These days, farmers in the villages of Kicoke, Bugana, and Nganzi in Buliisa sleep in a makeshift hut outside their gardens. The idea of crops of their crops being unable to pass another night rattles them. They have to stay awake to fight off the elephants from the National Park.
Serina Kamanyire, who previously lost her entire cassava garden to an elephant crop raid two years ago, says the elephant crop raids increase each time there is the semblance of drought. Farmers in Kagadi last month demonstrated against the “marauding elephants”. John Vincent Bambona is one of those pushing that Uganda Wildlife Authority should remove its elephants.
“It has been seven years since UWA promised to put up an electric fence here. It has not,” he said. “The children will ask me for cassava, it is not there, they will ask for maize.
It is not there; they will ask for bananas, they are not there because they were eaten by elephants from the park,” Bambona shouts in anger. The elephants do not know that they are not supposed to cross the farmer’s gardens; the crops they are eating are part of their delicacies. Far away from Muhorro Town Council, farmers from Lobongia sub-county in Kabongo district have suffered several elephant crop raids.
Christopher Lolem, the LCIII Chairperson of Lobongia said the elephants were behaving like thieves. “Each year when the farmers are about to harvest the crops, the elephants come and destroy them. I am very sure they (the elephants) are ha.