GOODBYE OLD DEAR

A few days ago, I was tinkering with my friend's camera and I saw a picture that almost made me cry. It was a picture of a horse. A dead horse. The horse looks very familiar, no doubt because I used to ride that horse.

Her name is Dusty. She used to be UB's horse until he gave her away some years ago.

When I first came to CFM, I felt like an outsider from my own friends and cousins because of being away too long. I have had to reestablish the friendships that I had back in grade school but it took a little bit of time before I was able to get kind of accepted again as one of them. Bringing friendships to the same page can be draining for an introvert like me, and so those times when I feel washed-out, I would saddle Dusty and let her take me up and down the river that runs alongside our compound. Her gallop is very steady, effortless and graceful. Her hooves stirs up the water and splashes it on to my face and all over me. With her racing the wind, you can feel the cool breeze embracing you like the arms of a long lost friend.

One time I rode her to the village and as we were galloping the nice road to Salinas, the belt of the saddle got loosened and I fell off Dusty's back. She was running at full gallop but when I was thrown off her and landed on her path, she suddenly stopped as if somebody has stomped on a brake somewhere. I do not know if all horses do that, but Dusty was just a very good horse. She could have gone on running, trampling me underfoot. I've heard someone said it's not that much painful to fall off a horse's back than a water buffalo's. But I just know I would have not come out that fall unscathed if Dusty was a thoughtless mare.

Dusty knows how to get home. One time I rode her to visit a patient at the hospital in town. Coming home, I stopped to buy some supplies in the market so I left her in the care of the security guard at a bank just outside the public market building. When I came back, I saw Dusty gone. I asked the guard what happened and he said, he tied the reins loosely around the big poles of the structure and went inside the bank for a minute and that when he came back out, my horse was gone. I almost knocked him off. :-) But Oh! well! It wasn't like I was paying him to look after my horse, right? So I quickly got into a tricycle to go home and get help but when I entered the gate, I saw Dusty already grazing inside the property.

I can fill this page with stories about Dusty.......

I asked my friend how it happened. She said they butchered Dusty at a wedding! I was so aggravated! She also told me she went there and actually cried over Dusty. (My friend loved that horse too; compared to me, she has more memories of Dusty because she's been riding her long before I came to CFM . We used to ride Dusty and Dolly (her daughter) almost every afternoon [when UB and AJ are in the US ]). My friend told me they tried to sell or exchange Dusty with a cow or a couple of pigs to butcher at the wedding but there were no buyers because Dusty is already old. I told my friend she should have let me know. Between the two of us, we could have bought her back. Dusty's old but she should not have ended the way she did. She should have been left alone to live out her life.

Goodbye, dear Dusty!

(In the picture is Dusty and her baby... I named her Dolly. Taken in September 1999.)