Elephant Dawn Page 15

  ‘Is this worth risking your life for?’ Shaynie asks.

  ‘What will be, will be,’ I say, in resignation.

  Things will never change unless we properly expose these bullies. I’m no use to the elephants as a martyr but I can’t lie low out of fear. Bobby, worried about my wellbeing, asks me from New Zealand, ‘When and how do you make the decision to stay or leave?’

  ‘I think somebody else will probably make that decision for me,’ I tell her.

  ENOUGH TO PEE YOUR PANTS

  2005

  The rains all but failed in the January to March wet season months this year and won’t come again until November. We’re heading into an extremely harsh period of drought. To make matters worse, the ex-governor’s family rarely pumped water and left the pans in a terrible state. Some were dry as a bone and others were covered with weeds from lack of use. The photographic safari operators now need to resurrect these pans.

  In the meantime, I decide to spend time introducing the L family to some of the estate’s photographic safari guides. Tourism is so important to Zimbabwe, and I’m in a position to assist. Lady’s sheer magnificence isn’t something that I can keep to myself any longer. I want the guides to be able to share her splendour with guests, but I’m very aware that the delicate balance between familiarity and strife could be fractured in a flash. I’ve spent countless hours with the Ls and have earnt their trust. I know and understand the family hierarchies, the family relationships and the elephants themselves, not just as individuals but as members of a close-knit group. I’ve become expert at reading their moods. I choose guides who I believe will be responsible, who understand and appreciate their own limits, and won’t be tempted to break rules and push boundaries in pursuit of a bigger tip.

  When I find the Ls on the vlei, I race to fetch Bheki, the resident safari guide of the largest lodge in the area, keen for him to at least be able to identify Lady. By the time we return to the vlei, Lady has wandered some distance away and is hidden behind bushes.

  ‘Lady, Lady, come on, girl,’ I call.

  ‘She’ll come right here?’ Bheki questions, in disbelief.

  ‘Come on, Lady. Come here, my girl,’ I call again.

  Before Bheki realises it, Lady is right beside his door, flaunting her unique charm, with Libby in tow.

  ‘She knows her name,’ Bheki declares, shaking his head in bewilderment.

  I’d never really thought about it like that, believing that she probably reacted more to the tone of a friendly voice, and the sound and smell of a friendly vehicle. But why not, I muse? If a dog can know its name, why not an elephant?

  So, during the next few weeks I test Bheki’s theory. Lady comes to me only when I call her name. She always responds to the sound of my voice by lifting her head, but if I substitute her name for any other, she stays where she is. Her daughter, Lesley, does exactly the same thing, as does Whole and others from the Ws, and Misty and others from the Ms. Members of the B and C families however don’t seem to care what name I call. ‘Come on, girls,’ is all it takes for them to all hurry my way.

  One day, with the Ms surrounding my vehicle, I take the opportunity to play a game of catch. Not yet two years old and still without tusks, Mertle’s son is standing a few metres away, using his trunk to investigate a small log on the ground. He knows I’m watching him, and he picks up the log and hurls it towards me. It hits hard against my door. He looks quite pleased with himself and, although stunned by his cheekiness, I admire his fiery spirit. I open my door with a smile and throw the log back to him. He smells it and after deciding that it is okay, promptly picks it up and hurls it back to me. This time it lands on my bonnet with a loud thud. By now I’m having no end of fun, but everyone seems to want to join in. There is quite an excited commotion, with elephants appearing from all directions, rumbles filling the air. I decide that it’s best for me to move off. I name this little guy Mettle, in celebration of his daring.

  It’s a fun time among my elephant friends. I wish these periods of light relief would last forever.

  During my early days in Zimbabwe I used to truly loathe leaving the elephants to spend a necessary few days in town, but as the years pass and the problems grow more and more frightening, I now look forward to a few days away to catch up with mates in either Bulawayo or Harare, and enjoy videos, pizza, ice cream, and other necessities of life! I don’t take weekends off, and so having some days away every few months gives my mind and soul a rest from it all and helps ensure I don’t go ‘bush crazy’.

  I get on a bus to Harare and wander around Carol’s garden. I listen to bird song and stop, literally, to smell the roses. And I read.

  ‘Why on earth are you reading that?’ Carol asks in dismay, as she walks into the room she has made up for me to sleep in. I’m reading a second-hand copy of Harold Hayes’ The Dark Romance of Dian Fossey, written after Dian’s 1985 murder. ‘You don’t need to be reading that!’ Carol says, shaking her head.

  I’m intrigued by the life and work of Dian Fossey, of Gorillas in the Mist fame. How isolated she must have felt living primarily alone in the remote Virunga Mountains in Rwanda for thirteen years, without even the luxury of email. She battled with poachers and corrupt officials. It is her murder, never properly solved, that has me absorbed. Although the Rwandan government eventually charged an American researcher—one of Dian’s colleagues, in absentia—few people believe that he is guilty. Many think it was the work of poachers. I’ve always felt that she was most likely killed by a hired hand, on orders from a powerful Rwandan government official.

  She was bludgeoned to death inside her cottage, her face sliced by a fatal blow from a machete. This image of Dian Fossey feels awfully close to home these days.

  Carol drags me out for ice-cream, to get me away from this book. We reminisce about a memorable shared encounter with a glossy black-coated sable bull, with massive sweeping horns, at Kanondo before the land claims. He’d walked so very close to my 4x4 and then sat down on the ground just a few metres away, totally at ease in our presence. We recall, too, the warthog families that grazed right beside us. It’s these sorts of encounters, now lost, that we long to experience once again. But with all of the disturbances going on, animals like these are no longer so trusting.

  Before returning to Hwange (the book still with me), I briefly stop in Bulawayo to buy supplies. So many things are ‘short’ these days. Bread is short; cooking oil is short; sugar is short; flour is short; butter and margarine are short; soft drinks are short; crisps are short; long-life milk is short; tinned goods are short; soap is short; toothpaste is short; engine oil is short; brake fluid is still short . . . and fuel is shortest of all.

  A little billboard, advertising the small piles of newspapers for sale on the pavements, catches my eye. ‘Shortage of shovels delays burials,’ it reads.

  ‘You surely can’t be serious,’ I mumble to myself. Even shovels are short.

  I arrive home to no water, and to the usual mess that needs to be cleaned up. But I’m pleased to be back in the bush.

  Just after midnight, I’m rudely awoken by extraordinarily loud munching. Elephants are around my rondavel. They’ve walked over wire fences and are, I assess, in my neighbour’s big backyard, very close to the circular wall of my little home. Wrapped in a blanket on my piece of foam on the floor, I calculate that the one munching the loudest, no doubt an adult bull, must be less than two metres from my head. His great weight against the wall of my rondavel would be enough to bring it crashing down with me inside.

  I climb out of bed and rather futilely put my laptop under layers of soft pillows in case the worst happens. Then I walk outside. As I open my door I hear a loud, determined voice and forceful banging on a windowpane. It seems my neighbour, Morgan, doesn’t particularly want the elephants in his backyard either. The six-tonne jumbos turn and run, thankfully away from me.

  It is an odd feeling standing there in silky pyjamas in the moonlight, my arms folded against the cold,
listening to our nocturnal visitors hurrying away, vegetation scraping against their leather hides. Morgan notices my silhouette, though I can’t see him.

  ‘Hello, Sharon,’ he says calmly, in the darkness, as if this is the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘They were too close,’ I reply, without pleasantries.

  ‘Arrhhh yes, very, very close,’ he agrees.

  We moan and joke about those responsible for keeping the perimeter fence electrified, and eventually go back to our beds. I think about my parents’ nocturnal visitors: possums that scurry across the roof of their home, which they complain about endlessly.

  ‘I win,’ I think to myself, as I drift back to sleep.

  Shaynie is now living and working back in Bulawayo, but feeling disillusioned. I convince her to finally drive to Hwange and meet my elephant friends. She sponsors me with town accommodation and countless other kindnesses, all of which ultimately benefit the elephants. So, as I’ve done for Carol and a few others who have done their utmost to assist me, she’ll come out with me in my vehicle, despite the trouble some people have begun trying to make for me whenever I do this. Some seem to think that I should never have anyone beside me, despite it happening so infrequently, and only with those who’ve supported me in some tangible way. It’s clear there are still people in the area, friendly with the ex-governor’s family, trying to frustrate me.

  It’s only Shaynie’s second ever visit to Hwange. For someone who loves the bush she is, for the most part, terrified of her country’s wildlife. Like any good friend, I choose to completely ignore this fact.

  The Presidential Elephants dazzle us with one of their uniquely sociable performances. The beautiful, gentle Misty is the first to acquaint herself with Shaynie, perhaps a little too closely. Shaynie just about pees her pants! But terror gradually changes to awe, and there’s no doubt that she’ll always remember this first remarkable encounter. Later Whole, Willa and Whosit practically sit on her lap.

  I admit that I keep positioning my 4x4 so that the elephants walk straight up to Shaynie’s window. Whenever she starts winding it up, I reach over and wind it back down! Unfortunately Lady, Libby and company remain out of sight.

  ‘It’s a good excuse to have to come back soon,’ says a transformed Shaynie, desperate now to meet up with Lady and the Ls.

  HOW LONG IS THE FUEL QUEUE?

  2005

  Although a child of farmers, I had no true appreciation for the rain when I was small, except that it meant I could play in the mud. I often noticed my parents on the veranda of our Queensland farmhouse, leaning against the wooden railing watching a still distant storm, hungry for rain. But I didn’t really understand. Years later, while working in the cities, the rain or lack thereof didn’t trouble me either. There were water restrictions occasionally but I didn’t fret over them unduly.

  Now though, after years in Africa, drought pulls at my heart-strings so intensely that I feel a physical ache in my chest. Over the next few months, I’ll watch the wildlife suffer shortages of both water and vegetation.

  To top this off, we again have a serious problem with snaring. Some days we appear to be losing the battle as we catch up from when patrols were prohibited by the ex-governor and his family. Jabulani and his team once again search tirelessly, destroying all of the snares they come across. The bush is thick and vast however. They can’t possibly uncover every death trap.

  Calls for assistance to remove snares start to overlap, tragically. Over one three-day period, seven snared animals are seen, some with truly horrific injuries. Five are animals that I have spotted. Working frantically, the snares are successfully removed from most of these animals, and I long for a period of respite.

  ‘We’re finding hardly any snares, and we haven’t seen a snared animal for a very long time,’ declares the spokesman for a nearby anti-poaching unit at the same time, intent on keeping their reputation intact.

  ‘Well, you’d better open your eyes,’ is all that I can say. I could have said a whole lot more, but I’ve learnt there’s no point arguing with some people. The circumstances speak for themselves. Ultimately, no one is able to deny the snaring problem around Hwange National Park. It is there. And it is, once again, getting increasingly worse. Already, more young Presidential Elephants have died from snare wounds.

  I come upon a group of 80 elephants together, from three different Presidential families. Of these, seven have shortened or sliced trunks. There is Brandy and Bubble and Bobby’s six-year-old son, Bailey. There is Grace, and Tarnie’s four-year-old daughter, Tabitha, and there are two adult bulls. Some are old injuries, with which the elephants manage remarkably well. Other injuries are newer, and it will be a waiting game to see whether these elephants manage to survive. It’s a distressing fact that no Hwange Estate elephant who has lost half or more of its trunk in a snare has ever survived for long.

  It’s a real comfort to arrive home to an email from John. He’s finally found someone to send one on his behalf. It’s signed ‘Spiderman’. I’m thrilled to hear from him.

  ‘U our hero’, he writes, speaking on behalf of his wife, Del, too. These words bring a lump to my throat. I have frequently wondered about them, and wished they were still around so that John could teach me more about the bush. I’ve recalled braais in dry riverbeds, campfires in new places and long talks of philosophy. I’ve often wondered if John was still sharing his bed with snakes, as he unwittingly did on more than one occasion, and whether he’d continued to befriend spiders and climb naked onto the rooftop of his home. I’m happy to hear that he still has his Akubra.

  ‘I miss everything so much I could scream,’ he laments.

  I understand, but during the twenty-fifth anniversary of Independence, a few months ago, President Mugabe had chanted, ‘Africa for Africans!’ What he meant of course was, Africa for black Africans. John, with his short fuse, is better off away from it all.

  What’s interesting at huge annual ceremonies like this one is that black Zimbabweans, from the poorest to the very rich, and from all the ethnic groups, dress in Western-style clothing. Zimbabwe appears to have no traditional dress as is found in most other African nations. The only tradition there seems to be on these occasions is to wear a garment with the face of the only president they’ve ever known painted all over it. President Mugabe is still a hero to many. He attracts standing ovations here, and in other African countries. But then, so does Libya’s dictator, Colonel Gaddafi. And so too did Uganda’s Idi Amin.

  When I ask a black Zimbabwean about Zimbabwe’s cultures and traditions he says simply, ‘We have kept few of them. Our culture now is to loot from others. All our chiefs do this.’

  Despite everything, there is plenty for John to miss. The Hwange bush is still a sanctuary of great enchantment and I try harder now to find the beauty, especially in the ever-changing detail of the smaller life forms. They’re often overlooked, yet they are, in their own way, as dramatic as the elephants walking proudly across the plains.

  But even looking closely at the trees these days can break my heart. A huge mature teak tree—a familiar sight on my regular route through the veld—is severely wounded. Its sturdy trunk has been hacked out by poachers looking for honey, lured there, perhaps, by the greater honeyguide—a dull-looking but clever bird, renowned for deliberately leading people to beehives. I can only hope that they did not leave a portion of their find for the honeyguide, because then, as legend has it, evil will befall them on their next trip into the bush.

  It’s gruelling coming to terms with just how much has changed around me for the worse, in the four short years since I arrived in the Hwange bush. People now get away with doing as they please. There are so few controls in place nowadays and nobody seems to care.

  I awake to a raging bushfire, much earlier in the season than normal.

  Some men are out whacking at the flames, trying to contain it. They set a back-burn, which nearly goes catastrophically wrong. They manage to limit the damage. Smoke
chokes the air, hiding the sun. Birds soar, feasting on insects flushed out by the flames. The vegetation crackles and burns all day. There’ll be more fires than usual in this drought year, some deliberately lit as uncaring poachers strike a match, making it easier to find game to kill.

  ‘I’m taking the old Dete Road,’ one of the helpers calls out to me, over the drone of our 4x4 engines. ‘Watch out for me on your way home. I’m running on air.’

  I look down at my own fuel gauge. Frequently now the only way to obtain fuel is to buy it on the black market. The cost of it is crippling me, talk of assistance rarely materialising, and I wonder how much longer I can keep this up. I drive home with the setting sun behind me, a ball of hazy fire cloaked with glowing pink, and the almost full moon ahead, round and smoky pink. Even now, there is beauty to behold.

  The fuel situation, though, is desperate. When I’m unable to source a delivery, I have no choice but to queue in the township of Dete, a 40-kilometre round trip, on the rare occasions when this filling station actually gets fuel.

  ‘How long is the queue?’ I always enquire, before using more of this precious commodity to get there.

  Every time, the response is the same: ‘Arrhhh, but it is not very long.’

  I’m not sure why I bother to ask, since I always sit in a winding queue for at least five long hours. And the queue ahead keeps lengthening, vehicles constantly barging in.

  ‘It is our culture,’ they say. ‘You put a stone. You come back later.’

  A policeman, smartly dressed with hat, belt and other finery, stops by my vehicle to chat. By now I’ve come to know the police force quite well. ‘Arrhhh, Pincott’, he says to me, extending his hand. ‘How are you?’

  Given the circumstances I don’t give a full account, simply replying that I don’t like fuel queues.