It is the rainy season, but the dawn once more brings cloudless skies.
One more day without water.
During the early hours of the day,
the animals take advantage of the lingering cool of the night to carry out their daily activities,
before the heat makes all movement impossible.
This group of elephants has found the last green patches
along the slopes of a karst hill where the limestone rock has retained the water.
The elephants move constantly in search of water and food,
and now, with the plants parched and withered,
they need to travel even longer distances
to get the 200 kg of vegetable matter they consume every day.
But, despite their incredible needs and the precarious situation of Shaba,
the enormous pachyderms survive here
while many other herbivores have had to choose between emigration or death.
The old matriarchs know the secrets of the land,
and their wisdom and prodigious memory enable the group to survive.
Among the baboons, too, the family structure is the key
making it possible for them to remain in Shaba even during the severest droughts.
While many species leave, the baboons remain,
and even manage to raise their young.
Their diet is so varied they will eat virtually anything,
and among the dry grasses, the scorched stones and the tree bark,
it is always possible to find bulbs, insects,
small rodents or some reptile of the savannah.
Each member of the family contributes to the survival of the group,
tasks being shared out for the common good.
They all work together in the search for food and water,
they are all aware of the precarious situation in which they live; or almost all.
For the youngest, life is a never-ending round of games and diversions.
During the first weeks of life these small baboons
have no obligations within the group and the drought doesn’t appear to affect them.
Mother is always close by, ready with her milk,
and they have a group of inseparable friends to play with,
so for them the scorched savannah is a marvellous world full of adventures.
Day after day, the clouds fail to appear.
The desert seems gradually eat into the savannah
and the dust spirals up like desperate emissaries in search of rains that refuse to come.
In the clear sky sinister spirals convey the message of death.
Illness has defeated an elephant weakened
by the lack of water and the precariousness of its diet.
Its body is now scorched leather.
The folds of its skin are like wrinkled mountains of a landscape tormented by the drought.
Even the most powerful succumb to the power of the sun.
Hundreds of butterflies gather round the body,
licking the skin and the ground impregnated
with the salts and nutrients of the decomposing elephant.
In Shaba nothing goes to waste.
Death generates life; the circle is complete.
And again god and the devil appear by turns, becoming one.