Opinion: War vs. African Elephants

The increasing reckless and diabolical nuclear sabre-rattling of Russia’s Vladimir Putin recently elicited an ominous warning to the world from Joe Biden, the U.S. president and de facto leader of the free world. Biden stated the following:

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as an ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

Biden’s alarming announcement, coupled with Putin’s slippery-slope, embarrassing routing on the battlefield by Ukraine, has sent world leaders, military experts and political pundits, into non-stop paralyzing paroxysms of fear, confusion and edginess.

I have opined in the past, in the Kyiv Post, concerning my perceptions of the snowball effect on Africa of Putin’s demented war on Ukraine. My reaction to Putin’s beyond-the-pale, nuclear-threat insanity, is to look at his actions, yet again, through an African lens with poetry.

Here is the result.

Elephants Trumpeting Peace

by Irene Fowler

Beloved and revered, gentle, peaceable giants

Tons of pleasing, amiable, grey hulk and bulk

Great wonders of the natural world

Magnificent, serene, unique, terrestrial ones.

The dignified, dutiful matriarch marshals her clan

Uplifted trunks smell the hot, arid, wilderness air

Prized, life-saving, waterholes sourced by impressive muscular snouts

Strong, confident, and loving, the ruler leads her parched kindred.

Africa’s blood-orange, fiery sunset, ablaze

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The stomping elephants raise high castles of red dust-clouds

Trekking as one, from grassy, rolling hills, descending

The dowager elephant ever protective, brooks no folly or dissent.

Arriving at their journey’s end to stake a place, at the refreshing oasis

A vital resource shared with zebras, hippos, warthogs, giraffes, monkeys, big cats et al.,

The gentle behemoths are no thuggish gangster-bullies

Thirst sated, bodies cooled, backsides turned politely; they take their leave.

Elephants; alert, loyal, guardian angels of the savannah

Mammoth, fan-shaped ears attuned to danger

Whilst trunks are quick to trumpet warnings

Wise, intelligent, gifted with retentive memories and alive to threats and consequences.

Gargantuan, sculpted and precious animate jewels

Exemplars of the potency of power, strength and peace

Elephants; giant, blessed tokens and heavenly sights

Message humanity

Might maketh not right!

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Irene Fowler

Irene Fowler is a Nigerian international lawyer (LL.M Harvard), educator, human rights advocate, opinion writer, essayist, and poet. Her professional career includes employment with the United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland, as well as, Shell Petroleum and Conoco in Nigeria. She has been an outspoken critic of Russia’s unjust war on Ukraine, and hopes for a speedy Ukraine victory, which will also redound to the benefit, of an essential rules-based international order.