Wednesday 10th June. Flurry of farewells and finishing.

 Our second day at TUC. This time the truck went out and came back with 17 pigs and one dog! Not what we had hoped for but apparently desexing male pigs means they grow faster and taste better, so this was a much requested service! So at one stage we had them lined up and 3 surgery tables running with dogs and pigs, and Rui was master of the pig castrations.

Me retrieving piggies. 17 small ones were in this cage (3-30kg).

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Rui finishing off a pregnant bitch spey with very
little assistance.

Brian asks - would you like your surgery next?

Sweet meats for the day. You can see the heat was getting to
us! Steve on the right was doing data recording and was
aptly called the "fan fairy" as he had a portable fan he directed
at us when the sweat was getting a bit much.

So our final day was busy enough and finished with farewells with Rui and Temwa. That has been a very encouraging part of our trip to see what their abilities are, and they have an excellent attitude to learning and their work which I must say is a little unusual compared with our observations of many locals in 2012. They have a very difficult task as they are meant to desex all animals on Tarawa as that is their job (without full veterinary training!). We will try and continue to assist them over the internet but at the moment they lack most equipment and medications. One bottle of penicillin I left with Rui will not go far!

Our final tally is 231 desexing surgeries - 113 male dogs, 55 female dogs, 11 male cats, 11 female cats, and 41 male pigs. We would always like more but were happy with our achievement!

Temwa and Rui with their thankyou gifts to us.

Late afternoon we had a meeting with the TUC mayor, clerk and treasurer over drinks to discuss what their plans were and if we could plan future possible trips. They are so keen for assistance but as always have pretty well no resources to support us. As similar to the BTC council, we concluded that education of local people regarding the health issues between dogs and people, benefits of desexing,  reasons for euthanasia, and how to care properly for dogs/animals was much needed. We floated the idea of council bylaws being changed so that desexed animals could be registered at a discount (currently only desexed animals can be registered!!!), that numbers of dogs be limited per house to 2 dogs, that future visits be preceded by more education and advertising, and that the councils be the location where people could purchase collars and worming medication for their dogs (currently no wormers available at all, and very limited collars). Perhaps there could be incentives with some free worming tablets initially?? Many things for us to explore and to gather information for them.

We were pleased that the mayor again expressed his thanks and hope for ongoing partnership with us and he clearly acknowledged that we had used our own personal resources and unpaid leave to be able to visit Tarawa, i.e. he knew we weren't highly paid for the job!

We finished the evening with a meal with our US Pacific Partnerships team. They very thoughtfully gave us each a commemorative coin from the US Millinocket which was a lovely gesture. We have really enjoyed getting to know them all and to working with them.

Well, we have many mixed emotions about leaving. Overwhelmed, sad, relieved, reflective...all different things as we finish this very busy time. We have so many people to thank for their interest, prayers, support, kindness, both on Tarawa: in particular Gillian and Jason, Tony and Andrea, Brooke and Joel, George and Denise; and back home, particularly Jude Mulholland and Mardi Chi Foundation, without their financial support Leesa and I would not have been able to travel to Kiribati.

Brian's extra long bus trip (30 minutes past his stop because he didn't know how to say "stop" on a local bus in I-Kiribati), fighting a huge marauding wasp that refused to die in our hotel room, and many other stories that have coloured our adventures will have to remain untold.

We hope there will be future trips to come. And thankyou readers for your interest and hope you can somehow find a way to support dog management work either in Australia (look up AMRRIC) or with us in Kiribati (look up Mardi Chi Dingo Foundation or call Farriervet in Kyabram) !

Slightly cleaner on our final morning and heading home to Oz.