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 be the team leader of his expedition to Isla Sorna to capture dinosaurs, although he originally turned down the invitation. After being asked to stay permanently, he refused.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Roland and Ajay in a bar in Mombasa
Bored with hunting because he was always too successful, he believed no quarry existed on Earth that could give him a challenge. He was so bored, in fact, that he purposefully picked a fight with some rowdy tourists in his favorite Mombasa bar for harassing a waitress and interrupting his reading. He easily broke one man's jaw. His longtime friend Ajay Sidhu is the one who ended up convincing him to go to Sorna. Roland's desire to face a new challenge, a Tyrannosaurus rex, is most likely the reason that he agreed to lead Ludlow's team. In a deleted scene, Roland is shown to lament that even "tigers have advocates", while him and Ajay are speaking about how there is nothing left for them to hunt. An extremely levelheaded, serious man, Roland took charge with an iron fist, bossing even Ludlow around.
He made sure the men under his command made no mistakes and performed only to the very best of their ability. Uninterested in money, Roland made certain Ludlow allowed his payment to be the right to hunt one of the Tyrannosaurs. To this end, he attempted to use a baby Tyrannosaur as bait to lure the adult into the open.
This did not go well, as the infant was rescued by Sarah Harding and Nick Van Owen as they were sabotaging InGen's base camp. This also led to the parents stalking the group. Despite being a hunter, Roland was not bloodthirsty or cruel, unlike Dieter Stark. Even after being sabotaged by Nick and the rest of Hammond's team, Roland helped the team up the cliff that their trailers had fallen off of. When Stark was killed, he showed a rarely-seen compassionate side and asked that no one tell Kelly, and when he saw Sarah's bloody jacket, thinking it was her blood, he immediately made sure she was alright. This, along with his defense of the waitress in Mombasa, suggests that he respects women.
Because Nick had stolen the shells from his elephant gun, Roland had to use an air rifle with tranquilizer darts to defeat the Tyrannosaur Buck when it attacked the hunters' makeshift camp. Afterwards, he learned that Ajay had been killed, news that deeply saddened Roland. Not wanting to spend any more time "in the company of death", Roland wisely quit Ludlow's employment, turning down a job offer at InGen, and went home. During his tour on Isla Sorna, Roland most notably used his custom Searcy Double Barrel Rifle chambered in .600 Nitro Express. It is unknown what happened to Roland afterwards.
Trivia
This character's name is a reference to Warren Zevon's song "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", as is Nick Van Owen's name. The song itself was infact a Army Ranger cadence, that was extended and adapted.
The character's surname, Tembo, is the word for "elephant" in Swahili, one of the national languages of Kenya.
Roland as it appears on the cover of MAN'S ADVENTURE comic by Christopher Hastings.
It is also known that Roland is an expert hunter, and he may have a personal moral code.
Roland thrives on being in control of any situation and really feels right at home in the wilderness.
He seems not to know much about dinosaurs, as he is unable to pronounce some names correctly, like Pachycephalosaurus or Parasaurolophus. However, he does have enough of knowledge of Tyrannosaurs as he often anticipates scienarios and behavioral patterns based on his experience with hunting regular predators.
Roland claims to have "seen" parts of Isla Sorna before the events of the movie, suggesting he was very widely traveled and had toured the island many years before the dinosaurs were bred there.
A deleted scene from the Lost World Jurassic Park shows him taking on a man almost twice his size with one of his ( Rolands ) hands tied behind his back, and winning. Showing he is just as deadly without a gun as he is with one.
