The children worked very hard this year on the school ‘shamba’ (vegetable garden). It was looking wonderful; we had started harvesting sukuma (a green leafy vegetable like kale) and were keenly anticipating tomatoes, green peppers and carrots.
Sukuma in the school shamba
Tomato and green pepper plants
Then an elephant came to tea.
Then an elephant came to tea
Sadly our fence was no match for a determined elephant and he (or she, we never saw the culprit) obviously fancied the sukuma as much as we did.
The fence was no match for a hunger elephant
The elephant also trampled a lot of tomato plants
As we all know an elephant never forget…. especially a good place for a meal! We had little hope of keeping the elephants out of the rest of the crop.
Other events overtook us though when, a few days later, the stream by the school dried up, and our ambitions of growing our own vegetables came to an abrupt halt. We harvested what we could and sadly watched the rest wither within a few short days. Even the elephant didn’t bother to come back.
We still hope to be able to grow all our own vegetables at the school but we now have to plan for an electric fence to keep out the elephants, and a more reliable water source.