GUYAN, Gbarpolu County - Last year, Nancy Mulbah, a businesswoman in Duala, decided to quit her market table to become a full-time farmer.
It proved to be the best decision the 40-plus-year-old mother made. Her farm in Guyan, a town in the Bondi Mandingo Chiefdom of Gbarpolu’s Bopolu District delivered a good harvest. She settled her Brewerville house rent and paid her children’s school fees.
But this year would be a nightmare. Last month, a herd of elephants raided her farmland, eating and crushing her crops.
“Almost everything, potato, eggplants and bitter balls,” Mulbah said pointing to the remnants of the farm and brandishing a plantain bunch.
Mulbah is one of several farmers in that part of Bopolu District whose crops have been destroyed as elephants comb new towns and villages for food in the western countryside.
Until now, the tuskers raided farmlands in several towns and villages in the Gbarma District and the neighboring Grand Cape Mount County, according to media and other reports. Varguay, a town in Cape Mount’s Gola Konneh District, has been the epicenter of what experts called the human-elephant conflict.
One Study shows that elephant have their biggest population in the northwestern parts of the country. However, human activities such as farming, mining and logging have encroached on their habitat, leaving elephants in a desperate search for food.