The scene of the tragedy of the elephants is the Hwange National Park in Matabeleland (northwest), the largest in Zimbabwe, where the watering places of the pachyderms are barren due to the lack of rainfall that plagues Southern Africa.
Meanwhile, in the Horn of Africa, floods caused by relentless downpours are destroying entire villages and sweeping away dozens of people who are never heard from again.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare’s (FIBA) account, puts the number of individuals dying of thirst under the relentless southern summer sun at 100, while the authorities in Hwange declare themselves unable to alleviate the crisis for lack of equipment to open new waterholes.
Faced with the crisis, Zimbabwean pachyderms are migrating to neighboring Botswana in search of food and water.
But this time the instinct of the largest land mammals may be wrong.
In Botswana, rainfall is so scarce that the people have chosen the word “pula” for their national coat of arms, which in the Setswana language means rain.
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