I think I've mentioned this before, but when I first was staying out in the Maasai villages--I told my Maasai friends, "I want to see a lion!" Or the big question for them was, "have you killed a lion?? Are there lions around here?" But especially during my stay in Nchaishi, my hosts told me it wasn't the lions they were afraid of, it was the elephants. At night these large, quiet animals, along with lions, came to the nearby spring and would drink the water, often drinking the source nearly dry. During the daytime I would see the broken branches and the droppings from the elephants but usually didn't see the animals themselves. "We could kill a lion if we needed to, but an elephant could just smash our houses if he wanted to," my host, Philip, told me.
Also in Maji Moto, a village with large source of water (Maji Moto means hot springs) everyday on my walk from the house to the school I saw new signs of the presence of elephants-tree branches broken, small trees trampled, fresh droppings; but no elephants.
My first drive to the bush, days after I arrived in Kenya, we joked all day about finding an elephant for me to see. My co-worker Steve promised me we would find one. I had high hopes but towards the end of the day it was getting dark and we still hadn't seen one. It was then, driving through an area with small trees and bushes that we saw one!! He was so near the truck! He was alone, so it seemed, which is abnormal for elephants and often means trouble. We speculated that this was the elephant who had just the day before, killed a man in that area.
This topic is on my mind because just a few weeks ago a friend of mine's 15 year old sister was killed by an elephant. She was out fetching firewood with 2 other girls and didn't notice the animal until it was too late. Just last week I heard another man in a community we work in was killed by an elephant. Just as a tomato crop was ready to be harvested in a community where we've been introducing farming, elephants came and destroyed the field.
Here's the field before:
The human/animal conflict is real here. Is it the humans fault for living where the animals stay or is it the animals fault for intruding where humans are living??? How do we co-exist? The struggle isn't just with elephants, but other wild animals, too. It's one thing to be a tourist and drive through the Maasai Mara and admire these animals, it's another thing when they are threatening your livelihood. These are real issues that we're dealing with everyday.
Please join us in praying especially for these 2 families who have lost loved ones recently and also for the farmers who invested so much in this new idea of farming, to have their crop destroyed right before reaping the harvest. Pray for us at AH, too, to know how to encourage the people in our ministry area who daily face the reality of sharing their land and resources with wild animals.
