Skip to main content

Vet recounts wild tales of working in Kenya

 https://bbc.com/news/articles/cz4xn7yqe25o


Vet recounts wild tales of working in Kenya

Rachel Candlin, BBC News, West of England

 



Hugh Cran treated animals in the Rift Valley in Kenya

A British vet who worked in Kenya for 55 years has recounted the time he went for "a pee", only to see a lioness staring back at him.

Hugh Cran, who lives in Somerset and trained in Edinburgh in the 1960s, was also a British vet who worked in Kenya for 55 years and has recounted the time he went for "a pee", only to see a lioness staring back at him.

 He said over the years he had "many chance encounters".

"I was threatened twice; on one occasion I was charged by an elephant on the top of a mountain," he said.

He said that every day was a challenge in the unforgiving environment of the Rift Valley, as he travelled miles on rough roads, performing impromptu surgery by torchlight with dirty water.

Mr Cran, who has now written a book, said: "I once got out of the car to pee and saw a lioness peering at me through the bush."

But he said the experience only sought to encourage his passion for working in the country.


Mr Cran, from Castle Cary, had answered an advert to be an assistant vet in the Rift Valley shortly after finishing his training.

He covered a 100-mile (160km) radius of untarmacked rads in the course of his daily work.

"I had darting equipment so I was called out to dart zebras which had been snared, or injured lions or cheetahs which had a broken leg or jaw," he said.

"The distances were so great you couldn't nip back to the surgery and out again, so I used to carry everything in my car for any possible emergency."

He said over the years he had "many chance encounters".

"I was threatened twice; on one occasion I was charged by an elephant on the top of a mountain," he said.

"When that happened you had no time to do anything except get out of the way."

The second was his close call with the lioness.

Mr Cran travelled long distances to treat animals caught in poachers' snares.

He said his interest in Africa had been sparked at an early age.

"I was always very keen on reading about Africa; King Soloman's Mines, that sort of thing, and I always wanted to work in the Tropics," he said.

But when he took the job in Kenya he had no idea how long he would end up there.

"I intended to stay to test the waters for a year or so but ended up staying rather longer," he added.

The Great Rift Valley is part of a ridge system running through Kenya from north to south.

As a young vet he quickly had to adapt to the very different working environment from that he was used to.

"Frequently I'd go into my surgery in the morning and turn on the taps, and there was no water," he said.

"I'd turn on the switch, and there was no electricity. Sometimes in the middle of an operation, say at night, the power would somehow stop.

"Vets in this country would probably be appalled, but I think the results were just as good as they would be if you had all the equipment which one gets in this country."

A stunning encounter

On one occasion Mr Cran was asked to help a crew filming a flock of pelicans with the help of a microlight aeroplane. He said it was a stunning encounter he has never forgotten.

"They were trained to follow the microlight in formation as if it was one of the flock, they were so tame and trusting," he said.

"If the plane dropped back another bird would take its place as part of an extraordinary interaction.”

"They were wonderful, wonderful birds." He always carried darting equipment with him in case came across animals that needed to be sedated.

  Mr Cran kept diaries of his experiences and has used them to spark the memories he has retold in his book.

Rift Valley Fever, named after a disease spread by mosquitos affecting humans and livestock, was published on 25 April.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MORE photos of cricketers in Kenya added

More cricket photos added! Asians v Europeans, v Tanganyika, v Uganda, v East Africa, Rhodesia, etc some names missing! Photo Gallery of Kenya Cricket 23 photos: CM Gracias, Blaise d'Cunha Johnny Lobo! Ramanbhai Patel, Mehboob Ali, Basharat Hassan and hundreds others.  

Pinto: Blood on Western and Kenyan hands

  BOOK REVIEW   Pinto: Blood on Western and Kenyan hands   Review by Cyprian Fernandes     Pio Gama Pinto, Kenya’s Unsung Martyr 1927-1965 Edited by Shiraz Durrani [Vita Books, Kenya, 2018, 392 pp.   Pbk, £30, ISBN 978-9966-1890-0-4; distributed worldwide by African Books Collective, www.africanbookscollective.com ]   Less than two years after independence from the British, on 24 February 1965, the Kenyan nationalist Pio Gama Pinto was gunned down in the driveway of his Nairobi home.   His young daughter watched helplessly in the back seat of the family car.   Pinto, a Member of Parliament at the time, was Kenya’s first political martyr.   One man was wrongly accused of his death, served several years in prison and was later released and compensated.   Since then no one has been charged with the murder.   Now the long-awaited book on Pio Gama Pinto is finally here, launched in Nairobi on 16 October 2018....

The sanctuaries trying to save birds of prey from extinction in Kenya

  The sanctuaries trying to save birds of prey from extinction in Kenya (Courtesy of Al Jazeera) Poison, deforestation and power lines have pushed the African raptor population to a 90 per cent decline in the last 40 years. Raptor technician John Kyalo Mwanzia rehabilitates a juvenile fish eagle to flight after it was treated for grounding injuries sustained in a territorial fight at the Lake Naivasha habitat, at Soysambu Raptor Centre. [Tony Karumba/AFP] Simon Thomsett tentatively removes a pink bandage from the wing of an injured bateleur, a short-tailed eagle from the African savannah, where birds of prey are increasingly at risk of extinction. “There is still a long way to go before healing,” Thomsett explains as he lifts up the bird’s dark feathers and examines the injury. “It was injured in the Maasai Mara national park, but we don’t know how,” says the 62-year-old vet who runs the Soysambu Raptor Centre in central Kenya. The 18-month-old eagle, with a dist...