Many moons ago... prior to any of our children actually being enrolled in Sahel Academy, the school asked if they could borrow our horse, King, for a "Western Night." We were happy to loan them our critter, except for one huge obstacle: getting King from our side of the Niger River to their side.
The two lane bridge, the only bridge - at that time, spanning the river often crammed three lanes of vehicular traffic plus pedestrians, camels, donkey carts, bikes and motorcycles into a very finite place. Adding a horse often spooked by close contact with anything on wheels into the equation just didn't seem to equal very good math.
Additionally, neither Tim nor I were accomplished or confident riders, so we weren't volunteering. In stepped Amber, one of our EBM colleagues would try just about anything, and - if I remember correctly, the dorm assistant at that time.
She was asked.
She succeeded.
As you can see, we had several "local" spectators (i.e. dorm students) who enjoyed watching, as well as two boatmen who helped show Amber the "best" path for traversing the river - shallow enough that the horse mostly walked, yet without any terribly fast flowing currents. What excitement!!
We even believed King enjoyed his dips into the river, although he was totally exhausted by the time he returned home!
Something tells me that even though we'll be living close to another major river once we move to Quebec next summer, we won't be having anyone swim/ride a horse across that river! It will be too cold most of the year.
*****************************
An edited repost
of a seriously ancient post
- from April, 2007.
(Yeah! Like over 7 years ago!)
This was actually the second post I
ever published on Our Wright-ing Pad.
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