Human Stories/Testimonials

Thompson Tembo

Thompson Tembo, from Chief Chifunda's area, killed his first animal, a warthog, when he was just 8 years old. His father was poor and his only livelihood was killing wildlife, a skill he passed on to his son. At the age of 14, Thompson witnessed his father killed by an elephant that his father had wounded while poaching. Years following this tragic experience, he became one of Luangwa Valley's numerous notorious poachers, killing 100s elephants and untold number of black rhino throughout much of his adult life. Despite a busy career of ivory trading and selling game meat, he never accumulated significant wealth for his family. Middlemen often cheated him and running from the law was expensive.

William Nyirenda

William Nyirenda, from Chief Chikwa's area, could not grow enough food to feed his family. Every year he depended on snares to exchange game meat for the food he failed to produce. Not a very happy person, he lived a dangerous life of drinking away his problems and eking a meager livelihood from small-scale subsistence farming, sometimes growing enough to find a market that offered a low return. William lacked better farming skills and as a result his fields produced low yields. He could not understand why weeds would take over his fields so quickly, even if he burned his fields after harvest, thinking this would help. Often such fires would spread to surrounding areas, degrading both soils as well as wildlife habitat. Soon his soils were exhausted and he would have to clear more land. Farming was not rewarding, snaring was.

Maureen Phiri

Maureen Phiri of Chief Mwanya's area knows hunger and poverty well. She has a large family and has seen her children go without meals many times during the year. Weeding her fields is hard work and she needs them to help weed during the farming season, which keeps them from attending school. Growing food for self-sufficiency and having a steady income to help raise her six children is a dream that will never come true, she believed.

In the words of one trader who has been buying agricultural commodities from rural farmers for years in Eastern Province, Zambia, the best time to buy soybeans and rice from farmers is in May when they are the poorest and willing to sell their produce for nothing. This is the world rural poor often live.

Poverty and hunger in a rural community as Thompson, William and Maureen have experienced contribute to more than human hardships. To cope and sustain family needs often result in survival decisions that drive people to destroy their natural resources. Cutting down a forest to convert into charcoal for selling or poisoning a fishhole to harvest all its fish to barter for food and clothing are better solutions than no solution at all. Unfortunately, when many people from a rural community resort to such practices, a landscape that was once rich with natural resources, the land can become depleted and changed forever.

Trends suggest such changes are happening in Luangwa Valley and many other parts of Zambia where forests are disappearing at among the highest rate in the world and where areas once rich in wildlife are empty and silent of wild animals.

Changed Lives

Today Thompson, William and Maureen live very different lives. Thompson has surrendered his guns and now owns 26 bee hives and earns $300 to $400 annually from selling honey through the COMACO trading center in Lundazi. He has also learned improved farming and poultry husbandry skills through the COMACO extension services and is able to keep his family food secure while selling 30 to 40 surplus chickens each year. In Thompson's own words, I never knew any other way of supporting my family than poaching until COMACO turned my life in a new direction. I now have to spend the rest of my life saving animals to repay for all the animals I killed.

He is one of 336 poachers COMACO has helped to transform.

COMACO encouraged William to join a farmer's producer group and learn better farming skills. Today he is a successful farmer and has surrendered his snares. This year he has grown 2 limas of rice and will earn close to $500 from COMACO's preferential pricing offered to farmers who comply with conservation farming. In addition to 2.5 limas of maize that will produce about 32 bags of maize, he also has a patch of cassava to serve as a food reserve in drought years. William is no longer a drunkard and has no time or need to set snares. Maureen also joined the COMACO program and has learned improved ways to farm to reduce her workload weeding fields. She is more food secure and her children are better able to attend school. Both are among the more than 30,000 farmers COMACO currently works with in Luangwa Valley.

They say you can move a mountain one stone at a time. COMACO works this way one household at a time, but through a combination of extension training, market support and trade benefits.COMACO has begun to show an impact on conservation and human well-being nothing short of spectacular multiplying the Thompson Tembos, William Nyirendas and Maureen Phiris by the 1000s and in so doing, COMACO has begun to move mountains. BACK TO TOP