Thinking Aloud: Beasts of Burden

Ode to the Little Guy

I've been to a lot of monuments recently. Monuments to gods and kings, scholars, heroes and martyrs. Their deeds are often inscribed on plaques and stelae, or depicted in vivid murals, glasswork and carving. What I haven't seen (though I'm sure there is one somewhere) is a monument to a little guy who has done so much, still does so much, and hasn't really gotten the thanks he so richly deserves.

Without him the world might be a very different place. He was responsible in large part for the development of early trade routes, and therefore the spread of skills, knowledge, ancient religions and the accrual of wealth that led to advanced civilisations. He has helped to build farms that sustain communities and the monuments of other, more celebrated heroes. He has worked in the fields of search and rescue and medicine. He has saved lives.

I'm talking about the donkey. He's been giving us a hand since the 4th millenium BC (or earlier) and today, instead of sitting back on his laurels or having pagodas and temples built for him, he's still out there working. Tough work – the hard stuff that people don't want to do. Carting around loads of bricks and carrying fat tourists up mountains. He's not big and tough like the oxen (another legendary helper of man), he's just a funny-eared, round, short-legged kind of critter with a big heart. I wonder if anyone remembers my story about Haw. At any rate, I've had a few personal encounters with donkeys that suggest to me they are sweet little animals in need of some respect.

On this silk road trip we'll be traveling through a lot of places where donkeys are still slaving their rumps off. I'm going to get Doug to take photos of their efforts, so I can build a little donkey shrine right here on the Dreaming Track. Maybe we'll add some other hard-working pack animals in there too. Just so nobody forgets that we still buy products (e.g. rice, tours of the Valley of the Kings) that have unpaid-for donkey sweat as an ingredient.

Maybe I can even think of some nice things to do for donkeys. After all, they were off saving our necks at Gallipoli (hey, remember that?) Any suggestions?

I figured I had better have a quick internet hunt for donkey memorials and remembered two of them I already knew about. The first is the statue of the donkey in Rome. I learned this story reading Livy or something. Essentially the donkey from the statue was working on the colosseum, but he worked even harder than the other donkeys and always took the lead. The people of Rome noticed the donkey's hard work, so they decided to reward him by retiring him - putting him out to pasture. The donkey escaped from his paddock and ran back to the colosseum voluntarily, trudging up and down the hills with the other donkeys, apparently “encouraging” them to work harder. He became a city hero and had a statue built for him. I couldn't find much more in a quick search to corroborate that story (or the existence of the statue), but there you go. The other statue of a donkey has a man attached, and is of course a Gallipoli memorial in a Melbourne park.

I still think a Dreaming Track donkey shrine would be nice. A memorial to the work of all donkeys, famous, infamous and obscure. Look for it here soon.