OUR KIND OF PLANET: Of a ‘Mzungu’, 1.3m tuskers and my silly question!

Any occasion to shake off an ugly rub in our lives can be hilarious, particularly if such episodes lead to a rewarding learning curve.

But some just refuse to go. Even with kudos attached – as my stupendous encounter with a British “naturalist” in former Soviet Russia would demonstrate.

Our first assignments overseas are often fraught with trapdoors, often having to do with cultural “gaps” either directly related to the job at hand – where we often ask silly questions arising from sheer ignorance. But first things first:

It’s the summer of 1978, City of Ashkhabad, where the IUCN General Assembly is in session – the first ever overseas beat for this native from TZ who, like Hon Kangi Lugola (CCM – Mwibara), thought all wild animals proven to have killed people, or those with the courage to eat what they didn’t plant, deserved summary execution, or in the case of Mwibara, instant translocation.

Bush mindset

And, it’s that bush mindset that informed the little there was to know; if the elephants helped themselves to a sumptuous lunch of pumpkins, even as they trample on what they don’t need, your reaction is typical: call the game scouts to shoot the offending tuskers dead.

In terms of public awareness about wildlife as key national resources, the 1970s were still misty. Two years prior to my assignment in Ashkhabad, I had personally witnessed just one Member of Parliament, the late Peter Saidi Siyovelwa, talk about the need to share space “amicably” with our “neighbours” in the wild and, when he mentioned butterflies among them, the House exploded in spirited laughter.

At once, that had vividly marked Ndugu Siyovelwa out as a lone warrior in that august House. Within the media fraternity, too, the situation wasn’t any better: only Paschal Shija, then Chief Sub-Editor at the Daily News and Sunday News, had had some rare opportunity to fly off to London for a press briefing seminar organized by Earthscan, the editorial arm of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), which had by then established itself as an authoritative source of syndicated features on environment and development issues. I came next on the Earthscan guest list, only with the added advantage of a major wildlife (IUCN -1978) conference to boot.

In retrospect, the dying 1970s were watershed moments for Tanzania; the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) had turned just a year and half older when I flew out to the Soviet Union, fired by the newfound “revolutionary” rhetoric of the day. As a “supreme” party, the sole constitutional monarchy, if you like, CCM became the byword for practically everything.

Of particular interest to wildlife was this underlying, if unresolved, question of implied double standards: “When the elephants trample on our crops … nothing happens … when we kill the animals … we get arrested…”

That’s the vexing question I took with me as I flew out of Dar – to a global meeting of minds talking about creatures I had never heard of in my life. In the middle of all this, however, Earthscan did a sterling job, arranging anything from organizing joint press briefings to sourcing relevant experts for individual interviews.

And that’s how I met Sir Peter Scot (RIP), a brilliant British “naturalist” who could paint, draw sketchy artworks of a panda or such other … and still follow the proceedings of either plenary or committee sessions to the last decibel. This is the man to whom I offloaded the vexing question.

“Well, son, your farms are sitting in the wrong place,” he said, adding that the farmers had “no business” being there, in the first place.

He then then took pains to describe how human encroachment had virtually bloated out once pristine annual wildlife migration routes. Even then, the animals never stopped their age-old annual pilgrimage, albeit at increasingly greater danger en route, because human settlements had since curtailed their paths – hence the rising tensions.

I came out of that briefing feeling pretty raw after this Brit had shot down the “vexed” question in the full glare of more experienced colleagues from across world. Still, I was highly buoyed by these new insights, plus valuable global contacts, all because I was “silly” enough to internalize the “vexed” question.

At the time, Africa was home to 1.3 million elephants (1979 figures), down from ten million in 1914 – some 8.7 million tuskers gone within 60 short years.

On reflection, there’s precious little room for the sentiments expressed by Lugola who last week expressed something similar to the “vexed’ question. Yes, four decades now separate my ordeal in Russia and that of Lugola today in what appears to define an enduring myth.

The human “animal” tends to believe we deserve “instant compensation” whenever conflicting “user rights” arise, and the animals in the bush often pay the ultimate penalty with their lives. With our bloated whims, some of our actions make it more difficult to decide which of the two animals is actually wild.

But mark this: in Nature’s accounting system, it doesn’t matter which of the two gets killed first, the hunter or the hunted because, in the end, both will make good compost.

So if I were Nyalandu, I would ask Hon Lugola to go jump and take a well-deserved swim next to the oldest croc in any of the wetlands dotting his “prefecture” and, that way, make peace with the rest of the crocodiles.

Jokes apart, there are two ways he could achieve that; first, instead of internalizing the pain of losing the woman who helped him get voted into parliament, he should convert that loss into ploughshares – by “farming” those reptiles for their choice meat, or simply showcase them to both local and itinerant tourists. Either way, he would also create more descend job for many of his voters who now put their lives on harm’s way. Crocs in farms are as harmless as pigs in a sty. The people of Mwibara stand to lose a lot if their MP gets his way and forces Nyalandu to take away “his crocodiles.”

The people of Mwibara

In fact, these aren’t Nyalandu’s crocodiles; they belong to the people of Mwibara who, through proper stewardship, stand to reap tremendous economic gains. So why would any discerning MP seek to “export” away such promising investment and job opportunities from his own unless he, too, wants to mortgage his own political fortunes?

As sure as sunrise and sundown, this would come to pass if Hon Lugola persists and succeeds in persuading Nyalandu and his wildlife resource managers to craft a “resettlement scheme” for the crocs and, take it from Yours Truly, there will be no shortage of foresighted bidders eager to give the reptiles a new home.

One more thing while still on crocs: it’s difficult to “exterminate” a species from its Godsend space; if in doubt, ask the Wildlife Society in Dar for their professional experience in dealing with the “invasive” Zanzibar crows in the city.

Working holiday

In the meantime, Hon Lugola may wish to take a working holiday in neighbouring Kenya, where he could help himself to a delightful night out at Nairobi’s famous Carnivore Hotel, where he could taste a delicious helping of crocodile meat. This could give him not just new insights in the way he perceives crocodiles but also render great tribute to the woman he lost the avid crocs he would love to export. The people of Mwibara would feel appeased, too.