Across southern Africa, the Amitofo Care Centre, an NGO founded by a Taiwanese monk, has established a series of residential schools for orphans and at-risk children in the area. Over time, the school has become increasingly staffed by those from mainland China—and in Malawi, some of them have groomed students to help a vast ivory-and-animal smuggling operation. Rachel Nuwer is the perfect reporter for this feature, having written the literal book on wildlife trafficking; here, she blends solid sourcing and spare scenework for a fascinating story.
When the officers stopped the car, they found Lin’s baby-faced driver, Jimmy Nkwezalamba, at the steering wheel. In the back seat, they discovered three live pangolins in a bag. As the police placed Nkwezalamba under arrest, Lin was bombarding his employee’s phone with WhatsApp voice notes demanding to know what was taking so long for his dinner to arrive, inadvertently implicating himself. At the police station, Nkwezalamba also admitted that Lin sent him to smuggle pangolins over the border with Mozambique. At one point, he said, there were 40 live pangolins at Lin’s farm, waiting to be sold to restaurants.
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