Burning Chillies and Dung Could Help Stop Elephants Damaging Farmers’ Crops, While We Search For Big Solutions That Work

Burning Chillies and Dung Could Help Stop Elephants Damaging Farmers’ Crops, While We Search For Big Solutions That Work

By Rocio Pozo, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling. First published on The Conversation.

Note from Anne: AOC has shared extensive research about human’s conflict with elephants in Africa. In my experience most Westerners have almost no patience, understanding or empathy around the lives of African farmers living with the elephants. Please watch the embedded video ‘Pathways to Coexistence’ documentary (2015), a SUPERBLY well-done, balanced examination of a conflict between elephants and people, conflict that will only intensify in Africa with population growth and economic expansion.

Humans — specifically African farmers — are not the bag guys in this wrenching drama around saving our precious elephants. A change in the overly-simplistic, American and European Twitter-universe, off-with-their heads attitudes towards trophy hunters (we agree) and farmers (we don’t agree) is long overdue on this complex topic.

Anilez Silva 'Africa' by Daniel Bracci Delves Into Woman's Collective Unconscious

Anilez Silva 'Africa' by Daniel Bracci Delves Into Woman's Collective Unconscious

Originally written July 7, 2012, 3am — same time I found it again just now. Little by little, I am restoring the far-flung DNA of GlamTribal.

Looking at Daniel Bracci’s magnificent images of Anilez Silva entitled ‘Africa’, my rational mind says “don’t go there, Anne”. Our politically-correct world only sees stereotypes where you see art and connection.

After all, Anilez Silva is fiercely tribal, sensual, erotic, impenetrable, dangerous, ancestral, aboriginal and ancient. She is ferocious, native, natural, primeval and primitive; turbulent, unbroken and proud. 

My friends at Jezebel would probably hate her. We tend not to see eye-to-eye on a few issues, and this is one of them. Are Bracci’s images stereotypical? Racist? I’m not an African American — or African woman — or African Parisian woman, so I can only speak to how these images affect me personally.

When the subject is Africa, I have a visceral response that another person might have with India. Most Americans have no visceral response at all, in terms of connection with “foreign” imagery, but this is not the case for me.