With the S.A.S. and Other Animals by Andrew Higgins

Author:Andrew Higgins [Higgins, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, General, Political Science, Political Ideologies, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Middle East
ISBN: 9781844682423
Google: u7fNDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2011-12-01T15:58:29+00:00

Chapter 13

A Close Run Thing

As the days passed, I found my army duties on the hill were increasingly mixed with civilian work around Salalah. Pet dogs were regular patients too, as British expatriates had a tendency to adopt mangy and unpredictable pi-dogs. It was a rewarding and challenging time professionally, although it took a while to get my head around the sometimes uncomfortable paradoxes presented by, on the one hand, courtiers, parties and tennis matches and, on the other, guns, poverty and goat pox.

Some two months after my first visit, I made a return trip to Sudh. This time I flew with Saleh in an SOAF helicopter with British pilots and without a BATT escort and less fuss generally. This reinforced a quietly whispered consensus that the war was turning our way. The Wali greeted me like an old friend and was pleased to tell me that there had been no more deaths and he had issued a firm edict about importing animals from Africa. It sounded improbable but the line between medicine, politics and public relations was so vague that I could only smile and express my delight. We had given the Wali a day’s notice of our visit this time so I found there were plenty of patients to see and, of course, plenty of coffee to drink.

Government employees are followed everywhere by demands for paperwork and the BATT Vet in Oman was no exception. There were monthly reports for MOD, indent forms to complete for supplies and drugs, memos to respond to, orders to read and letters to write. Sometimes the bumph was challenging, like when Mike Butler passed me a communication addressed to ‘THE CHIEF VETERINARY OFFICER’ and asked me to deal with it. Who, me? It was from an American company, which had been contracted to import a hundred Holsteins from Arizona into Salalah for a new government dairy farm, currently being built on the outskirts of the town. Would I advise them on prevalent diseases and my current import requirements? I signalled MOD for advice. They suggested contacting the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Near East Animal Production and Health Development Center in Beirut, where there was a British Animal Health Adviser called Dr Richard Wooldridge, DFC and bar.

After long and helpful exchanges of telexes with Dr Wooldridge, and thanks to his guidance, I was able to devise suitable formal import restrictions and forms that I hoped would pass muster. It was one thing to import from Somalia dhows full of sheep destined for slaughter, or even mongooses and hyenas from Bombay for a private zoo at the whim of the Ruler, but it was quite another matter to deal with the formalities of the US Department of Agriculture and get a structure in place for the arrival of high-cost dairy cattle that would be living with and breeding from indigenous livestock.

Thanks to Wooldridge, I was able to make proposals for vaccinating the cattle against some of the diseases I thought might pose a problem, such as anthrax, brucellosis and some of the clostridial diseases such as tetanus.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.