Elephant Dawn Page 11

  I smile too, knowing that if Dinks leaves Zimbabwe to live elsewhere next year, it will be Shaynie needing the comfort that is now being lavished on me.

  The next morning we forget all of this depressing talk, and head southwest to Great Zimbabwe, a World Heritage site close to the township of Masvingo where Shaynie once lived, said to have been the royal capital of a Shona community. The town ruins exhibit extraordinary workmanship: a maze of well-finished stone block walls, astonishingly wide and tall, built without mortar. They’re considered the most spectacular ruins south of the Sahara.

  Back in Bulawayo, we welcome in the New Year watching videos, while struggling to adjust to the high temperatures. Separated by just seven hours’ drive, but seemingly another world, log fires are definitely not needed here. Dinks expertly makes sadza, the maize meal staple of Zimbabwe; white and bland and somewhat of an acquired taste. With the smell of the accompanying relish tantalising our taste buds we tuck in, eating it in the traditional way with our fingers.

  We celebrate New Year’s Day among the spectacular rocky outcrops of yet another World Heritage site—the Matobo Hills—a twenty-minute drive south of Bulawayo. This is 3000 square kilometres of some of the most spectacular granite scenery on earth, superbly sculptured by nature over hundreds of thousands of years, resulting in extraordinary castles of balancing rocks. It’s a place of bushmen rock art, where in bygone days, these hunter-gatherers used caves and crevices as canvases.

  There’s an overwhelming sense of power and grandeur here that leaves us feeling awed and humbled. The lime-green, grey and rust-coloured lichen on the huge granite boulders resembles splashes of paint—an unexpected smattering of colour among the leafy trees and the breathtaking towers of stone.

  The unmistakeable call of the African fish eagle echoes hauntingly, but it is the larger black eagle that is the master of the skies here. On terra firma, rhinos roam, leopards have their lairs, and rock dassies (also known as the rock hyraxes) scamper over the boulders. Small and guinea-pig-like, the dassie has—astonishingly—been genetically proven to be the closest living relative of the elephant.

  With a glass of wine in hand, while watching the sun sink behind the boulders of smooth rock, we take in the overpowering spirituality and mystery of these timeless rocky hills.

  ‘This is my favourite place on earth,’ Dinks declares, and we raise our glasses in a toast to that.

  It’s been an extraordinary ten days with special friends, in some of Zimbabwe’s most beautiful places. Now it’s time for me to return to Hwange and the heartache of my own reality. It would be easy to pretend that the destructive and often violent land take-overs, now in prime tourism areas, are not even happening. After all, everywhere we visited on our trip seemed so normal.

  It feels a bit like I’m about to be catapulted back into someone else’s life.

  INTO ANOTHER WORLD

  2004

  After time away, even if it’s been only a week or so, it always takes a few hours to get myself organised. There are inevitably spiders, rodents, bats, ants and termites to deal with, and a mess in my fridge from the constant power cuts. Sometimes there’s a snake. There’s likely to be thatch everywhere too, the baboons and vervet monkeys having partied in my absence, feasting on the insects living in my roof. Still, I quickly adjust back to my life in the bush, where an ancient 4x4, a pair of binoculars, a camera, a tyre compressor pump, jumper leads and a can opener are my most treasured possessions. In this country, which continues to crumble around me, my small fridge remains all but bare with basic commodities like bread and dairy products constantly in short supply.

  I slip into a stretchy knee-length black skirt, in preference to shorts or long pants, and a black spaghetti-strap top underneath a loose open shirt. Even as a tourist I never fancied trying to look like Tarzan’s girlfriend, fitted out in designer khaki, although some people seem to think that I should look like Jane of the jungle. I wear only thongs, which Aussies know that you wear on your feet, unlike Shaynie, whom I horrified one day as I walked around her flat looking for them. She was imagining that my knickers were hiding somewhere in her house! I might have been looking out for my bare feet but Shaynie was looking out for my bare butt.

  I haven’t worn closed shoes since I arrived in Africa and I’m certain that I’ll never feel comfortable in them again. I now cringe at the mere thought of an underwire bra. In fact I no longer even own a bra.

  I sit down and wonder if perhaps this really is someone else’s life.

  ‘Your boobs will be hanging down around your waist when you’re 60,’ Shaynie once declared, admitting though, that she had never actually noticed my lack of underwear. ‘You’ll be wishing, then, that you were in someone else’s life.’

  I have, at least, returned to the bush to some extremely good news. The Wildlife Ministry has conceded that a mistake was made, and has now officially withdrawn the sport-hunting quota so rashly issued to the governor and his family. They’re still on the land however—and it looks like they might be here to stay—but at least, for now, they can’t legally hunt. It is encouraging news indeed.

  The governor’s family are unaware that I’ve had anything to do with this decision, and I’m not about to enlighten them. Instead, I decide to befriend them. Now that they have no approval to hunt, I suppose I’m going to have to try to work with them if they’re really here to stay, which I’m prepared to do so long as they allow game drives and snare patrols to continue.

  ‘Be very careful,’ I’m warned time and again, by those who know firsthand just how ruthless some of these ZANU-PF politicians can be.

  Soon I’m back in Bulawayo for a meeting with the head land claimant, the governor himself. In an office building in the centre of town, a small rickety lift lands me in a nondescript reception area. Before long, I’m sitting at a large wooden table with him and a couple of members of his family. I can’t help but notice that they all look extremely well fed, in this country where so many go without.

  The meeting goes well. In fact it lasts for several hours. We talk and even laugh together. They’re exceedingly polite and charming. Perhaps, I think hopefully, they mightn’t be as ruthless as so many are claiming, after all.

  ‘Appearances in Zimbabwe can be very deceptive,’ I’m cautioned time and again. Even so, I’m ready to give them a chance. There is, however, one statement that keeps racing around and around in my mind, setting off alarm bells; one sentence that makes me doubt their integrity. ‘We do not want to hunt,’ the governor says to me.

  Although I sit quietly listening, I know this to be a lie. I know that the Parks Authority is no longer allowing them to hunt in the Kanondo and Khatshana areas, despite their application to continue to do so. I know, too, that this man has already allocated himself and his extended family at least two other farms, on which they are hunting. But in Africa so many things are all about not ‘losing face’. So I say nothing. Without me having to go to higher levels, the governor agrees that I can return to my elephant work in the areas he has claimed as his own.

  For a few months after this meeting my life returns to a degree of normality, as long as I ignore the sideways glances and the criticisms from those who believe I’m doing the wrong thing by giving them a go.

  ‘Have you lost your mind?’ (white) people ask me. ‘You will never be able to work with these men,’ they declare.

  But surely not every ZANU-PF politician is deceitful and immoral.

  I keep searching for Limp, who is still suffering from his snare injury. The last time I saw him, his leg was hideously swollen once again and I’d feared for his life. When I finally catch up with the Ls, I’m grateful to find that he’s looking better, although still limping badly. Thankfully, the rest of his family are fine. Lady is as gorgeous as ever. As I tick off each member, I’m relieved to know that the family is intact.

  ‘You stay safe, Lady,’ I tell her, as I always do, while giving her trunk a friendly rub.

  While I’ve
been granted permission to return to these Kanondo and Khatshana areas, it’s awfully worrying to me that tourist game-drives have not recommenced, and the anti-poaching team still hasn’t been allowed back to patrol. Frustratingly, the Parks Authority doesn’t try to intervene and make this happen, despite this being the land of the Presidential Elephants.

  I’m trying to find as many elephant families as I can—a survey of all members of each family—to check on their welfare since the bout of hunting; to check if anyone is missing. I run into various families in addition to Lady’s—the Ws included. Matriarch Whole never fails to melt my heart with her placid, caring nature and gentle rumbles, right beside the door of my 4x4. But I see relatively few elephants during my daily rounds. I’m not too concerned yet, as sightings always decrease during these rainy months. As always, I wonder where they disappear to. Are they following centuries-old migratory instincts? Is there perhaps a favoured plant—a tree, a flower, a pod, a particular type of grass—that they go off in search of? Or are they just hidden in thick bush?

  By the time the dry season arrives, the elephants should have returned in bigger numbers. But they have not. Kanondo and Khatshana are often devoid of elephants—of any animals in fact—day after day, week after week, and month after month. And I become increasingly suspicious. Something is just not right.

  I return to Australia for a month’s break from Zimbabwe, arriving on my birthday in early May. A visit, especially to see my family, is long overdue; I haven’t been back for over two years. Airfares and associated time away are expensive, and I choose to keep my dollars for field work as much as possible.

  Only two of my three sisters, Deborah and Catherine, know that I’m coming since we thought it’d be fun to keep it a secret. Catherine is my youngest sister, who I tormented when she was young. Apart from (accidentally) dropping her head-first on the linoleum floor of our bathroom, I was suspiciously close when a droplet of water from the hot tap soaked her cardigan, scalding and scarring her little arm. And later I was close by when she thrust a digging fork straight through her foot, so that it poked out on the underside. How the plastic bottom plug of a biro got so far up her nose that it had to be removed by a doctor is another of our family’s unsolved mysteries. Needless to say, as we grew up, it felt safer to spend time apart.

  Deborah fetches me from Brisbane airport, and drives me the hour and a half inland to Grantham. She has the good grace not to tell me how tired I look. She’s bought me an extra large packet of cheese Twisties and a McDonald’s cheeseburger, with fries to put inside the bun. She knows that I’ve been craving this comfort food. I rip open a little squeeze packet of ketchup, spread it liberally on the bun, and tuck in.

  When we pull up at my childhood home in darkness, Deborah walks up the stairs and goes inside, where my parents are clearing up after dinner. I remain quietly downstairs, listening to her reminding them that it’s my birthday.

  Then I appear without warning. I learn this is something that should never be done to parents in their seventies! My eldest sister Genevieve, and my nieces and nephews, are equally bowled over by my unexpected appearance.

  I find it difficult to talk about all that has been happening in Zimbabwe in a way that my family and friends can relate to. It’s an effort to find ordinary words to explain so many extraordinary and incomprehensible events, especially to those living in a stable country where life is fair, where shops supply your every need and where everything functions as it should. In Australia, you can say whatever you like, to whomever you like, without fear of repercussions. Sitting in my parents’ living room, my words suddenly seem unbelievable, even to me. It’s easier to avoid speaking too much about it, and besides, for these few weeks, I just want to forget.

  Everything seems so alien to me. I can’t bear to sit in front of the television, not even to watch the news. I marvel at how clean and tidy everything is. I struggle to readjust to the fact that there’s always electricity and running water. I adore how soft and thick the bathroom towels are. I snuggle into a real bed, that isn’t a thin piece of foam on a concrete floor. There’s nobody snatching land, nobody making hateful proclamations, nobody walking around with rifles. But, of course, there are no free-roaming elephants either and this for me, now, is hard to bear.

  It’s a rejuvenating month of fine food, rest and relaxation. Nonetheless, as it draws to a close I’m looking forward to my return to Zimbabwe, despite my fears that the worst is still to come.

  It’s incredible how quickly we can be transported into different worlds. Back on the Hwange Estate, the logic and luxuries of the First World disappear, and it doesn’t take long for my worst fears to be realised.

  ‘Why are there hunting vehicles on the land?’ I ask the governor’s men, trying hard not to raise their ire with any visible hint of alarm or concern.

  ‘Arrhhh, they’re just sight-seeing,’ I’m told.

  Sight-seeing! What a load of rubbish. Why am I seemingly the only person who can see through this?

  ‘Oh, that’s nice for them,’ I say, my blood already beginning to boil.

  When I catch one hunting party at Kanondo, on foot with their guns, I’m told that they’re ‘after a wounded elephant bull’. Never in all of my years on the estate have I ever known an animal wounded elsewhere by a hunting client to be followed into Kanondo. When this happens a second time I become more than a little suspicious.

  Another day I find one of the governor’s vehicles driving around Kanondo pan. The gun-toting occupants in the back are very clearly looking for an animal to shoot.

  I am incredulous.

  I would give the devil my soul, I declare, rather than close my eyes to what I am now seeing. If I cause trouble, I will immediately become the governor’s target—but it is another risk that I will have to take. I tell only those who need to know, and ask once again that they handle my information with discretion. This is a country where some simply ‘dispose’ of those who are in their way. I try not to worry unduly about the possible consequences.

  I am constantly distraught about how little wildlife I’m now seeing, day after day after day. Usually during July, Kanondo hosts what I’ve termed ‘reunion month’. For some unknown reason, this is the time when the largest number of family groups regularly mingle in the middle of the day, creating an unforgettable spectacle. Several hundred Presidential Elephants revel in the mud-bathing area, and feast on the mineral licks and surrounding vegetation, regularly returning to the pan to drink and playfully splash around in the refreshing water. These memorable displays are made even more special for me because I know who the elephants are, and am able to interpret their interactions with one another. I don’t know for sure why they meet up like this, but I like to think they’re simply having a party, by infrasonic invitation only; celebrating their close bonds, and catching up on gossip after long periods apart.

  But this July there is no sign of a reunion at Kanondo pan. For the first time in four years most elephant families stay away. With so little wildlife activity, the once pristine Kanondo pan is becoming choked with reeds and, more concerningly, with an inedible weed.

  One afternoon, however, Lady and her family appear here. They seem as happy to see me as I am to see them, and they surround my vehicle to sleep. I’ve just finished singing ‘Amazing Grace’, which has them all nice and relaxed, when all of a sudden the entire family race off in complete silence, their tails up, into the bush, alarmed by a sound or smell that is beyond my human senses. I sit bewildered and saddened, presuming that they’ve heard a distant gunshot. But it is one of the governor’s vehicles that appears in the open just 30 seconds later. It is further evidence of what is going on unseen: the elephants clearly associate the sound and smell of this vehicle with danger. I remain calm enough to greet the occupants, but beneath the surface I am incensed.

  I can’t imagine it getting any worse than this, but what if it does? I did not come to this country to play policewoman. This is not something that I want
to get involved in. But what choice do I have?

  CARRYING ON

  2004

  Dinks has moved to South Africa. It’s heartbreaking to watch friends leave, especially when you know how much they love their country despite everything. Zimbabweans are searching for a better way of life and families are split as millions are forced to make their way over the borders, or overseas, in order to try to survive.

  Now that Shaynie has lost her flatmate, she’s decided to take on work away from Bulawayo. She would leave Zimbabwe too, if she could—but where would she go? She has no ancestral rights to claim citizenship in another country and so has no choice but to stay, unless she manages to get herself sponsored in elsewhere. At one point, she makes enquiries about a job in Mozambique.

  ‘Shaynie, come on, that’s just stupid. Why on earth would you even consider Mozambique as a place to live, even if they could in fact get you a work permit?’ I ask bewildered. ‘A country suffering from decades of civil war, that’s where you now want to be? It’s one of the poorest countries in the world forgodsake. You’d be jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire.’

  I quickly realise that I’m definitely not the right person to be preaching to anyone about jumping into a fire! But I’m starting to believe that Shaynie would consider a move to Afghanistan if it was offered to her. What she eventually decides she really needs is a kibbutz in Israel to ease her troubled mind.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I announce in support, despite the idea being way too communal for me—and secretly confident that she’s not likely to walk this path. Shaynie is a survivor; she grew up during a war after all. She’s going to be okay.

  Shaynie remains in Zimbabwe and we stay in touch by email. I miss her presence (and also her couch) in Bulawayo. She’s been to Hwange National Park just once—and that was last year. I think of my own circumstances in Australia and realise that I was always so tied up with my work that I, too, visited relatively few of the wild places in my own home country. Too often we take for granted what’s right in front of our noses. So I don’t criticise Shaynie for not making more of an effort to escape to Hwange on weekends; she knows all about the awful goings-on after all. Now, at least, she’s determined to one day meet Lady and some of my other special elephant friends. That will have to wait a while however, as she spreads her wings, searching for relief elsewhere.