When Mr. Lubinda first came to settle in the Mukuni Chiefdom near Livingstone he never thought that finally elephants would be one of the biggest problems he would face while trying to build up a small-scale business as a farmer. After having been working for 15 years for Zambia Railways, Lubinda took his (at this time) 12-headed family to build up a small farm about 15km from Livingstone. However he has no direct access to water and the next borehole is about 2 km away. The droughts during the first four years made it impossible to grow anything there and he had to struggle to feed his family from his pension. During this first years he saw the elephants passing by many times, coming from the Zimbabwean border and crossing the wide Zambezi River and the small Zambian Mosi-o-Tunya National Park searching for food.

In 2000, the rains became better and Lubinda could start to plant maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes, ground nuts and sugar cane on his 15 hectares but like a bad joke the same year elephants came and raided his field and the family lost between 25 and 50% of their crops. “I was always the first victim when the elephants came because of being the nearest farm to the River and to the National Park” Lubinda explains.

The following years between January and March, which is the rainy season and at the same time the main crop growing season in southern Zambia, groups of up to 15 elephants came every day so that Lubinda and most of his neighbours lost almost 100% of their crops to the pachyderms.

“The attempts to scare the animals beating drums, shouting or using the fireworks given gratis to the farmers by the Zambian Wildlife Authority were completely useless” Lubinda says. Elephants are very intelligent and have highly complex social structures and communication systems so that information about where and how to find food and about the actual earnestness of a threat is spread fast within the groups. Sleeping at night was impossible during these times – every night Lubinda had to protect his field together with two of his sons and two workers.

Mr Lubinda is a strong, friendly and very ironic man and one of the few with the capacity to laugh about his own fate. He is also a person who tries to find solutions for his problems with his own initiative and experimenting by himself. When he first heard about the possibility to use chillies to repel elephants and the Elephant Pepper Development Trust in October 2005, from farmers in Simonga he went directly to the office in Livingstone to inform himself about this methods.

He was recommended to visit the Elephant Pepper Demonstration Sites at Showgrounds and to talk to other farmers participating in the program.

He came back and two weeks later he became trained in the Problem Animal Control (PAC) methods at his own farm. “When I tried to convince the other farmers to participate in the training, they did not believe in it and mistrusted it” Godwin Lubinda regrets.

He started to build a chilli fence around his whole property in the same week. When the first elephants came about one month later he started to burn chillies and briquettes made of elephant dung mixed with chillies at night, the time the animals normally come to raid the fields. “They smelled the chillies and ran away” Mr. Lubinda says laughing. Only once this year three of the pachyderms entered his field when the heavy rains had washed the chilli on the fence away. He had a surplus of his maize production this season and was able to sell 150 (50 kg) bags.

When the neighbours saw footprints of the elephants stopping in front of Mr Lubinda´s field but not entering, the interest in the community grew and Lubinda came back to the Elephant Pepper office with 16 motivated farmers that wanted to be trained.

Now Mr. Lubinda supports Elephant Pepper as a contact person for the farmers in his area. He helps to supply them dried chillies and he organises a conflict report and conflict monitoring system. Unfortunately the water supply to his field is too low for growing chillies but he puts hope in the construction of a borehole near to his plot. His plans to grow chillies as cash crop are already made.

Showgrounds is a small compound, founded in 1990 and situated in the peri-urban area of Livingstone next to the Zambezi River and the Mosi-o-Tunya National Park. About 350 people live there, most of them dedicated to small-scale agricultural activities.

Roy Kaanga is one of these farmers. On his 250 square meter property he grows mostly regional vegetables like okra, eggplant, tomatoes and watermelons for subsistence. When the harvest is good and more than he needs to sustain himself, his wife and his four children he can sell the surplus.

After having lost his plot in Monze, a small town about 300 km away (because he was a drunkard and could not pay his landlords anymore) and having resigned his badly paid employment at the council, Kaanga decided to make a new start, stop drinking and to move to another area. He came with his family to Showgrounds in 2001. “To cut off poverty and be my own employee” he says.

The second year after he settled down elephants raided his crops in May. The animals came almost every day to the village until November. He and other farmers lost almost all their harvest in 2003 and the following two years. First it seemed to become better when he started to burn fireworks when the elephants came near at night but the animals got used to the noise and the problem just continued. “And beating drums even attracts them because the elephants realize that there is something to eat” says Kaanga.

During these years the elephants only used to come during the dry season but by 2005 they started to come during the rains. “Because in Zimbabwe and Botswana there are too many” Roy Kaanga says. The population density of elephants in the so-called “four corner area” where Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia come together is very high and above the carrying capacity. Lack of habitat and feeding grounds forces the elephants to cross the border (which is the Zambezi River) and feed in the farmers´ fields. The farmers explain that normally the first day the leading individual of an elephant herd comes to investigate the situation and they come back the following day together with the rest of the herd.

The peak of damages caused by the pachyderms was in June 2005, so Mr. Kaanga went to the ZAWA (Zambian Wildlife Authority) office in Livingstone to report the case. After the Ministry of Agriculture did an assessment of the situation he was told about Elephant Pepper.

The same week he went to the Elephant Pepper office where he was informed about the possibilities but was told to come back with other farmers to prove the village’s interest. He did and finally a PAC (Problem Animal Control) and chilli-growing workshop with fifteen people from Showgrounds (8 women and 7 men) was realised in October 2005. All of the participants were also members of the “Neighbourhood Help Committee” which is managing a community garden with the aim to support people of the compound unable to work because of Aids or other diseases. Immediately after the workshop Kaanga and the others installed a chilli fence and a buffer strip of chilli plants around the community garden. Kaanga finished the fence around his own field about one month later and started chilli growing as a cash crop in December. After that elephants only once came back to Mr. Kaanga´s field “but they smelled the chillies that were burned immediately and ran away”. After having started using the PAC methods the elephants did not raid his crops anymore.

“But this year the elephants are becoming more pestering - they even enter the village to feed on the already harvested and stored maize”, says Roy Kaanga. He is making an effort to convince other people and supports them applying chilli PAC methods.

The Livingstone College of Education trains future teachers and is located on the outskirts of Livingstone´s district Dambwa North. Apart from their technical and pedagogical subjects, 380 students are taught in agriculture and gardening. In the four hectare garden of the college cabbage, onions, tomatoes, sugar cane, oranges, okra, green beans and finally, since September 2005, even chillies are cultivated.

In June 2005, five elephants coming from the nearby Mosi-o-Tunya National Park, entered the college garden in two consecutive nights, fed on sugar cane, green beans and tomatoes, destroyed completely the southern part of the garden, the irrigation system and the fences surrounding it. The damage caused by the pachyderms amounted 20 Million Zambian Kwacha (about 6000 US Dollars).

Immediately Mr. Kanini, lecturer of Science and Mathematics, and in charge of the production issues of the garden, took the decision to confront the problem before it would become more serious.

He got in touch with Elephant Pepper and training in PAC (Problem Animal Control) methods and chilli growing for 15 of the lecturers and the non-teaching staff was realised in August. The college also received chilli seeds and dried chillies to start growing chillies as a crop in its garden and to build up a chilli fence.

After having implemented the PAC Methods only once a group of 15 elephants came in April 2006. They went around the garden but when they sensed the noxious smoke of the chillies that were burned by the workers they disappeared.

In total the college has planted a quarter hectare of chilli as cash crop and was able to harvest 800 kg in the first year. The fresh chillies have been sold to African Spices and the dried chilli harvest kept aside to apply the PAC methods to keep the elephants out of the garden. The college does not have problems with elephants anymore and within a short time it has been able to increase its income from selling fresh chillies.

The college is a very good strategic partner for the Elephant Pepper Development Trust as the collaboration has a multiplication effect. The college applies the PAC methods to serve the crops of the garden and at the same time its students become trained and further their knowledge is spread in the communities where they will work as teachers in the future.