Njomba

Njomba is from Kenya, a country in Africa. He lives with his family in a remote area where the forest is interlaced with areas of large plains. Many elephants live near his home.

One day his father came home with many bullets and a very powerful rifle. His father had found a big bull elephant with huge tusks. It had been shot many times by another hunter, but it had lived long enough to escape and stagger into the forest before dying near their home. Njomba's father had found the bull and taken the tusks. Later, he traded them to the ivory trader who came through the village every so often. In exchange for the tusks, the ivory trader gave his father the automatic rifle and bullets. He made Njomba's father promise that he would only sell tusks to him when he came through the village.

The whole family was excited! Now they would be rich; they would be able to buy anything they wanted! Njomba had heard that the government had a law forbidding the killing of elephants because their population was declining, but Njomba thought there were plenty of elephants. The elephants had been there as long as the people, and he believed that the elephants belonged to the people, not to the government. Njomba loved the elephants and liked to watch them; there really were plenty of them. He kept thinking of things that his family could buy from the sale of ivory.

Questions

1. Does Njomba's family really want to kill the elephants? Describe your thoughts or feelings about their reason for killing elephants.

2. To whom do the elephants really belong?

3. What if nobody would buy the ivory? How could this be accomplished?

4. Would it really matter if there were no wild elephants?

5. List your solutions to this problem. Be creative and imaginative.

6. Be prepared to give a two-minute summary and/or solution to the problem.

	Copyright © 1996 Society for American Archaeology