The villagers of Ghude in the Kavango East Region are surviving on wild fruits after elephants destroyed their crop fields during the 2021 harvesting season.

The villagers turned to wild fruits and have been walking long distances to nearby villages to work in crop fields in exchange for five cups of mahangu as compensation.

The villagers still battle with the elephant for wild fruits.

"The villagers of Ghude are crop farmers. We are not lazy, we do try. This is the third year that we have been without food. We do plough, but we got nothing for three consecutive years. The elephants show up when we are close to harvesting; they move from one field to another until we are left with nothing," said village headman Kafukunyu Mbumbo.

The headman says they sought assistance from the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism early this year, and it promised to compensate them.

"We are appealing to the government to do something for us. Since 2021, we have been battling with the elephants in our fields, and until now, we have had to go and look for wild fruits. Who can survive on eating roasted nuts alone? Can the government please help us by giving us even just one bag of maize meal per month? Or even provide us with seeds? This year we did not plough because we did not have seeds."

Romeo Muyunda, the Chief Public Relations Officer in the Environment Ministry, says they are aware of the concerns raised by the Ghude community.

"When the Ministry was conducting awareness activities with the communities that are affected by the phenomenon of human-wildlife conflict, in those engagements we highlighted to the community the challenges that we face as a Ministry, especially to pay the offset amounts for communities that do not belong to a conservancy." He added that "The challenge there is that all the applications from elsewhere in the country go to one central place where they are processed by the Game Product Trust Fund, leading to delays in payments, but also, in terms of the process itself, from acquiring the application to the time it gets to the Game Product Trust Fund, sometimes we experience cases where documents get lost or are nowhere to be traced, which may also delay payments."

Muyunda is appealing to the Ghude community and others affected to form a conservancy, as this will make it easier for them to get assistance.

Ghude villagers refused this advice, arguing that villages that form conservancies have no benefits.