HORSE SENSE

Moufassa is in his favorite position--that is to say, motionless, as if he were tightly secured to a hitching post, which he’s not. His reins are dangling free and there’s nothing to prevent him from galloping off into the sunset. Except that he has no intention of doing so.

Standing by his side, however, is a child who is soon to be Moufassa’s undoing. Randall Hook, age 6, waiting with his twin brother, Carlton, has been chanting, “I want Moufassa, I want Moufassa,” just loud enough to ensure that the spirits that bring horses and children together hear him. The spirits apparently have, because Randall is about to be boosted by a strong pair of arms onto the back of the aging gray horse.

Randall will now, through a combination of rocking in the saddle and spasmodic thumping of feet, urge the horse forward. Moufassa will comply, taking a few turns about a ring that he knows very well. He also knows very well that as soon as he tires he can stop, and there is not a lot Randall, whom he outweighs by 1,000 pounds, can do.

But Yahya Islam, age 12, who is very familiar with Moufassa’s predilection for inertia, simply takes the braided reins in his hand and leads the horse forward, and Randall is back on track circling the ring again, doing what is probably his favorite thing in the whole world.

Mayisha Akbar is counting on this, that the bond children have with horses will overcome loneliness and boredom and violence and keep everyone in her youth riding group happy--and safe. Akbar conducts her program, called Junior Posse, in Compton, a city where 72 murders were reported last year, a city whose school system is in such disarray that it’s been run by the state government for the past four years. These may not be great times for the children of Compton, but they can be if you’re one of the 20 or so lucky ones in the Junior Posse.

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Akbar, 44, grew up in harbor city when there were horses and dairy cows and strawberry fields forever. She spent her childhood bumming rides on other people’s horses and developing a love for all things equestrian. So it was with a certain jubilation that she stumbled on Richland Farms, a square-mile corner of Compton that is still zoned for horses, eight years ago. Here, amid the ranch-style homes on half-acre-and-up lots, she could give her children, Khafra, Nailah and Rashid, the same childhood experiences she cherished.

“I thought it would enrich their lives by keeping them in contact with Mother Nature, that it would give them experiences that were lifelong, a respect for life and an understanding of death,” Akbar says of the move to Richland Farms. It is a philosophy that also imbues Junior Posse. “They would learn responsibility in having to take care of an animal and keep focused, so they wouldn’t get caught up in the drugs and the violent culture that’s out there.”

Pretty soon children from all over were hanging out in the backyards of Akbar and her horse-loving friend, Hanan Islam, for a chance to ride, touch or just watch the animals. By taking the informal gathering to the next step--an organized program with rules and commitments and goals--four years ago, Akbar was making her bid to improve the welfare of Compton’s children. She knows she cannot save everyone, and at times her disciplined approach hasn’t set well with some of the teenagers. But with her emphasis on education and attitude, “we concentrate on the whole child.” And: “We will save those willing to be saved.”

Akbar is especially strict about school. Any member of the Junior Posse who drops below a B grade point average must sign up for tutoring at the nearby Winnie Mandela Educational Center. Poor attitude can also jeopardize standing. When 18 Junior Posse members traveled to a rodeo in Las Vegas in January, four male members were barred from riding because of poor grades, and two were further disciplined for surliness toward a rodeo official. “They have to learn to get along in the world,” says Akbar.

Discipline is also foremost in the minds of the parents--many of them single fathers--who bring their children to the riding sessions each Saturday. “It’s when they don’t have anything to do that they end up in gangs,” says Wayne Holland, father of new Junior Posse member Raymond, 10, and of a teenage son murdered four years ago.

Another Posse member, Anthony Harris, 15, was “messing up” when his father, a long-distance truck driver, signed him up three years ago. Now Anthony, an accomplished rider with kind hands, takes over the horses that need a special touch. This day he is riding Star, an Arabian that arrived as a donation in February. Under Anthony’s careful handling, she is becoming the Posse’s newest star.

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The $40 monthly dues the children pay (many are on scholarship) can’t begin to meet all the costs of keeping the half-dozen or so horses used by the Posse, so the group is dependent on the kindness of strangers. Pony, next to Moufassa the favorite of the Posse mounts, is an older thoroughbred donated after years of “ponying” racehorses at Hollywood Park. A couple of retired farriers shoe the horses at a discount. Bellflower and Lomita feed stores have donated hay when the group has run short of funds. The Rolling Hills Empty Saddle Club, which invited the Posse to participate in a city anniversary celebration last year, contributed saddles and other tack. A veterinarian holds specially priced clinics to file the horses’ teeth. Akbar worms the horses and administers shots herself. Fortunately, there have been no large vet bills--yet.

Few similarities exist between this operation and the kind of equestrian display going on a few miles away in Palos Verdes or in any of L.A.’s other tony riding communities, in which $50,000 hunter-jumpers and $40-an-hour trainers are the norm and $20-a-bottle hoof ointments might be applied daily to keep the horses looking just so.

But whether they have the newest riding equipment means nothing to two sisters who, frightened but jubilant, are making their way around the Compton ring on Pony and Moufassa. Sent to live with their grandmother after officials took them from their drug-abusing mother, the girls are taking their first ride with the Junior Posse. The sight clearly delights Corrine Paige, the executive director of Queue-Up, a nonprofit organization that assists the homeless in Watts and has been a champion of Junior Posse since 1995, when it officially adopted the group. Queue-Up helps with fund-raising and its homeless children get to ride and care for the horses.

Paige and Akbar have a dream of expanding the program, adding English equitation to the Western riding. They have acquired use of a larger arena--sessions were being held in Akbar’s backyard--on 31/2 acres maintained by the L.A. County Department of Recreation and Parks on unincorporated land at 72nd Street and Atlantic Place. But they need a nearby facility at which to stable the horses to do away with the added expense of bringing them by trailer.

The group makes several public performances each year, including the Huntington Park Christmas, the Compton Kwanzaa, the Watts Festival and the Temecula Fourth of July parades. These appearances are a particular favorite of Junior Posse veteran David Dotson, 15, one of the original members, who believes that horses may be the ticket to celebrity. It was the movie “Tombstone,” with its many mounted heroes, that inspired him to join the group, he says as he steadies his nervous mount, a tall bay mare.

What Dotson may not realize is that a few feet away, studying the other children from a safe position on the ground, is a rider who may soon challenge him for most-watched status. In a few weeks, Raymond Holland will make his debut as a Junior Posse rider in the Temecula parade, astounding everyone by completing the entire route without an adult escort. “You should have seen the grin on his face,” Paige says.

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It was a blessed time for Corrine Paige. She was celebrating the group’s acceptance as a Special Olympics training center when a bullet--sadly commonplace--reminded her of why Junior Posse is needed.

Akbar’s 16-year-old son, Khafra, who had watched with a half smile as the sisters made their tremulous Junior Posse debut a handful of weeks earlier, was riding his bike down a Richland Farms street on a warm summer day when first one, then a second bullet ripped through his body. Khafra never saw what was coming; the assailant, standing on a street corner, shot him in the back. Nine surgical procedures were required to save his right leg, its blood flow severed by the bullets’ assault. Akbar, her Junior Posse activities on hold, was at the hospital every day.

Slowly, Akbar turned her attention from her ravaged son, an accomplished horseman who had won a medal for bull-riding at the January rodeo, to the future. The shooting added new impetus to what Akbar hopes Junior Posse will accomplish. When she talks to children about the importance of rising above the violence, Khafra’s presence brings the message home. The 16-year-old, told by doctors he would never walk on the leg again, is doing just that. More important to him, he’s back riding. Why Khafra was targeted still isn’t known. “This isn’t the first time an unarmed child has been shot,” Akbar says. “They’re just prey to some people.”

“I know of a lot of little graves,” says Paige. “For Khafra to be saved--he had been partway in the streets but was brought back to reality before this. So he’s not doing those things, he’s not getting into trouble. Then he gets shot. It makes you wonder what the Lord has in mind for him.”

Probably the same thing Akbar does--to save the children.