Edged, strong, and aged
They touched the ground.
A source of my wisdom
And the ability to nourish myself.
They first saw me with the herd grazing about
Plans set in motion, days of tracking and evading
Even I couldn’t escape them
It happened in the evening, in the pitch dark, you see
I only heard the shots,
Didn’t see or hear them pry upon me
Then more shots, and I crumbled to the ground
They hacked and they hacked
“Usibakishe kitu” I heard them say
So deeper and deeper they hacked
Took what they prized most. And then fled
A piece of me cost my life
Sold and turned into
A must-have. A need-have. A should-have
Yet there I lay
A giant that once roamed this land
Reduced to a meaningless speck
All with the mere excuse “to meet the growing demand”.
Photo Courtesy of Tsavo Trust
*At his death, Satao was the largest tusker known to roam the earth. He was killed in 2014 by poachers at the Tsavo East National Park in Kenya
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Liz Mwangi is a dedicated environmental conservationist with extensive experience in Eastern and Southern Africa. Her expertise lies in integrating gender perspectives into environmental justice initiatives, community-based natural resource management and governance, and enhancing local adaptive capacities to climate change.
Her professional background spans communications, program design, community engagement, and human-centered design, all aimed at advancing environmental causes. At present, she is a Communications Officer at the Natural Resource Governance Framework, a strategic initiative under the Commission on Environmental, Economic, and Social Policy within the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
In addition to her professional work, Liz is pursuing an MPhil specialising in Environmental Humanities at the University of Cape Town, as a 2023 Mandela Rhodes Scholar. In 2019, she was also awarded the McKinsey Women’s Achievement Award, Africa. Beyond her passion for an ecologically better and just world, she enjoys diving into new books, hiking up mountains, and baking.
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