The
30th of March, 2017 for me was a much-anticipated day. Not because I was among
the inductees, but simply because it was the last opportunity for me as a
student to be able to hustle for induction goodies in celebration of my senior
colleagues—the freshest doctors. The thought of the pageantry associated with
the event, exchange of friendly greetings between friends and relatives all
assembled together, forming a boisterous and jubilant atmosphere could not
leave my mind.
That
morning, in high expectation as always, I donned my best clothes;
well-befitting of the event and headed for the designated venue. When I was
just a few metres away from the auditorium, a man approached me. He was one of
the photographers who had come in the hope they would make some fortunes
through the event. He asked me if I was among the graduands, but I said no, ‘I
am in 600 level.’ Honestly, my dressing was spectacular. At least, that’s what
people said. I chose it because I would be taking a lot of photographs with my
graduating friends. “Oh, it is a 6-year course. Wow! Who would want to study
for 6 good years because of ordinary animals,” the photographer replied. It
never made me feel bad because for 6 years, I have been hearing that. Let’s say
I’m just used to seeing people demonstrate their astonishing wealth of
ignorance. I didn’t feel bitter at all. What I was surprised at, and still
baffles me a lot was the story the photographer said afterwards about himself
and still learnt nothing from it.
He
started: “I used to be a rich farmer; a very rich one actually. I had a lot of
farms. There was a time I brought some of my dead piglets here. They were dead
because their mother refused to breastfeed them. When I got here, I was shocked
when they asked me to bring money for postmortem. Why should I pay them? My pig
died, and now I have to pay again to examine them! Dead pigs! Does that make
any sense at all!” I tried to speak some sense into this condescending,
unbelievably ignorant and proud man’s brain by telling him how important
postmortem examination is but he utterly disagreed. I told him that most
disease diagnosis for food animals rely greatly on postmortem examination
because these animals are always stocked in large numbers and it may be very
difficult to detect a disease symptom from a single live animal among the
flock. Whereas, if postmortem examination of all dead animals are properly
done, the conditions and their predisposing factors could be prevented in the
life ones. Also, he could have received some advice from the experts here, such
as controlled breeding in the case of non-lactation. Instead of heeding to what
I had said and take some sense from it, this man pressed further in defense of
his ignorance. “When pigs are dead, they should be thrown away. Why waste money
on dead pigs!” he argued further. Since argument was not my major, I resigned
to letting him wag his tongue unchecked about things he knew absolutely nothing
about. Perhaps, he has been destined to fail! I asked him if he employed any
Vet in his farm since he said it was a very large farm but he said no. “I
usually go to animal care whenever I have problems but they too charge
exorbitantly. There is no reason why it shouldn’t be free, but they charge
money actually,” he said. This time, I couldn’t resist the urge to laugh. It
was becoming more and more ridiculous.
In
the end, he lamented how his farm folded up after millions of investment due to
various health problems within the herd. He had to sell it off as scrap.
Written by Martial
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