KOYASO LEKOLOI SHOT His first elephant in anger. The hundred or so that followed he killed for money. During nearly two decades as a poacher, bandit, thief, and alleged murderer Lekoloi killed more elephants than any other individual in northern Kenya until, tired of life on the run, he decided to give up poaching.
I met Lekoloi by the side of a dry riverbed just outside Samburu National Reserve in Kenya’s arid, craggy north. We sat on the ground beneath a towering acacia tree to talk. The sand flies buzzing in our ears didn’t seem to bother him. “I had a happy childhood,” Lekoloi began, speaking in the local Samburu language. The youngest of eight children born to the last of his father’s six wives, Lekoloi grew up herding livestock, like many young boys in rural …show more content…
Rangers from the Kenya Wildlife Service were after him for killing the elephant, and he retreated deep into the bush, far from home. According to Samburu traditional beliefs, elephants are part of the clan, almost like ancestors, and to kill them is taboo. But separated from his family and clan connections Lekoloi became dangerously free of social norms. “I became a wild man,” he said with a shrug and a glimmer of a smile.
Lekoloi joined cattle raids, robbed tourists, broke into homes and was charged with — and later acquitted of — the 1998 murder of an Italian missionary in Archers Post. He soon began to poach for a living. “When I killed that first elephant the rangers were asking, ‘Is the ivory still there?’ Then they came and picked the ivory and took it away. That is when I realized it must be important,” Lekoloi said. “Poaching became the dominant business for me.”
He became good at it, working with others in ad hoc poaching gangs. “We would aim for the joint behind the shoulder. Sometimes they died there and then. Other times we followed the trail of blood for hours. At first we just killed just anyhow, but over time I learned to choose the ones with the big
I met Lekoloi by the side of a dry riverbed just outside Samburu National Reserve in Kenya’s arid, craggy north. We sat on the ground beneath a towering acacia tree to talk. The sand flies buzzing in our ears didn’t seem to bother him. “I had a happy childhood,” Lekoloi began, speaking in the local Samburu language. The youngest of eight children born to the last of his father’s six wives, Lekoloi grew up herding livestock, like many young boys in rural …show more content…
Rangers from the Kenya Wildlife Service were after him for killing the elephant, and he retreated deep into the bush, far from home. According to Samburu traditional beliefs, elephants are part of the clan, almost like ancestors, and to kill them is taboo. But separated from his family and clan connections Lekoloi became dangerously free of social norms. “I became a wild man,” he said with a shrug and a glimmer of a smile.
Lekoloi joined cattle raids, robbed tourists, broke into homes and was charged with — and later acquitted of — the 1998 murder of an Italian missionary in Archers Post. He soon began to poach for a living. “When I killed that first elephant the rangers were asking, ‘Is the ivory still there?’ Then they came and picked the ivory and took it away. That is when I realized it must be important,” Lekoloi said. “Poaching became the dominant business for me.”
He became good at it, working with others in ad hoc poaching gangs. “We would aim for the joint behind the shoulder. Sometimes they died there and then. Other times we followed the trail of blood for hours. At first we just killed just anyhow, but over time I learned to choose the ones with the big