Folowing is a review of The Emperor and the
Elephants - A Peace Corps Volunteer’s Story of Life during the late 1970s in
the Central African Empire, Peace
Corps Writers, Oakland, CA. 2016.
This memoir of Peace Corps service by Richard W. Carroll,
who went on to become a noted conservationist and activist leader of the World
Wildlife Fund, recounts his early years in the Central African Empire. Initially Carroll was a “fish guy” charged
with inculcating the virtues of fish farming to rural residents. This was an active and successful program in
the CAE as long as some outside agency - the Peace Corps, the French or the UN
- kept funding the production and distribution of fry, i.e. baby fish. Sadly,
once the donors left, without new fish coming in at the bottom, the system
collapsed.
But during Carroll’s tenure, it all worked fine. After a stint as a fish guy, Carroll sought
and received a transfer to the nation’s nascent game park Manda-Gounda St.
Floris in the far north east. The park was relatively undeveloped and un-
assessed. Carroll’s task was to catalog what was there in terms of animals and
plants, of which he found a profusion.
His experiences in this wild place are what propelled him onwards to a
career as a wildlife professional.
In the book Carroll tells about people, places, animals and
birds. He muses about life and its meanings. His African adventure took place during the
bizarre times when the Central African Republic’s tinpot dictator Jean Bedel
Bokassa crowned himself emperor. Carroll provides an accurate description of
the national scene and observations of what that meant, or did not, to the
rural folks he dealt with on a daily basis.
Essentially, it was all dramatic theater that had few repercussions on
rural life. The fact that national resources were stolen and squandered by the emperor
and his ilk was just how life was. However, the larceny included not just tax
money and foreign aid, but also within a three or four year window the
slaughter of tens of thousands of elephants for their ivory. (Hence the catchy title of this book.) Even
today, years after Bokassa’s demise, poaching continues apace.
After his Peace Corps days, Carroll returned to the renamed
Central African Republic to do research on lowland gorillas and help found the
Dzanga Sanga reserve near Bayanga in the south western forest. Although Carroll alludes to this time and
again in the book, he never really elaborates on what was involved in that much
longer experience. I wanted more.
Finally, included in the memoir are excerpts from several
latter day speeches decrying poaching of elephants and rhinos, the bush meat
trade, the timber industry, and mining. In the CAR all the rhinos are gone, as
are most of the northern elephants. Only the forest elephants remain and they
are threatened by poaching and human encroachment.
In sum the book is sort of a hodgepodge of themes all of
which have some linkages one to another.
