Elephant Graveyard

Piles of rough, scaly, dried skins are stacked up underneath a corrugated tin awning. The type of animal is mostly indistinguishable unless you look closely, and then it is possible to identify an occasional crocodile snout. Tiny chunks of the salt that preserves the skins spills off the heaps onto the ground. Across the yard in the sand, the jawbones of elephants are lined up like soldiers, the more recent kills still covered in bits of gristle and hairs while the older ones are bleached as white as the sand under the midday African sun. The skulls of other beasts, their dangerous horns lifeless in the sand, wait to be packed and labeled in boxes and shipped around the world to those who paid dearly for the privilege of ending the lives of these beasts.


As I wander around more I find the tannery, with the tiny old men hunched over carefully tanning the hides, using impossibly sharp knives to scrape away the remaining bits of flesh from the now soft, pliable furs. It is clear that they have learned these traditions from their forefathers, techniques passed down a long line from father to son for generations. Their feet are bare, calloused and hardened from walking many miles in the scorching sand and through the thorns of the brush, their thick toenails grown protectively long over their hardened toes. They are dressed in ragged “modern” working clothes, although I can easily picture them in skins of animals they have tanned previously. I imagine them doing the same thing around a fire in a village somewhere, scraping at the hides as they tell stories, as the children play and the women cook the meat from the hunt. The stillness in the air lends a sense of the sacred to this practice; the rains seem to be waiting for the men to give their signal to fall.


I walk into the warehouse, where the glassy eyes of the mounted heads gaze back at me. The head of an elephant, it’s ears at full staff as though he is listening for intruders regally regards anyone who enters the room, and one fights the impulse to bow to the fallen king in reverence and respect. Around the room skins are stretched tight over foam molds, the fur carefully styled to look “windblown”. Horns and tusks are mounted on wooden trophy stands, and elephant femurs have been fitted into lamps. On the opposite wall, brilliant paintings depicting bones and patterned skins of the beasts against wildly colored backgrounds are reminiscent of a combination of Georgia O’Keefe and Salvador Dahli. Below them are photographs of the animals in states of life and in death, shots from various angles to help the taxidermists achieve a realistic look for their eternal preservation.


Having spent my youth in the hunting-happy state of Minnesota, I have a certain appreciation and respect for hunting. For me it was very cool to get to see how those glassy eyed animals went from living in the wild to staring down at me fromthe walls of my uncle's homes. Granted, these are very different specimens but I got the idea.

I don’t have any particular moral issue with hunting, eating meat, ect and the operation before me appears to really make use of all parts and pieces of the animal, from the skins and bones to the meat that the villagers are called in to harvest after a kill. Where some people would think of this as gross, to me it seems quite the opposite, the very epitome of respect for the animal, to hunt it nobly, kill it quickly, and honor it’s spirit by making use of all the parts.

In addition, it seems that as the population in the rural areas of Botswana has increased, there has also been an increase in poaching. I've been told the populations of most animals in Botswana have gone down as the human populations have increased. Many people in other countries look at the hunting industries in Africa and think it's savage, or cruel, when in reality the people who run the hunting companies take pretty careful management of the animals, after all, if you're spending amount x to sell hunting experiences to Americans and other tourists, you're going to take care of that investment, and the hunting companies are sort of the ones who protect the animals from poaching and over hunting. I myself prefer the experience of what is known is photographic safaris, wherein you are attempting to shoot photos of animals to bring home rather than carcasses, but to each their own I suppose.


It's funny to me that when I was interviewing for site placement I specifically said I didn't need to be near the delta, and furthermore wasn't very interested in the animals and whatnot having had plenty of time watching National Geographic and Animal Planet in my day. I have eaten these words again and again as the delta and it's people continue to reveal their magic to me. I admit it, I was wrong...