There are almost no animals left – but we’ve been here before

You know things are bad when the zebras are thin. Even during most droughts, zebras are like matrons at the gym in stripey spandex stretched around plump buttocks. Pastures vanished long ago and our plains resemble Sudan’s Batn-el-Hajar – the Belly of Stones desert – so that I cannot even recall what they were like when they were last thick with green grass. The zebra foals are dying, the elephants are thin, while the buffalo disappeared a while back. The dry has killed quite mature trees which now shudder with the sound of termites and crash to the ground. To the north of us, horned skulls and dried carcasses litter the trail where the cattle-keepers trekked their animals vast distances in search of rain. Up there the countryside is silent. There are almost no animals left.

We had good rains until October 2020, then conditions changed.