Coming in to land at Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe
We fly in to the land where I was born and raised. She is green from the recent rains and dusted with small white clouds.
It is early 2017, and I have not been back for fourteen years.
“… But there was one Elephant–a new Elephant–an Elephant’s Child–who was full of ‘satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions. And he lived in Africa, and he filled all Africa with his ‘satiable curiosities …”
(Rudyard Kipling’s ‘ The Elephant’s Child’)
A deal has been done – a sale has been agreed and the animals delivered … but not everyone is happy. The animals sold are young, wild-born Zimbabwean elephants, and the buyer is China.
Zimbabwe is selling not just the family jewels, it’s selling family. It is exporting them as though they were goods, to a remote land that has little experience of the needs of this great, intelligent species.
Ambleside – Adrian Warren & Dae Sasitorn/www.lastrefuge.co.uk
(March 2015: Relaunch of a piece about ZANE’s 2014 walk.)
Tom Benyon OBE has decided it’s the perfect time to strike out on another walk to raise money for the charity ZANE (Zimbabwe a National Emergency).
England is all sunshine and has been for a while. Half the population is draped across greenery under the nearest available sunbeam.
It’s the sensible thing to do … unless you’re Tom.
The Phraser 