A seventy-year-old, six-ton bull elephant dies of natural causes and for the starving people of Zimbabwe, it's the answer to their prayers.
Hungry people arrive from all directions and it took just one hour and 47 minutes for them to cut the meat away from the body - even his trunk and ears - and when there was nothing left but the skeleton, they took his bones away to boil for soup.
Conditions are expected to get worse this year after the collapse of agriculture caused by President Mugabe's violent seizures of thousands of white-owned farms since 2000. Harvests for this year will produce less than a third of the required amount to feed the whole country.
Just after dawn, a villager on a bike spotted the dead animal miles from anywhere and within 15 minutes, people from every direction arrived. The women formed a ring around the elephant and the men stood inside, fighting to get at the meat.
Some of the meat was eaten straight away but most was dried on washing lines and stored to eat later. There were celebrations in surrounding villages for the next two nights.
This is how the people survive under President Mugabe.
Nothing left 
No comments:
Post a Comment