Elephant Dawn Page 10
I realise there is no turning back. There’s no running away, and no giving up. In the elephants’ rumbles and in the feel of living ivory, I’ve found a life that has real meaning to me—and there can be no escape. Not now anyway. These elephants need somebody on their side.
My passionate desire to be out in the field all day every day is dwindling though. I now dread what I might see, and what I might not. Which of the elephant families are still around? Which are running terrified today from the sound of gunshots? Which are being forced to flee into snare-infested areas? Do I really want to know? My spirit beaten and bruised, I wonder if I’m strong enough to cope with the reality.
Few things are more distressing than watching a family of magnificent giants bunched tightly together, running terrified in complete silence with their tails high from the sound of gunshots, not game to stop to grab even a trunkful of water. Sometimes the shots aren’t audible to my own ears, but the elephants hear them. Or perhaps they hear infrasonic warnings passed on by other elephants closer to the danger. Whatever the case, they flee at high speed.
With the hunting, and without access to Kanondo and Khatshana, my days with the elephants are not what they used to be. Their key home range is now inaccessible to me, and their behaviour has changed. For three years, I had always yearned to be out all day in the field with the elephants. Occasionally now, I don’t even go out at all. Too often, the elephants are not around, and I know that it isn’t only the rain that has chased them away.
It has been said that one can’t live with animals without heartbreak. But heartbreak at the hands of greedy humans is so much worse to endure. I recognise that I’ve been happier with the elephants than I’ve ever been—although now, possibly sadder than ever as well. Perhaps it was inevitable, I console myself, that I would encounter this very bleak side of Africa. I wonder if I’ll be forced to leave.
Yet I realise, with renewed clarity, that I no longer have any real place in a sophisticated Western society. It is a life that I’ve lost enthusiasm for, the wildness of Africa having called out to the deep wildness in my heart. I can’t imagine going back. Zimbabwe, with all of its troubles, has still managed to keep hold of my soul. An adopted child of Africa, that’s what I am now.
‘You’ll find the courage to stay,’ Shaynie tells me in an email from Bulawayo. And I hope that she is right. The elephants have become an important part of me that I’m not ready to lose. By now I know over two hundred of them well, as individuals and family members. They have, in some ways, taken the place of people.
During these last months of 2003 I regularly watch the sun sink below the horizon, contemplating the unpredictable current of events in Zimbabwe. In the past, when chaos belonged to other people and not me, I’d had a boundless capacity for optimism. Now, I’m more world-weary, far less naïve. But though disenchanted, I still nourish hope that things will somehow come right for the elephants and other wildlife on the Hwange Estate.
For now, the hunting goes on and I wait impatiently for sanity to intervene. Sadly, I know only too well that things take time in Africa. They take even longer in Zimbabwe.
In an attempt to ease my troubled mind I search for diversions. I creep to Mpofu pan to watch the sunset. It’s now also ‘owned’ by the governor.
The beauty of the fading day pierces me like an arrow. The sunken sun in the west has left the horizon orange, and the warm glow of the full moon is visible in the east. The dusk symphony begins. A saddlebill stork flies low from the pan, landing in a dead tree close by. Bare, contorted branches decorate the moon, the saddlebill exquisitely silhouetted in the middle of this distant yellow ball.
Everything is still. Their perfect reflections in the pan are the only evidence that four elephants are keeping me company. For a short time, I manage to disappear into my imagination. While watching the twilight die, I pretend that everything is right in my world.
My visit to Mpofu pan is so healing that I secretly return late the next afternoon. Just a few elephants are resting by the water’s edge, now orange with the reflection of the sun just gone. Heavy grey clouds laced with deep blue hang in the sky, above bands of vivid orange and hot-pink. There are soft elephant rumbles. There is the familiar sound of dung balls hitting the ground and their sweet straw-like pungency. Sheet lightning is visible behind the heavy cloud cover, and the rainbird is calling. Eventually, the roosting commotion of the guinea fowls ends my quiet interlude.
On my way home in darkness, I stop at a lodge to find out how much further the local currency has devalued in the past few weeks. The numbers are now staggering and are expected to get much worse. The sky-rocketing inflation and exchange rates are indicative of a country in crisis. I’ve heard that the governor’s family may be willing to sell their newly grabbed land for the princely sum of US$250,000, a huge amount of money in Zimbabwe at this time.
‘How many Zimbabwe dollars is two hundred and fifty thousand US dollars?’ I query. Numbers are punched into a program on a computer that’s sitting on the reception desk. But it is too much, even for the computer. It displays no numbers, but instead responds with just two words.
‘What does it say?’ I ask, wondering why the receptionist is shaking his head.
‘Numerical overload,’ he laughs.
Numerical overload? Now I’m shaking my head as well. What hope is there?
I’ve been advised that I need to sit tight while correspondence about this land grab is being considered. It could take months, I’m told, which is terrifying to me. If nothing else, the hunting quota on this land surely has to be withdrawn as quickly as possible.
GIVING SOMETHING BACK
2003
Something odd happens to the elephants around full moon. That invisible man sprinkles his moon dust, and his magic, and the elephants become a little crazy: more visible, more social, more vocal.
But the poachers have destroyed the beauty of even these nights. Nowadays, the full moon is referred to as the ‘poacher’s moon’: the moon lighting their killing fields. And now the sound of the sport-hunters’ gunfire combines with that of the poachers to ensure that there are far fewer elephants around than normal.
So I’m not in the best mood when I become stranded, alone one afternoon, in a remote location. It’s the first time that I’ve had to admit defeat in the bush. While driving along a little-used road, essentially to show my presence to poachers, my back tyre hit a log hidden in long grass. Somehow in the process, my rubber fuel pipe dislodged and has been ripped in two.
The radio network is down so I know that I’m not going anywhere unless I can rejoin this rubber tube. I tell myself to get a grip and deal with it. Two clothes-pegs (used to fasten the mosquito net that I always carry in my 4x4 in case I’m forced to stay out overnight) keeps the rubber pipe ends bent and secured so that no more precious fuel is lost. Some all-purpose putty and tape from my toolbox doesn’t help in rejoining it, although I try various imaginative fixes for over an hour. I feel surprisingly happy, pleased with my resourcefulness, all the while realising that I’m going to fail.
I know of only one vehicle that might pass my way, but it could be days before I see the dust of its approach. It is almost mid-afternoon. I’ve given up trying to repair the pipe, lying now on the sandy road looking up at it—as if that might help! I decide to lock my field equipment in my vehicle, leave a note on the windscreen and set off on the one-hour walk to the nearest lodge. I will take my water bottle, my little high-pitched air-horn, which will hopefully help to frighten off anything threatening, and my one-and-a-half metre hollow metal pipe that John gave me to help loosen tight wheel nuts. They seem like sensible protection devices to have on hand; a false sense of security perhaps, but better than nothing.
I think about John, who I know is struggling to adjust to his new life, and fondly recall the day he made me an expert in tyre changing. I wonder if he ever imagined that I’d be using his length of pipe for this purpose.
Then miraculously, I he
ar that vehicle. It is, just this once, an infinitely preferable sound to the silence that was surrounding me. A tow rope, never yet used but always in my 4x4, means that I’m quickly rescued. Previously, I’d always managed to limp back to base, but not this time. Resident mechanics, exercising their superb bush skills, have me mobile again quickly and I’m soon back off into the bush, smelling distinctly of petrol.
Although it sometimes feels like my 4x4 is held together mostly by wire and optimism, it has, for the most part, proven to be an extremely reliable bush vehicle despite its unenviably high fuel consumption. It does, though, have a few little foibles. During one of my trips to Bulawayo for supplies I ask Ernie, a father figure and friend, to help me source some brake fluid, which is often in short supply as so many things are now. Soon afterwards, he returns with a small pot.
‘What’s that?’ I ask.
‘It’s brake fluid,’ Ernie replies.
‘That will last me for two weeks,’ I grumble.
Ernie turns to his companion and shakes his head. ‘She’s got the only vehicle in the world,’ he sniggers, ‘that runs on brake fluid.’
We all still manage to laugh a little. But laughter—and sleep—no longer come easily for me. I think constantly about the snaring, the land grabs and the sport-hunting. I think about the past few years, which have passed more quickly than I could ever have imagined. And I realise there is something missing of the person that I’d been three years ago, since seeing and going through so much. I’m so grateful for my friends in Bulawayo and Harare, who understand this country well and who have helped me keep things in perspective. I continue to cherish my Down Under friends too, who encourage me on and enjoy living my life vicariously. Together, they’re my backbone, my team.
What my family have been going through in Australia also helps me to keep things in perspective. My eldest niece, Rebecca, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma last year, only a few months after I sold my Brisbane home. Cancer at age seventeen. It was a shock to us all, especially since there’s no family history of this dreaded disease.
After four months of weekly chemotherapy, Rebecca was deemed to be in remission. But six months later, after starting a law degree, her cancer was back. She wasn’t keen to commit to more treatment, but she wasn’t ready to succumb to this disease either. Mater Children’s Hospital in Brisbane became her home for two months. This was, on top of everything else, a logistical battle for my sister Deborah, since there were two younger siblings in their family home, 130 kilometres away in Toowoomba, who also needed their mother.
Rebecca required higher doses of chemo, and also a stem cell transplant. A month of daily radiation treatments to her neck and chest would be necessary following the transplant, which raised concerns about breast cancer and infertility, which also had to be addressed. Her own stem cells were harvested and then transplanted. Her weight plummeted to 42 kilograms.
‘Once you get through this, Bec, you’ll have to come over and visit the elephants,’ I tempt, trying to give her something else to focus on and look forward to. I realise, though, that she can well do without Africa and its array of diseases and disasters.
For me, this is another poignant reminder of just how fragile life is and how important it is to make the most of every day, doing what you really want to do with your life. In a strange way, Rebecca has given me the courage to stay in Hwange and battle on.
‘God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle and get through,’ she tells me.
‘How are you feeling, really?’ I ask her.
‘My body feels like it’s been stampeded by elephants,’ she admits. ‘I’m dying for a Hungry Jack’s double decker cheese combo,’ she tells me, after not being allowed any take-away food for months.
‘I’m craving a McDonald’s cheeseburger, with fries inside the bun,’ I say (knowing there’s no McDonald’s anywhere in Zimbabwe).
At least we’re both smiling.
Rebecca’s sixteen-month ordeal is finally over, although it will likely take as long again to properly regain her strength, and there’s no getting these years back. Her cancer, we all hope, won’t return. She’s due to begin university again next year, where she’ll leave law behind, and study to become a schoolteacher instead.
‘Life’s too short to be arguing for a living,’ Rebecca decides. ‘It’s time to give something back.’
She’s come through her own battle much wiser, which gives me hope that I will get through mine.
CHRISTMAS IN THE MIST
2003
Dinks and Shaynie are determined to ensure that, this year, I enjoy a peaceful Christmas. We decide that the spectacular Bvumba Mountains, in Zimbabwe’s east, is where we’ll go together.
We sit three abreast in a borrowed vehicle, taking turns to drive and singing songs (not often in tune) out our windows to the great African outdoors as if we haven’t a care in the world.
We pass boulder-topped koppies and gnarled, bulbous baobab trees. When we arrive, we drive cautiously up winding roads. I’m amazed by the seemingly endless vistas of rolling green hills cloaked in patches of forest, with glimpses into neighbouring Mozambique. It’s an entirely different world from the one I’ve come to know so well in Hwange, and I’m grateful for the change of pace and scenery. And for some sanity.
Our cabin is nestled high in the Vumba, in ‘the mountains of the mist’. Mist rolls in tangibly over the hills and soon rain begins to fall. We sit in front of a crackling log fire, allowing our bodies to relax, listening to the peaceful tinkling of frogs.
We awake on the morning of Christmas Eve to the sparkle of countless raindrops suspended from the tips of pine needles, the soaring pine trees dwarfing our cabin. A Livingstone’s lourie—green with red under the wing—flits gracefully among the trees. It seems fitting to see these Christmas colours in the sky. Flame lilies (Zimbabwe’s national flower) are abundant, including the yellow variety, as are the stunning large blue flower-clusters of the hydrangeas.
It is enchanting, and we find it impossible to leave. Literally. Having driven our vehicle down a steep slippery incline to get to our cabin, we now find that we can’t get back up. The overnight rain has made it 4x4 terrain and we’re not in a 4x4. Our first rescuer has to be rescued himself, and we wait for a second knight in shining armour. A visit from a beautiful Emperor Swallowtail butterfly, with sizeable wings and distinctive clubbed tail found only on this eastern border of Zimbabwe, lifts our spirits.
After our rescue, we stand quietly on the roadside as a troop of elusive canopy-dwelling Samango monkeys—with chubby silver faces and dark grey bodies—swing swiftly through rain-sodden branches. In Zimbabwe they only exist in these misty mountains.
The African new moon is lying on her back in a crystal clear night sky. Around the log fire we toast marshmallows, while enjoying good South African wine, a treat for our often deprived palates. A firefly appears, flashing its bright light just above my head, willing me to make a festive season wish.
‘Here’s to lots of everything good,’ toasts Dinks, forever the optimist. And we clink our glasses together in genuine hope.
We take a trip northwards to Nyanga the next morning, where the mountains are more rugged. Pine forests dominate the landscape and there are sparkling waterways and waterfalls.
Some days the mist and the rain lingers all day, which is a welcome respite from the Hwange heat. We wander around in it, collecting pine cones to put on the fire and admiring the oversized toadstools, snails, slugs and frogs. The evenings are spent playing Scrabble, laughing and inventing new words, while enjoying endless cups of hot Milo.
‘Look what I’ve got!’ I grin, holding a bottle of Amarula high above my head, to claps and cheers from Dinks and Shaynie.
We eat freshly picked mushrooms from the Vumba forest floor, and survive. We eat berries growing by the roadside, and survive. We visit the renowned Tony’s Coffee Shop, and barely survive the shock of the prices. In Zim dollars, a slice of cake costs what yo
u’d have paid for a roadworthy vehicle here just a few short years ago. It isn’t Tony’s fault; Zimbabwe’s economy is in free fall. None of us are prepared to pay that much for a piece of cake, but Dinks and Shaynie, unable to resist, order a very expensive hot drink while I sit and watch them savour every mouthful.
I find that I can’t avoid talking about the Hwange land claim altogether. The last two months have passed in a blur of disbelief, outrage and grief, and even here in this distant location, it’s always at the back of my mind.
‘Do you think the land will ever be returned?’ I ask, searching for some thread of hope. Dinks and Shaynie want to hand me that hope. They know what I long to hear, but false hope is not their specialty. They urge caution. They urge me not to try to take on powerful people. One of the hunting companies now operating on the estate is a South African one that has been officially banned from Zimbabwe, although it’s still managing to operate underhandedly.
‘You must know how corrupt a hunter has to be to be banned from Zimbabwe,’ Shaynie states, ‘and what sort of connections they must have to still be able to operate.’
I cringe inside just thinking about it.
‘But this is the land of the Presidential Elephants,’ I say, for what feels like the hundredth time.
My mum once told me a story about a highway in Australia that was being diverted ‘because a frog lives there’. I’d grinned at her, rolling my eyes. It was clearly not just one frog; not just any old frog. A unique family of frogs. Frogs, and their habitat, deemed worthy of preservation.
‘Well, it worked for frogs in Australia,’ I say meekly. ‘Maybe it will work for the Presidential Elephants?’
‘We certainly hope that it will,’ Dinks says gently. But I can tell she’s not convinced.
‘Here’s to staying alive in 2004,’ Shaynie toasts with a half-smile.