The Animals Respond

This is part 2 of the story of water shortage. Read part 1 here.

It turns out that the tapirs had a unique ability. One day, a young tapir was tired of being weary, and started following his nose to a pit far away. Guess what? He discovered that his long snout could sniff out new sources of water, and he couldn’t wait to tell the others. The tapirs learnt that if they could get in touch with their true nature, they could find new water, and contribute meaningfully to the solution as well.

While the monkeys were the happiest, their happiness didn’t last very long. When they were down to their last drop, they panicked and turned to the hornbills for help. What if they could save water while having fun with it? Together, they came up with an ingenious ideas – they borrowed some water from the hornbills and started building a closed-water circuit amusement park that continually recycled the water.

The hornbills however faced a different kind of problem. They saved SO much water that the tree trunks started to rot. By their extreme hoarding, they had prevented water from flowing to better uses and were even hurting the trees. They started flying to different animal communities to learn how they could better use the water they had.

The water rats became more and more burnt out. Building higher and wider dams became more and more tiresome, and yielded less benefits for the efforts they put in. They realized that dams were useful in the past, but new times called for new solutions, and they had to get smarter. They went to the elephants for help.

By now, every animal was beating a path to the elephants. The elephants were fearful – would their own water supply be threatened? What should the elephants do?
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– Above is a story from the Moolahsophy programme where children engage in forum theatre to learn about what they can do about real community problems they may face.