Roland Tembo (CB-Topps)

Disambiguation Links – Roland Tembo (JN) / Roland Tembo (S/F)

A big game hunter from Mombasa, Kenya, Roland Tembo was widely regarded as the best of the best. He was chosen by Peter Ludlow to lead his expedition to Isla Sorna to capture dinosaurs, though he originally turned down the invitation. Bored with hunting because he was too successful, he believed that no quarry existed on Earth which could give him a challenge; he even purposefully picked a fight with some rowdy tourists after they harassed a waitress at his favorite bar, as well as interrupted his reading, out of boredom. It was his longtime friend and hunting companion Ajay Sidhu who ended up convincing him to go to Isla Sorna.

An extremely levelheaded and serious man, Roland took charge with an iron fist, even bossing Ludlow around. He made sure that the men under his command made no mistakes and performed only to the very best of their ability. Uninterested in any money that Ludlow could have offered him, Roland made certain that he was payment was the right to hunt a male Tyrannosaurus. To this end, he captured a baby tyrannosaur to use as bait. When the dinosaurs broke free, Ajay and Tembo barely escaped their tree stand after a flaming car flew at them.

Despite being an avid hunter, Roland was not bloodthirsty or cruel, unlike Dieter Stark, his second-in-command during the expedition. When Dieter was killed, he showed his rarely-seen compassionate side as he asked that no one tell Kelly about what had happened to him, and expressed concern over Sarah‘s bloody jacket, thinking she had been injured. When the Bull Tyrannosaur attacked the camp, Roland attempted to put it down with his Hunting Rifle. However, Nick van Owen stole the shells that Roland had planned to use to kill the bull tyrannosaur, forcing him to resort to tranquilizer darts in order to defeat it. After he learned that Ajay had been killed, he was deeply saddened, and turned down a job offered to him by Ludlow in San Diego, as he did not wish to spend any more time “in the company of death.”