'In Zimbabwe, we don’t cry for Lions' - Interesting article by a Zimbabwean writer
Americans will not let us hear word about Cecil the Lion that was killed recently in Zimbabwe by an American dentist The protests and no...
https://newshelmng.blogspot.com/2015/08/in-zimbabwe-we-dont-cry-for-lions.html
Americans will not let us hear word about Cecil the Lion that was killed
recently in Zimbabwe by an American dentist The protests and noise
about it is alarming to say the least. A Zimbabwean writer shared his
opinion on the issue in an article with NY Times & I just had to share it! Quite interesting.
And
please, don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also
willing to offer me
So sorry about Cecil. Did Cecil live near your place in Zimbabwe? Cecil who? I wondered. When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menace families like mine.
My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain. I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I’d experienced during my five years studying in the United States. Did all those Americans signing petitions understand that lions actually kill people?That all the talk about Cecil being “beloved” or a “local favorite” was media hype? Did Jimmy Kimmel choke up because Cecil was murdered or because he confused him with Simba from “The Lion King”? In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or granted an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.
When
I was 9 years old, a solitary lion prowled villages near my home. After
it killed a few chickens, some goats and finally a cow, we were warned
to walk to school in groups and stop playing outside. My sisters no
longer went alone to the river to collect water or wash dishes; my
mother waited for my father and older brothers, armed with machetes,
axes and spears, to escort her into the bush to collect firewood.
A
week later, my mother gathered me with nine of my siblings to explain
that her uncle had been attacked but escaped with nothing more than an
injured leg. The lion sucked the life out of the village: No one
socialized by fires at night; no one dared stroll over to a neighbor’s
homestead.
When
the lion was finally killed, no one cared whether its murderer was a
local person or a white trophy hunter, whether it was poached or killed
legally. We danced and sang about the vanquishing of the fearsome beast
and our escape from serious harm.
Recently,
a 14-year-old boy in a village not far from mine wasn’t so lucky.
Sleeping in his family’s fields, as villagers do to protect crops from
the hippos, buffalo and elephants that trample them, he was mauled by a
lion and died.
The
killing of Cecil hasn’t garnered much more sympathy from urban
Zimbabweans, although they live with no such danger. Few have ever seen a
lion, since game drives are a luxury residents of a country with an
average monthly income below $150 cannot afford.
Don’t
misunderstand me: For Zimbabweans, wild animals have near-mystical
significance. We belong to clans, and each clan claims an animal totem
as its mythological ancestor. Mine is Nzou, elephant, and by tradition, I
can’t eat elephant meat; it would be akin to eating a relative’s flesh.
But our respect for these animals has never kept us from hunting them
or allowing them to be hunted. (I’m familiar with dangerous animals; I
lost my right leg to a snakebite when I was 11.)
The
American tendency to romanticize animals that have been given actual
names and to jump onto a hashtag train has turned an ordinary situation —
there were 800 lions legally killed over a decade by well-heeled
foreigners who shelled out serious money to prove their prowess — into
what seems to my Zimbabwean eyes an absurdist circus.
PETA is calling for the hunter to be hanged.
Zimbabwean politicians are accusing the United States of staging
Cecil’s killing as a “ploy” to make our country look bad. And Americans
who can’t find Zimbabwe on a map are applauding the nation’s demand for
the extradition of the dentist, unaware that a baby elephant was
reportedly slaughtered for our president’s most recent birthday banquet.
We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.
Don’t
tell us what to do with our animals when you allowed your own mountain
lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States.
Don’t bemoan the clear-cutting of our forests when you turned yours into
concrete jungles.