Short Play

Combating Hunger
by Amarachi Eze
Government Boys Secondary School, Owerri

Synopsis of Play

The essence of this play is to highlight the problems of climate change and its solutions. The plot runs like this:
A hunter comes home from an expedition complaining that the chase was poor. The situation having remained the same for the past five weeks, he fears he and his family will have problems feeding for the subsequent weeks. For wood and other raw materials, trees are felled arbitrarily within and without the village. This gives erosion a go-ahead order and when he turns to his farm for livelihood he finds it eroded, the trees around it having been felled to make way for a refinery. In order not to go hungry, he undertakes salt selling to support his family, on his way home from bringing back a sack of salt from the wholesalers; the weather behaves unexpectedly and ruins the salt. When some environmental activists on enlightenment campaign hold a seminar, he attends and learns about climate change and its causal factors. Having been told of its solutions, he embarks on massive tree-planting operation. He ensures that smoke is seldom seen in the village. A recycling factory is provided for the village, even as the whole community joins Maduka in his tree-planting.
The story is woven into six scenes and involves four active characters.