jagged rocks that line the crumbling walls of a mine 5,000 feet underground. His thigh is cut and bleeding, but he’s forced to keep working.
It’s something that photographer and animal welfare worker Freya Dowson, 33, has witnessed many times in the past three years while raising awareness of the plight of donkeys in north east Pakistan’s coal mines.
Freya, from London, is haunted by the suffering she’s witnessed. She says, “The air was stale and dank, the only light was often from the miners’ cigarettes. The donkeys were dehydrated and worked beyond exhaustion, I saw skeletal donkeys with open wounds.
“They were expected to work relentlessly for hours. It was heartbreaking to see them treated like that.”
While a donkey can live until the age of 40 in England, the mining donkeys generally survive for just 10.
UNBEARABLE
Freya says, “It’s heartbreaking. I’ve always loved animals – particularly donkeys and horses as I grew up with them. Donkeys have so much spirit and yet they’re submissive and will literally work until they die. I can’t bear that.”
Sadly, there’s no easy solution. Rural communities can’t afford to mechanise the mines and, if they shut down, the men will have no work. Conditions for miners are terrible, too – they toil all year long, risking death from tunnel collapses, and earn just £1.50 a day. Freya, along with animal welfare charity Brooke, is helping to raise awareness and teach the miners how to treat their donkeys.
She explains, “Many simply don’t know any better, so we’re educating them as best we can with the help of a roaming vet. We teach them about shelter, nutrition and hydration, as well as the importance of rest. With up to 10,000 donkeys working in Pakistan, it’s a huge undertaking.”
SACRIFICE
For Freya, who’s married to London-based town planner Adam, 34, she risks working in a perilous part of the world where Government advice warns against travel to some areas due to terrorism and the risk of kidnapping. But she insists it’s worth any amount of hardship.
She says, “I miss my husband and my home so much and I’m delaying having children for the sake of my work. But I need to do something to help these beautiful animals. My sacrifice is nothing compared to what they go through every day.”