Hungry Mwenezi villagers survive on baboons
By Godfrey Mtimba
Friday, 01 October 2010 16:07
MWENEZI – The baboon population is under threat of being wiped out in
Mwenezi as desperate villagers have resorted to eating the human-like wild
animal to avert hunger and starvation, game ranchers in the area have
revealed.
Hunger and starvation continue to dog thousands of villagers in the arid
district, forcing residents to survive on wild fruits, animals and roots,
following a poor agricultural season caused by low rainfall and a myriad of
artificial problems including the shortage of inputs.
National Parks officials in Mwenezi expressed concern over the depreciation
of the baboon population in the district conservancies as poaching has
suddenly increased with villagers claiming that they have no option except
to survive on baboons that roam around villages.
A National Parks official in Mwenezi, Edmond Garwe the Daily News that
poaching of baboons had become rampant and they were struggling to contain
poachers.
“We are experiencing a rare form of poaching here.
“This is our first time to realise that people eat baboons. Villagers are
forced to do this because of starvation here; people are hungry and they do
not have grain so they are now surviving on wild animals and fruits.
“But the activity is detrimental to the population of this particular specie
since it is going down at an alarming rate,” he said.
He added that villagers were hunting baboons because the area no longer has
other types of wild animals after they were exhausted by war veterans who
invaded white owned farms during the chaotic land reform programme of 2000.
He said the ill-equipped new farmers went on a rampage hunting wild animals
after experiencing nightmares in their farms and the few wild animals left
migrated to other regions leaving the baboons at the mercy of the starving
villagers.
Tsekelani Chauke, a villager from Chief Chitanga said they were doing this
out of desperation.
“We have no choice but to feed on baboons because we can’t watch our
families die of hunger. The wild animal meat has become our food and we are
surviving on it alone since we don’t have the grain to prepare sadza.
Mwenezi is the driest district in the province and farming is completely
impossible; wild meat is our sole means of survival and the only animals
that are available are baboons,” he said.
He said while they were aware that most people say human beings do not eat
baboon meat, they are in a desperate situation as their calls for assistance
from government have failed to bear any fruit.