Our team visits Thimitam market. On an open field without infrastructure hundreds of cattle, sheep and chickens are offered for sale. It has well over 30 °C. Only a few trees provide shade. Today, our team is mainly on site for the sheep.
When Sridevi arrives with her teammates, she finds countless sheep, which are offered for sale lying on the ground with their legs tied together. Among them two ewes, Tania and Sarina, with their little lambs, Satia and Koko.
Sridevi turns to the 'owners' and explains how painful this posture is for the animals. One by one, she convinces them to untie the ropes tied tightly around the sheep's legs and fix them with a loose loop around the neck instead. The two mothers and their children are also untied and can now at least stand in the shade together. Sridevi knows that the traders only untie the sheep because she is so vehement in her defence of the animals. She also knows that it is a long process until the traders fundamentally change their behavior and treat their sheep better without her presence.
But for today she has been able to give some animals relief. And the old saying "the constant dripping wears the stone" also applies to the traders. Sridevi will soon be back in Thimitam and with the sheep.
