In an attempt to relieve his thirst, the adolescent bull elephant thrusts his trunk into a village water line. He takes a big sip from the limited supply that is being pumped to the 1,500 residents of Phuduhudu hamlet, which is located 200 kilometers into Botswana’s wilderness, as I stand by and watch.
It gets hot in the midday sun, and every now and then the beast stops funneling water into his mouth and shoots gallons over his head to cool himself.
That same day in Phuduhudu, 18-year-old Bafenyi Ngwengare is standing at a tap in the local plaza with her newborn daughter slung over her back. She responds confidently, “It’s not water for the elephant, but for us.” To live, we require it. Before it gets here, elephants are grabbing it out of the pipes.
She is correct, according to the visiting police sergeant from the neighborhood. The pipes are broken by the elephants. The elephants observe while the government mends them. They stamp on them once more the moment they go. They are obsessed with water.
Here in the globe, people and elephants are engaged in a bloody war over water. In quest of water, the animals are migrating in large numbers from neighboring countries into Botswana due to a severe drought affecting southern Africa.
To live, an adult animal need 40 gallons of water each day, or about three quarters of a typical bath. This much can be swallowed in less than five minutes by a fully grown guy.
Botswana relies on big numbers of elephants to power its expanding tourism business, but there are now too many. This week, the government made the contentious announcement that it will send 8,000 elephants to Angola, which is next door, in response to the worsening situation.
As this is going on, they carelessly cross highways into the jungle, dodging around passing automobiles and tourist safari vehicles.
At night, they saunter into suburban homes’ lawns to sip from swimming pools.
I heard stories from people about elephants seeing them at breakfast through the kitchen windows.
Botswana had 130,000 elephants, more than any other African country and a third of all the elephants on this huge continent, prior to a series of severe droughts in southern Africa, the worst of which occurred last year.
Elephant and human populations are growing, and since both want water, this is a recipe for conflict, says veterinary expert Dr. Erik Verreynne of Botswana. He takes us on a helicopter ride to see the herds—roughly fifty in number—massing near farms and settlements in Botswana. As we fly overhead, a giant bull elephant in the middle of a watering-hole for goats and calves hardly glances up.
Here in Botswana, the joke is that elephants are not bound by national borders and do not require a passport in order to move. But hardly many people laugh these days.
‘The difficulty is that they are now going into farmland right next to villagers’ houses,’ says Dr. Verreynne. They stomp on household animals and drink at their watering holes.
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