I've been very skeptical of a lot of the groups who were going to "save the starving horses of Giza" for a very long time and have gotten internet stones thrown at me for it. But I live here, I know the businessmen (I will NOT call them horsemen) in the Nazlit Semman area of Giza and there has been a huge upsurge of these sorts of groups since the revolution.
Some of them were relatively misguided efforts on behalf of charities from outside Egypt, like Princess Alia's charity (from Jordan) that was distributing bags of yellow corn to some of the guys in the pyramids area in the spring of 2011. In the first place, yellow corn is hardly the feed of choice for starving horses. It's expensive, too high in sugar, and likely to cause founder. On the other hand there was little chance of horses being damaged by it because 90% of it never made it near a horse. It was being bagged up in smaller quantities and sold in the market instead.
And to be honest, there are no more horses starving in Giza than there have been horses ridden to death in Giza in the past when tourism was booming. The bottom line there is that horses in this area are viewed as disposable assets and if they are not needed, generally they aren't just starved to death, but water (which is free) is denied to them so that they die of thirst. Nice people, those.
Recently we've had groups coming to help the pyramids horses and some of these groups have been useful to the horses. Cairo Farriers and some of the other vet groups have come and done shoeing, trimming, dentistry and other patch up work on pyramids horses and this has certainly helped the horses that they saw. Last winter was a busy time for groups like this and some of the local entrepreneurs saw a good thing and hopped on the band wagon. This was the point when I really started noticing because I ended up with one of the mares rescued from the pyramids by some of the workers.
Sheba is a 14 hh mare, about 6 yrs old, who must have weighed in at about 200 kg when she was purchased by one of the workers. She had scars all over her body, open wounds and someone had beaten her on the face with enough force to break the orbit of her right eye. The rescuers thought that they had a place for her to heal at a stable run by an English woman and her Egyptian husband in Hurghada (a diving resort on the Red Sea that is in the desert and a good long haul for anyone needing to bring in feed from the Nile Valley...not really a great place for stables). It didn't exactly run as planned. Although apparently the couple had registered as a charity in the UK, they were well aware that there was pretty much no one on the ground in Egypt to check up on them. Money sent to them for the upkeep of Sheba and a number of other horses who went to the stable was used for the keeping of the owners' horses, as was the medications and equipment sent by the sponsoring groups. When they were called on this and local people went to check, they found that one horse had been definitely sold back to the pyramids, and a few others had been abandoned in the desert. Sheba was one of the lucky ones in that someone found and recognised her and got her back to Cairo where she was being boarded at a stable (near the pyramids again) but at least under the watchful eye of one of the group members. When this person had to leave Egypt to deal with personal matters in the UK, they looked for a more stable home for her and that's where I came into the picture. When I got her, about 6 months after her initial rescue she weighed in at about 270 kg, as opposed to a gelding about the same size here (Wadi for anyone who knows my horses) who was about 380 kg. The fact that she was still so thin can only be due to severe neglect, as Sheba is one of those golden horses...an easy keeper...who gained weight so quickly I had a local vet do an ultrasound as I was worried that she was pregnant.
Being the new keeper of one of this FB group's rescues, I then became more aware of some other groups in Egypt claiming to be horse rescues. I don't advertise as one because I can't take in just any horse since I don't sell horses. There isn't a great future in Egypt for most horses once they hit a trough in health or performance. Most horse owners board their horses and can't afford the bills of an unusable horse PLUS its replacement. When horses come to me, they stay here until they die. They work to their physical capabilities giving lessons, pony rides to kids, being Barbie horses for little girls who like to brush manes and tails, or if they are fit, doing our more energetic rides (which are VERY energetic). My horses are between five and thirty-five in age, and the 20+ group mostly work on walk/trot rides in the countryside. Our 35 yr old is a Barbie horse par excellence and totally enjoys being led around and brushed by adoring little girls.
To get to the point, there is a group on FB soliciting funds to "rescue" horses in the pyramids, Prince Fluffy Kareem, (to be honest the name makes me want to retch) that is run by a Norwegian ex-belly dancer and a groom from Nazlit Semman. They take horrific photos of horses in the pyramids (and there are many horses there in horrific shape) and solicit funds and donated equipment to help the horses. They have bought a number of horses and installed them in a tiny stable somewhere near the Sphinx, but they are not terribly forthcoming on exactly where. Visits to the stable tend to have to be stage managed. One of the reasons for this is that the horses are doubled up Other horse charities who have collected equipment (fly fringes, nose fuzzies, girth covers, saddles, bridles and so on) have been a bit disturbed by the fact that when they brought things to PFK they were shown a stall filled with other donations. Asked why these hadn't been handed out to people who might need them, they responded rather vaguely that the "right" people hadn't been found. The pyramids area has literally hundreds of stables of anywhere from one horse owned by someone to take people for a ride at Giza to stables with close to one hundred horses, some of whom are registered Egyptian Arabians. It is, in fact, a giant horse market and most of the money is made in the buying and selling of horses and tack. Many of the horses are only a couple of years old, thus being very inexpensive and quite malleable psychologically, that are trucked in, tacked up and worked without any training, the hope being that someone with more money than brains or a soft heart will buy the horse for anywhere from 8 to 10 thousand LE (about $1200 to $1800)...generating a profit of about 6 to 8 thousand LE. Not too bad.
I don't want to feel bad that I've been aware of the fact that PFK is a major scam and I haven't warned friends about it. There are good groups who are trying to help the health issues of the horses and to educate the owners. The Brooke, The Donkey Sanctuary, Egyptian Society of Animal Friends, and others are all legitimate. PFK is not and most of the donations are being used to increase the wealth of the people running the "charity"...paying for travel to and from Egypt, accommodations, and other things such as camels and carriage horses to be used by the Egyptian partner at Giza.
