Today I ate elephant

04/11/2014

The title may come as a shock to many, and if you are sensitive to this topic maybe this post isnt for you. 

Elephants are of course a protected species, however Botswana has the highest elephant population in the world. The law goes that if human life is freatend you may shoot an elephant in defense. Which is exactly what happened, we do get alot of elephants trekking through the local area. However yesterday one happened to come far to close to be deamed safe, right through the middle of the local village. The cheif of the village took a shoot gun and and killed the elephant with a single shot.

Once an elephant has been shot the police are called to come and make sure the animal is dead, and that it was shot for good reason. Then a wildlife officer must come and remove the tusks to prevent people shooting elephants for money or material gain. Once these boxes are ticked the elephant is butchered for two reasons, one obviously being food, but secondly because it deters scavaging animals coming into the village such as hiennas which would create more of a problem.

We took all of the boys from BBM to the village to see the elephant up close, but also so they could see it butchered and observe the anatomy of another animal. We were also kindly allowed to take meat for the school and for us volunteers. Hundreds of people turned up to take meat from the elephant, the meat could easily feed a village everyday for weeks. I must also comment that elephant is actually quite pleasent, it tastes a lot like beef except more tender and abit more salty. We also tried the tounge, some things are best left untouched.

I do hope this isnt a regular occurence, we can often here them crashing through the bush at night towards the river, although they usually tend to steer clear of human inhabitted areas. This was definetly not a story I ever thought I'd right when I came to Botswana.