Caribou

Today, I rode a caribou! I have always wanted to try it, because whenever we have visited rural farming communities and seen farmers and their children riding them, it has looked such a natural and beautiful sight. It is still quite common to see people riding slowly along through the sugar cane fields on the majestic creatures, or to drive by rivers and see caribou cooling off in the water.

So today, in the midst of all our preparations for the ICM Hong Kong banquet, I had the chance to try my hand at riding a caribou whilst visiting some ladies in a rural community. I had ridden a horse once, and thought that I would have to find that kind of connection between me and the animal I was about to ride. But the huge caribou didn’t even flinch when I plonked myself up onto his shoulders, not half as gracefully as my guide had just demonstrated. He almost seemed to think I was just one of the hundreds of flies that were buzzing around his flanks, and took to trying to swat me with his powerful tail. And when he walked, it was nothing like a horse! His shoulders threw me in all directions; it was a little like one of those rodeo theme park rides… thankfully I managed to stay on. I can’t imagine how the locals make it look so graceful.

It’s interesting that animals are still used for farming here. Caribous are used to plough land before planting, and during harvest are used to pull loads of sugar cane from the fields to waiting trucks. Most of the farmers could easily afford to buy machinery to do this labour and quicken the process. But it seems almost all of them prefer to stick to the old ways, with their manual labourers doing the job by hand. The cost of labour is so cheap here, so the thought of the large upfront costs of large machinery may seem to much for some. Or it may be a slight sentimentalism; generations of families all work for the same ‘haciendero’ (land owner) family, and so there is often a tight bond between them.

Part of me likes that farming here is still done the old fashioned way. After all, a lot of people would lose their whole livelihood if the land owners decided to upgrade their caribous to combines. But the wages that they workers are paid are so low that they are trapped in poverty, often with no education and no way out. Perhaps if they were no longer ‘bound’ to their haciendero, they would be forced to educate their families and work their way out of poverty. But for now, the slow, strong, serene caribous play their part in Hacienda Laguda, and throughout these beautiful islands.

Louise Joachimowski