The Zebra above looking at it's chest stripes, looks suspiciously like the zebra the good Dr. is riding below. I wonder if he used a "wrangler" to get pounded, pommeled, stomped, and kicked before he took a ride. LOL A curb and a snaffle like the Dr. is using below, doesn't seem to be the norm. A snaffle for left and right is what is normally used.
Following the arrival of the railway in 1897, Nairobi had soon grown into a town with muddy streets and ram shackle wood and sheet-metal buildings built on stone plinths to ward off termites.
Our next hero, Dr. Rosendo Ayres Ribeiro, appears on this scene in Nairobi, February 1900, as the first private medical doctor. For six months, he and his assistant, Mr. C. Pinto, shared a tent as home and practice. In the evenings by candlelight, they made up prescriptions of his invention, including a special malarial cure which was patented and eventually sold to an international company.2.
Later, when the Indian Bazaar expanded, he built his surgery from the packing cases used for shipping his drug supplies from England. It was Dr. Ribeiro who, in 1902, had diagnosed bubonic plague in two Somali patients and reported it. The Medical Officer of Health, with no experience of tropical diseases, panicked at the news, ordered the Indian Bazaar evacuated and burnt to the ground. Dr. Ribeiro's surgery went up in flames with the rest. The government in recognition for his services gave him a concession of sixteen acres of land in the township, part of which he was able to sell to Julius Campos, another Goan Pioneer. A street, Campos Ribeiro Avenue, was named after them. .
In Nairobi, the automobile was yet come to its own then. Horses were still relied upon to get around town, but they suffered from an equine fever in the hot tropical climate, which reduced their life span considerably. It was felt that the thousands of zebras that populated the grasslands around Nairobi should be trained to replace horses. Two schools of thought emerged on this subject. The first were of the opinion that the animals were stupid and untrainable. The second took the side of the zebras. They concluded that the zebra species had already done enough for human kind... they gave aesthetic appeal to the many zoos over the world, made street crossings safe for children, and had their skins crafted into numerous home furnishings and wall hangings. There was no need for zebras to go further, and make asses of themselves!.
An exception seems to have been made for Dr. Riberio. He managed to train a zebra, and ride him around town for house calls. As a founder member of the Goan Institute, he rode his zebra right up to the verandah of the club and hitched it to the front post. A photo of Dr. Riberio on his famous zebra is included in the 1950 Souvenir Brochure of Nairobi City to convince skeptics of this account! .
Friday, February 11, 2011
Zebra Training
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
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8 comments:
Have you seen the way they paint the donkeys to look like zebras in Mexico? Sincerely Paul
Paul,
That is not a painted donkey you are referring to. It is actually one of the rarer sub species called a Gibbs Zebra historically native to Oklahoma and Texas, with a few unsubstantiated reports of sightings in Wisconsin.
Wade
Wade, I used to have a small collection of zoo guides when I was a child. One, my father brought back from a business trip to Australia, was from the Taronga Zoo. From it I first learned of the existence of the black buck antelope from India, and I have since heard that there are more black buck living wild in Texas than there are left in the wild in India. Taronga Zoo had a gorilla named Little John. Another animal whose existence I first learned of from one of these zoo guides was the blue bear from Alaska. Detroit Zoo had one. That was probably the first zoo I ever visited seeing as I was born in Detroit. They bred black rhinos there, I think, and had Siberian tigers in a huge naturalistic exhibit. I remember from the zoo guide a picture of a baby gorilla with a hose. Maybe he was drinking from it. The gorillas and chimpanzees at Granby Zoo used to smoke cigarettes. Maybe that's why no baby gorilla was ever born there. I've heard that cigarettes lower the sperm count, and that male gorillas have such a low sperm count to begin with they would all be considered sterile by the standards we apply to bulls. Sincerely Paul
The German Army used to ride zebras in East Africa, because they are immune to malaria. That was their colony before WWI. Then it became Tanganyika, and when Tanganyika acquired the island of Zanzibar, the two countries merged, into Tanzania. That guy-Baron Rothschild-has a female descendant, who is an authority on fleas. That's her specialty. She may be the world's formost authority on fleas. The interest in natural history runs in the English branch of the Rothschilds. Baron Rothschild started a natural history museum, which he donated to the British Museum. I think the Rothschild's enabled the British to acquire India, with a loan to Prime Minister D'Israeli. Sincerely Paul PS: Maybe it was a loan to acquire the Suez Canal, which in turn enabled the British Empire to acquire India.
Who is Gibbs? A friend of yours, Wade?
Paul,
Before I would blame cigarettes for the gorilla's problems, did they even do much breeding at all. You may want to look at mean, evil, dominant female gorillas. That will shut a male down quicker then tobacco. LOL
Wade
Anonymous,
Why are you assuming I knew Gibbs? Just because I mentioned the zebra named after him. If I mention a Rothschild Giraffe are you going to assume Walter and I were mates? There is a Humboldt Penguin, does that mean I broke bread with Alexander von Humboldt? Geez.....
Wade
Wade, I did'nt assume anything. That's why I asked. Sincerely Paul PS: I thought maybe it was an inside joke. Geez... Sincerely Paul
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