Have decided that Tuesdays will be a day of respite from lodge or fishing talk. So I have brought in Fearless Reporter William Walitoompa who has in recent times been trolling the archives of various well-known Zambian news publications and has amassed an impressive collection of somewhat hilarious articles that we will share with you over the coming weeks. They appear exactly as they were in print, bar the name of the reporter and the newspaper. As ludicrous as some of them may sound, theee are real articles not fiction I promise!!!
The Commodore;)
Thought we’d stick with a wildlife theme for the next few weeks and get those out of the way before we get onto the seriously strange stuff.
This one comes from a few years back and caused side splitting laughter when I stumbled upon it. Although not the typical ‘meanwhile’ article that I will share with you in coming weeks, the powerfully dramatic writing in this one is brilliant. The mental images that it conjures up are just too much for my warped mind….
Hope you enjoy this one as much as I still am …..William WaliT
Hippos terrorise Kitwe peasant farmers
PEASANT Farmers in Kitwe’s Kakolo farming area are living in fear of marauding hippos that are terrorising them and destroying their crops.
The peasant farmers living across the Kafue river near the former presidential guest house in Ndeke township, were now fearing to go to their fields because the beasts’ population had grown.
Farmers’ representative Dailes Phiri said more than 15 hippos and their young ones had been destroying crops, and scaring the farmers away from their fields.
She said last year, farmers faced the same problem which they reported to the office of the district commissioner.
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On a slightly more serious (although less melodramatic note) the hippo has just recently been added to the latest IUCN Redlist due to largely hunting pressure in the DRC. Zambia has the largest population of these beasties in the world - something that's pretty obvious if you spend any time on the river at all!!
95% decline of hippo populations in Democratic Republic of Congo – now listed as Vulnerable
Larger freshwater species, such as the common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) are also in difficulty. One of Africa’s best known aquatic icons, it has been listed as threatened for the first time and is now classified as Vulnerable, primarily because of a catastrophic decline in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In 1994 the DRC had the second largest population in Africa – 30,000 after Zambia ’s 40,000 - but numbers have plummeted by 95%. The decline is due to unregulated hunting for meat and the ivory of their teeth.
From:IUCN news release http://www.iucn.org/en/news/archive/2006/05/02_pr_red_list_en.htm
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