To all my fellow horse lovers,
To those of you who do not know me, my name is Abby Mayer and I am a 23-year-old who is currently volunteering in Cochabamba, Bolivia for a three month span. I was lucky enough to find a volunteer placement working with horses, something I haven't had the pleasure of doing in years! The name of the program I am working for is Vida y Esperanza, and our mission is to engage young people who have lived on the street and/or had problems with drugs in the past to encourage positive and healthy development. The group of kids I have been working with over the last few weeks are 12 kids ages 10-16. The group is made up of two components, kids who are deemed ¨high-risk¨ and kids that are considered to be more stable, some of whom have been part of the program for several years; however, who is who is never disclosed to the others in the group.The theory is that by stable individuals leading by example, the higher risk children will begin to stabilize as well, using the same ¨group¨ or ¨gang¨ mentality they are used to experiencing on the street as a way to encourage positive behavior. Jose Luis Torres, the man who runs the program, owns 10 horses that he rotates as lesson horses. Lessons are generally held after lunch Monday-Friday, unless there is some scheduling conflict with another activity planned for the boys, as they often play soccer and volleyball as well.
The first day I went to the ¨Blajot¨, which is the name of the conference center where Jose Luis rents a field to hold the lessons, the kids were just finishing up their second lesson. Everything looked like it was going smoothly, however when one of the boys came over to the fence nearest the tack room to remove the saddle, I began to see the condition their equipment was in. What first caught my eye was a noseband that had been taped together since the buckle had broken, and I thought to myself, ¨Wow, that´s less than ideal.....¨ However, when I turned around to check out the saddle on the fence I was really taken aback. The entire saddle flap was literally hanging on by a thread. As I probed deeper, I discovered not only that the entire tree was broken, but that I could actually see the ground through the gap between the right panel and saddle flap..... Yikes! After all of the tack had been removed I asked Jose Luis where I could find the brushes or some supplies to sponge the horses off. He reluctantly told me they did not have a brush. Now, as a former member of the United States Pony Club to say the state of these horses and tack was appalling would be a gross understatement. I decided this simply wouldn't do, and that I was going to undertake the project of obtaining some new equipment to serve the program. 
To my knowledge there is not a tack store in Cochabamba, so the following week I went to the Cancha, which is the Saturday market, and began looking for supplies that would suffice. I ended up settling on a brush you might use to clean bathroom tile and the bottom of a broom for a hard and soft brush, a phillips head screw driver for a hoof pick, and a rubber squiggy used the get rid of rainwater to use as a sweat scraper. These improvisations don't work all that bad, however with 10 horses a second set sure would come in handy. We also currently only have 6 sets of tack and generally 8 kids will ride during each lesson, which means that two kids are left to ride without a saddle or bridle. They seem to still have a blast riding, but it sure does make it difficult to work on one's posting trot when it's all you can do to keep the pony on the circle.
I am writing this post because I imagine some of you, as I used to, have old tack laying around collecting dust. Whether you changed the style of bit you were using, got a second set of reins to use for cross country and fell in love with them, or just got a new bridle altogether... most of us have back-ups laying around. What I ask of you, if you feel so inclined, is to donate one small piece of tack to Vida y Esperanza..... stirrup leathers, bits, halters, crops, and any part of a bridle are all things that the program needs badly. While shipping heavy, leather saddles may be out of the question, we are open to accepting used synthetic saddles, as they are much lighter and may be able to fit inside a suitcase. As a reference, we mostly have large ponies and a couple small horses, however the two ponies that are generally ridden without tack are quite small, around 12 and 13 hands.
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| Some halters are tied together and ill-fitting |
Since sending items from the States to Bolivia is generally unreliable and outrageously expensive, more often people will send things down in suitcases of people entering the country. It just so happens that a large group of about 20 college students is coming down through Bolivia Cultura (the organization that placed me at Vida y Esperanza) at the end of April who have agreed to bring items down in their luggage. If an issue arises with this initial plan or we end up with more donations than expected, a close friend of the Director of Bolivia Cultura is making a trip to the States and will be returning in late April as well; by raising a meer $40 to cover the luggage fee we would have ample space to transport items collected for donation. While ambitious generosity is of course appreciated, I do ask that the item(s) donated be light, per their mode of transportation.
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| Others..... |
Donations can be made by making a secure electronic transfer through PayPal, or by sending a package, check, or money order to the following address:
Abigail Mayer
600 James Street Apt 702
Syracuse, NY 13203
Thank you for your generousity!
