Population Explosion

One of the interesting things about a farm is that it's a place to grow things. Pretty basic, right? We grow corn, aubergine, cucumber, tomatoes, dates, all sorts of eating things. We also have chickens, turkeys, ducks and rabbits, not to mention a flock of highly fertile parakeets. My previous flock of chickens produced a fair number of eggs, but bird flu culling got them before we got any babies. This year has paid back for all the lack. Our first arrival was Negmat Sallamat on the evening of March 8 (see "New Arrivals" post). Then we had three of our goats give birth in fairly quick succession. I have one nanny, a red goat that I call Pippi due to her resemblance to Pippi Longstocking. The others belong to my driver and one of my grooms. Mohamed's were the first babies, two adorable black and white females, who quickly began running and bouncing all over the goat pen to the delight of us all. The next to arrive were Pippi's twins, Golda and Sharon. (I didn't name them. Don't blame me.) Golda was born with a twisted back leg, something that happened to her in utero, and despite my concerns she has turned into an active athletic kid. When Golda and Sharon were about a month old, Mohamed's other female gave birth to twins a few weeks early. The female was stillborn and the male was a bit weak. His mother wasn't the most willing caretaker and had to be held to nurse little Bush (again, I didn't do the naming). He's come along quite well and now there are five little popcorn balls flying around the paddock to the delight of visiting children. All of the goats have discovered that children are a brilliant source of treats and scratches...they donkeys got that sorted out months ago.
We started out with four rabbits last winter and now have three litters of babies with more to come. The first litter are almost as big as their parents and are sharing space with the chickens and turkeys to give the younger litters space. The chickens were a bit put out at first but they've figured out that bunnies don't bite birds, and life in that flight cage is pretty calm. The mid-sized bunnies are the favourites for cuddling. At about a month, they are hand-sized and cuddly. The older ones are better at twisting out of a lap, and the adults are not that thrilled with humans.
This morning I had a riding lesson for the daughters of some friends, and after the lesson we all went to the bird house to visit bunnies. The girls are five and eight, prime bunny age, and they played with furry things while I checked food and water for the parrots and other creatures. I went to check on Oprah, one of my turkey hens who has been very determinedly sitting on some chicken and duck eggs for the past few weeks. The turkeys don't have a male so their eggs get collected regularly for breakfasts. When I reached under her, Oprah's response was rather less than welcoming...a hen turkey pecks pretty hard...and we found a pair of baby Muscovy ducks. This is the first time I've had baby ducks that small and they are criminally cute. We moved them to the duck cage where Daphne, one of the female Muscovies was hiding another six nestlings under her wings.

A natural question is what we plan to do with all of these little creatures. Well, this is a farm and I do have staff to feed and people who are very interested in being able to buy clean fresh meat. Personally, I eat some poultry and fish with fruit and vegetables, so I can't see myself chowing down on Bush or Sharon. The male goats are castrated and raised for meat, while the females stick around for milk and breeding. I do like rabbit and find that adult rabbits seriously drop on the cute scale...but then I won't be doing the slaughtering of them though I will ensure that it is done quickly and cleanly. The ducks, being Muscovies, are the best for meat production and again get a lot less cute as they grow up. They will most probably be sold when they are about half grown to people who will feed them to slaughter weight. Maybe it seems a bit heartless, but who's to say that it's any worse than eating peaches?

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

It's A Dog's Life...or Death

I have a regular set of news alerts for stories that mention Cairo, Giza, and Egypt. It's always interesting to see what people are saying about us. This morning my alert included the news story from Al Ahram that can be read by clicking the title which links to it. Al Ahram is the primary government newspaper, and it publishes a weekly English summary as well as an online version. I was actually rather surprised to read about the petitions that have been collected online to try to get the government of Giza and Cairo to stop killing street dogs and to use a more humane and ultimately useful means of control. No one in Egypt questions the need to control the stray and feral animals in Egypt, but there is considerable debate on the way that it should be done.

The Al Ahram article provides a good discussion of the issue. There is no question that something must be done for these animals, but at this point there are a number of groups who are trying to provide neutering and vaccinations for them. This is a vast improvement over the way things were when we first moved to Egypt. In the late 80's it was hard to even find a vet, much less animal rights organisations...and in Egypt animal rights does not mean the sort of strangeness one finds with PETA or some of the other extreme groups. In Egypt, people who talk about animal rights are really talking about the chance for a halfway decent life. The fact that we do kill and eat animals is not subject to debate. Life and death are more immediate and accepted here.

Unfortunately, there is less understanding of the needs of animals to lead good lives. One of the things that the article doesn't mention is the need for education of the general population about how the environment consists of humans AND everything else. The dogs, cats, weasels, rats, mice, foxes, bats, owls, lizards, snakes and geckos, to name a few species, inhabit our cities and villages with us....and without them, our lives would be very different. During my first years in Alexandria I was horrified to find our staff killing geckos whenever they found them and I asked why on earth they would do something like that. I was told that the folk wisdom is that geckos spit poison into salt dishes so they must be dispatched. People who work with me now get constant lessons about the need for animals such as geckos and garden snakes to help control insects and other pests. There truly isn't a basic understanding that the other creatures inhabiting our space have to be considered as well.

As deplorable as this massive lack is, I can understand a lot of it. Until very recently, a huge proportion of Egypt's population was rural and they were subsistence farmers who struggled to make ends meet. There isn't much time to think about the quality of life for donkeys, dogs, and cats when you are simply scrambling to feed your family. Medical care for animals was sketchy at best even when I moved here in the 80's. Most vets took care of dairy cows or chickens and there was perhaps one small animal vet in Alexandria...and even he knew more about chickens or rabbits than cats. I knew more than he did. Most farmers rarely see a vet and know almost nothing about the animals that they use. When George, our donkey, was born I had some fairly knowledgeable grooms tell me that we should tie strings around his legs above the knees and tie his ears together over his head. After I picked myself up off the ground from laughing at them, I absolutely refused, pointing out that we never tie a foal's legs to strenthen them, nor do we tie their ears to ensure that they are upright. They were rather amazed to see that a donkey who goes without these essential steps not only grew up strong and straight, but that worming and trimming him from an early age gave us a donkey that is generally admired greatly for his size and strength. As he still isn't four years old, no one has ridden him either, so his back is still intact and very strong from his pulling work. Most donkeys are ridden far too young, destroying their spine early and leading to an early death. A ten year old donkey is old in Egypt. I expect George and Daisy to outlive me.

The missing link, of course, in all of this is education. We can hope that some of the television shows that people see will help a bit, but I'm not holding my breath. In school systems that rely on memorization and rote learning, there isn't much hope for teaching either. Perhaps the various animal rescue/rights groups will be able to make some inroads on education. For myself, I just do what I can with the resources available to me. Anyone who admires George gets a lecture on the need to let a donkey or horse grow up before being ridden. My neighbour, Am Ramadan, however, continues to have a heartbreaking string of two and under two year old horses going through his "training" program prior to selling them. We wormed everyone on the farm yesterday...horses, donkeys, mules, goats, sheep, and gamoosa. When I insisted on doing the babies as well, the boys were shocked but I pointed out that they will grow much better if they aren't carrying a parasite load. Hmmm, novel idea. And the goat and donkey pen does good business as a petting zoo/instructional setting for both visiting city kids and some of the village kids who come to play. This way, I figure that I'm reaching some of the children with a different idea about how we live in this world. If everyone does one small thing, we can actually make a difference.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Keeping Busy in May

A number of things have conspired to keep me from the blog lately. The biggest obstacle has been the appalling connection that I have with my Vodafone card. To be fair to Vodafone, they have been trying but it is simply awful. I am working on getting DSL and expect to be connected in a week or so, and this will make life so much better. Another obstacle to my writing has been a much happier one. My daughter came home about two weeks ago for a holiday before she heads off to help excavate a site in southeastern Turkey and then heads straight into her first year of the PhD program in anthropology at New York University. It's wonderful having her home. She gets a real kick out of the animals here at the farm and has been religiously going out to the rabbits to cuddle the baby bunnies into cooperation. Before arriving, she sent me a list of foods that she'd been missing in New York, so we have been arranging all her favourites, such as koshari, a mix of lentils, pasta, rice, chickpeas, tomato sauce, fried onions, and a vinegar/garlic sauce.

The first week that she was here we had utterly abominable weather with highs in the mid 40's. One day we took off and headed to Carrefour, supposedly to shop for things that Yas might need, but actually just to waste time in an airconditioned space until dusk. Not too surprisingly, we ended up at one point in the toy section where we checked out what was new in dolls. Barbie dolls were introduced when I was a little girl, and I was as likely to use them as pistols (aiming from the feet) as I was to play dolls with them, but my daughter actually liked them. Now some of the dolls available here are some interesting variations on the Barbie theme. Fulah looks a lot like Barbie, but her proportions are a bit more realistic and she comes with a head scarf. On the other hand, some of her outfits are pretty racy for what people might think that a veiled woman would wear. Another doll was simply frightening. She's supposed to be a belly dancer and the carton explains that her hands, head and hips can move rhythmically...the mind simply boggles. I didn't actually see many little girls demanding her immediately, although the store was full of families with children. Carrefour is sort of a French Walmart, and they have a number of major outlets here. They carry everything from food to major appliances, with clothing, books, and strange signs to tell you what everything isn't. We wandered the aisle with a friend and her eight year old son, watching families of some of the visiting Gulf Arabs stocking up on household needs for their summer holidays. Even with our heat, Cairo beats the Gulf cold.

We've spent some time catching up with some of Yas' friends between dental appointments and doctor appointments. A lunch with one of her high school buddies at a fish restaurant overlooking the Nile was the occasion for an hour or so of gossip to review who was going to school where, working where, and who was either engaged or married. Oddly enough, marriage is still pretty far from the minds of most of the Egyptian from her graduating class in Cairo, while quite a few of the American kids have made the plunge. While crossing the bridge over the Nile we encountered a truck of camels on their way somewhere and I was able to get a photo that I'd always wanted of a truck full of camels. The camels seemed quite unconcerned about their travels and persisted in engaging in mock battles as the truck made its way through traffic.
One of the nice things about a child who studies something that I'm interested is the fact that we have plenty to do together that interests both of us, no matter how odd it may seem to other people. While driving in the desert the other day looking for interesting stones for my rock garden, we found an area where the Antiquities department has been dumping debris from excavations. Most of the debris consists of ancient mud bricks, chunks of old pottery, sand, gravel and such. But surprisingly, we also noticed some very old cloth sticking out of the sand in one pile. When we examined the cloth we realised that it was, in fact, an object wrapped in ancient linen. Carefully unwrapped, the item was revealed to be the crushed mummy of an infant. Not much was left that could be identified other than a tiny mandible and leg bone. We left the wrappings and bone shards in the desert with the other discarded objects.

Today was a lovely day so we decided to visit Memphis, once the capital of pharoanic Egypt, but now an area that is part of one of the neighbouring villages. The last time we'd visited the museum at Memphis was when the kids were still in primary school. We checked out the tacky tourist trash that was being sold, chatted with the sellers who got a kick out of some locals visiting the site, and most importantly got some seeds from a wonderful tree that was shading the garden there, an acacia whose delicate flowers give a sweet scent. We brought a number of pods home to be planted on the farm. Much better than a rather cheesy set of stone pyramids.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Down To The Nitty Gritty

Life in Egypt has its gritty side sometimes as we noticed yesterday. I was supposed to ride with my friend Cristina who arrived at about 9 am. We went out to feed the parrots and popped back into the house with the food bins. Open the door to go to the horses and....where did they go? We got hit with roughly half of the Libyan desert yesterday and high winds driving the dust into every crack and cranny imaginable.

No way we were riding in that stuff. When the sand hits, everyone heads indoors and/or stays as still as possible. The less sand in the lungs the better. The horses turned their butts to the wind and stood head down in the hot blast. My grooms hid out indoors with forays out to see that the bathtubs were full of fresh water (when the power was on and the hoses worked) and to give the herd meals. This was one of the worst storms I've seen here. Most of the day we had no electricity so we were sitting indoors in the dark. Good day for a nap.

Cristina and I decided to go over to a neighbour's place to visit and welcome him home. His wife is the Norwegian ambassador to Jordan so he bounces between their farm here and the embassy there. This is Mette's last posting so they are looking forward to retiring here...they have great windows and doors in their house, so even yesterday's blow didn't turn Pal off Egypt too much. I know where my next investment in the farm is going. We stayed for an hour or so chatting and admiring photos of wild flowers in Jordan, when Cristina suddenly remembered an open window in her home in Zamalek. Time to run!

I shot most of these photos from her car with my phone. The trees, tall eucalyptus and casuarina, were lashing all over the roads. I heard that there were a lot down along the canals. Cristina said that the drive into town was miserable, no visibility, blowing debris, and branches falling willy nilly. I headed indoors where I swept the living room three times during the day just to keep from tracking kilos of sand around the house. Even the dogs were willing to be indoors for most of the day.

When I went out to feed the parrots and other birds, they were all a sort of beige colour. I changed their water so that at least they had some fresh water and they all looked at me miserably, but no way I could bring all the parrots, ducks, chickens and turkeys in as well. They are all out there whistling and calling this morning so they survived the blow.

But today is sunny and bright. There will be time to wash the sand out of the grass and flowers, about one hundred loads of laundry to do, and I have five women from Maadi coming out to try riding this morning. I guess I'll keep the farm.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Farewell, Blue Boy

One of the hardest parts about caring for animals is the day that inevitably comes when you must say goodbye to an old friend. Almost a year ago the last Czech ambassador to Egypt and his wife gave me their lovely grey gelding Blue Boy to care for. Blue Boy was one of those Arab crosses that look like they have maybe some draft in them, and they are often used for jumping and dressage. Jana and Jakub rode him in these disciplines, but mostly in dressage once they realised that he had a problem in his feet that would flare up if he were jumped too much or too high. When the time came for them to move back to the Czech Republic, they offered him to me, wanting to give him a comfortable retirement and being concerned that not every owner would take care of Blue Boy's ouchy feet.

He came to live in the herd at the end of last summer and had some difficulties learning to live with a group of horses. He'd lived all of his life in solitary confinement in a box and really seemed to have little or no idea of how to communicate with other horses. We have small paddocks attached to the main one so that he could visit with the other horses without having to worry about squabbles and Blue Boy moved in with us. He was a terrific horse for beginners being very easy going and eager to please. He would follow a group of horses around the countryside trails, never spooking at anything. His only fault was that once in a while he would offer to take a route not recommended but he was always willing to reconsider if the rider said that it wasn't a good idea. His smooth gaits made him a favourite with our novice riders.

When a German trainer offered to teach me about vaulting, Blue Boy was an obvious pick as our vaulting horse. He had such smooth steady gaits and a nice broad back, both of which are very helpful to a rider who is learning to do gymnastic exercises on horseback. A number of children tried him out, at first daunted by the idea of standing up or sitting sideways or backwards on a moving horse. They would start out unsure and finish a quarter of an hour later quite full of themselves, having completed a number of gymnastic exercises on Blue Boy's broad back. Blue Boy was a huge confidence builder.

A week ago we woke to find him in severe discomfort. We called the vet, followed his instructions while waiting for him to arrive, and worried a lot about Blue Boy. Horses have amazingly long digestive tracts and a tummy ache in a horse is definitely not be be ignored. We gave him liquids IV, pain killers and oil to try to help him pass whatever it was that was causing the problem, but to no avail. We lost him in only a few hours. The vet was on his way out when Blue Boy died, but as it happens there was nothing he could have done. We don't have easy access to clinics where colic surgery can be done, and it turned out that he had a hard blockage in his upper intestine that was causing the problem. It was very hard to lose him but it was one of those things that we had no control over.

Burying something as big as a horse is seriously problematic in an area where the water table is only about a metre and a half under the surface of the soil. If we were to bury him in the farmland, and bury him as deep as is appropriate, the last two metres of the hole would be underwater and the water in the area would be over-fertilised, killing plants all around. One of our neighbours had a bulldozer at his property, so he drove it over to pick up the horse and to take him out to some old gravel mines where he could be buried.

So we found ourselves BlueBoyless last week and it took some getting used to. The next day all of the animals on the farm were very quiet...much less playful and silly as though they somehow understood that a member of the group was gone. Indeed they should have understood as he was within sight of all the animals during the process. I found myself having to correct myself when organising horses for trips, and we all miss the big grey gentleman who became so dear to us all. The hardest part was emailing Jana and Jakub to tell them...and emailing all of Blue Boy's many admirers and friends. We will miss him a lot.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

African Grey Pirates and Other Birds

When I started putting animals together on the farm, I thought quite a lot about comfort, safety and compatibility but I never really thought that the animals might start to take over. However, I'm seeing definite signs of a change in the balance of power in the aviary and now small signals in the house. The only bird in the house until recently has been Mona, my one-legged African Grey. She lost her right foot to
predators unknown last year and has made a brilliant recovery, living in state in the living room where she can comment on my taste in music and television. (She likes Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews, and Bob Marley...interesting choices to whistle along to.) Lately a pair of house sparrows has taken to flying into the living room as soon as I open the front door, which stands open most of the day. They spend a lot of time trying to build a nest in some very nice brass lamps that hang in the room and I spend a lot of time telling them to get out. It makes life inside almost as interesting as it is in the aviary.

The aviary is a grouping of three cubes that are each three metres on a side. Each cube has a door that opens on a service room that in turn opens to the outdoors. When I built the aviary at the farm, I'd already built one at my old house and was hoping to move the old one here, but when that couldn't happen I decided to wire the cubes with a wire that has smaller holes than the old aviary, so that a) rats can't get in and b) whatever bit off Mona's foot is kept out. The base of every cube is built of stuccoed brick to a height of a metre to allow the birds the privacy to walk around on the ground without the dogs going ballistic. All very good planning, and then the birds began redecorating the place.

The first thing to happen was that the Cuban Amazons discovered that if they chewed hard enough on the wire, they could make a hole. There is nothing that a parrot likes better than a hole. One of them slipped through the hole causing great concern among my grooms and neighbours, but I noticed that she hung around calling to the other Cuban, who didn't seem to feel that escape was such a brilliant idea. For 36 hours I had one Cuban inside and another one on the outside trying madly to figure out how to get back. The food service just isn't that super on the outside, I guess. Finally we left the service room door open and she flew in, and from there back to her cage. The next thing that they began chewing was the wire mesh between the cubes and the service room. At first I would patch it but after a while I just gave up. No one was escaping to the outside anymore. I had four new budgies that appeared and demanded to be let in, and a pair of lovebirds that even now sometimes leave the cage for an hour or two and then return, usually with some interesting straw or grass for their nest box.

Within a month or two of moving the parrots and budgies in (and having the new budgies and lovebirds appear) we began bringing other rather more useful birds to the aviary. In one cube we added a pair of bronze turkeys, although they turned out to be a pair of hens...that's okay because turkey eggs are delicious. In another cube we added a trio of Muscovy ducks, Donald, Daphne, and Daisy, who hopefully will soon be providing us with some baby ducks. Initially, Fritzi the Grey was sharing the cube with the ducks and budgies, but for a while we had to move him to the cube with Ali the Grey and Bamba the Bahamian Amazon because he was stealing the duck eggs and rolling them around the cube. Monster. The ducks were getting quite perturbed and I caught Frizi dangling by a wing from Donald's beak one day. That's when he got moved. The Cubans shared their cube with a flock of baladi chickens and a rooster to which were added four rabbits.


Once all of these creatures were in place, life REALLY got interesting. Fritzi started the remodeling with a window to the service room so that he could break into the stores of sunflower seeds. Once Ali and the Cubans saw this there was no stopping them. Before you could say "Noah's Ark" the parrots were moving freely all over the aviary and every time I would go in, I would count heads to see that they were all still there. No one ever left but the parrots were having a ball playing musical cages. Oddly enough the budgies and the lovebirds always stay in their own cage with an occasional foray into the service room, or in the case of the lovebirds outside. I've checked the cubes carefully and there are budgie/lovebird/sparrow sized holes to the outside all over the place but the sparrows and lovebirds are the only ones to take advantage of them.

After about six weeks of all this moving, some patterns seem to be stabilising. The two Greys, Ali and Fritz appear to have decided that they like living with the rabbits and chickens most of the time. In fact one of them is often perched in the window between that cube and the service as if to keep the other parrots out. Sometimes we find them walking around on the floor of the cage investigating the nesting boxes of the chickens or the clay pot where the rabbits like to sleep. The chickens and rabbits seem to be comfortable enough with the parrots...at least they don't carry them around like the ducks. I'm a bit apprehensive regarding the imminent arrival of baby rabbits. After twenty years with Ali, I know better than to assume that Greys are just charming vegetarians.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

New Arrivals

As a horse owner you try hard to monitor a pregnant mare as she approaches her foaling date. When Diva, my young bay mare, came near her expected delivery date, we moved her and her best friend Shaboura, another young mare, to a paddock near the grooms' room so that they could watch her more closely. Just before foaling, there are usually signs that we were hoping to catch so that she would start spending nights in the box, which would be a safer place for her to give birth. Diva, however, had other ideas. The evening of March 8, one of a neighbour's grooms stopped by to give us the sad news that the stallion who had sired Diva's foal had died that evening just as one of my grooms was setting out to check the horses. I got an almost unintelligible phone call to say that Diva had given birth in the paddock.

Making sure that the dogs were securely stuck inside the house garden so that they couldn't run amok and terrify the new mother, I dashed outside with a flashlight. There in the middle paddock stood Diva over her soaking wet daughter. We gathered the baby up and walked the mare to the box at the end of the row of paddocks where clean dry straw was waiting. We carefully laid the filly on the straw and watched Diva as she nuzzled and cleaned the little creature. As we rubbed her with straw to dry her and stimulate circulation she began to struggle to stand. Organising four long legs under a tiny body isn't easy at all. We called the owner of the sire who lives just down the road and he came over to help us get her nursing properly and taking her first poop, both the essential tasks of birth. It all took until about 2 am, time well spent in assuaging the pain of the loss of the stallion. We named the filly Negmat Sallamat (Greetings' Star) as her father had been a very well bred Arabian stallion Sallamat.

The next morning, we put the mother and filly out in one of the paddocks in the sun to give her a chance to meet the world during the daylight. We had allowed the dogs out the night before once the horses were in the box and they had all lined up at the door to greet the new arrival, who wobbled over to sniff noses. Now they lined up at the paddock fence and waited for permission to enter to meet the filly. Sabah the Sloughi and her partner in crime Demon were the first ones in to greet. Mother stood quietly just watching as they approached. Negmat was interested at first but quickly decided that it was naptime and dogs just weren't interesting enough to keep her awake. At this point most of the dogs decided to come and have a good sniff while the filly slept. She was utterly fascinating. The other horses also watched carefully from the other paddocks nearby, Shaboura crying out every so often to Diva. She had been extremely upset the evening before when we moved Diva and her daughter to the box. When we'd arrived we found the donkey family, Shaboura, and the gelding Jack in the next paddock all standing along the fenceline watching intently.The horses and dogs have a very good relationship for some reason. The dogs occasionally go into the large paddock and bark to see which horses will run so that they can chase them. I don't understand why the horses don't kick the dogs, but they don't. They seem to tolerate the canine foolishness very well, much better than I do. Both Negmat and Fagr, Dorika's last foal who is now about four and a half have made friends with the dogs immediately on birth.A foal's first few weeks are very much a matter of nursing, sleeping, and a bit of play, with a great deal of time spent asleep. The soundness of the sleep of a baby anything is a wonder to behold. I couldn't have slept a wink with a dozen dogs nosing me, but she certainly managed to. After a short nap, however, Negmat decided that it was time to get up again.The next day we had yet another arrival when one of the goats who share the paddock with the donkey family had two daughters as well. Baby goats are tiny, about the size of a cat, and have to be some of the most adorable creatures in the world. Our new ones are both black with some white spots on the face, ears and legs. The grooms decided that the best solution for these tiny babies was to spend the nights in the room with the groom who would be sleeping over, to be sure that no one bothered the newborns and that they would be warm enough.So far all the new ones are doing very well. Negmat is proving to be an easy handler with all the cuddling that she's getting. She's gaining control of those long legs and promises to be much taller than her mother. She's also going to be grey eventually rather than the pale chestnut colour that she currently sports, but the process will take years and she will turn a new colour every time she sheds. I had a birthday barbecue yesterday evening, just a group of my neighbours and friends, and after dinner we all went trooping about to visit the babies. The kids were a big hit and the experience of holding a sleepy baby goat in your arms is unforgettable.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani