Elephant Dawn Page 9

  I spend two weeks living among the elephants in Amboseli, practising sexing newborn elephants and estimating the age of older ones. The Amboseli elephants have been monitored intimately for more than 30 years, many since they were newborns, so ages are precisely known. From the Amboseli project I learn what a five-, ten-, fifteen-, twenty- and thirty-year-old elephant really looks like. When I first see new babies on the estate, I’m sometimes still confusing females and males, but I quickly learn to tell them apart with ease.

  Over the years the Amboseli project dispelled many myths about elephants, and uncovered numerous fascinating facts. I admire Cynthia and Joyce’s supreme dedication and find myself craving their vast knowledge. During our days together in the field, devoted indigenous Kenyans also share with me their intimate understanding and love of the elephants.

  The splash of icing atop Mount Kilimanjaro provides a perfect backdrop to this study area. The purple sunsets are dramatic, the last rays of sunlight illuminate the snow-cap with golden light. I awake in the mornings, under canvas in a palm grove, to the call of fish eagles and to buffaloes, hyenas and elephants wandering through camp.

  The tusks of the charming Amboseli elephants bear little resemblance to those of the Hwange ones. Some splendid tusks almost reach the ground. Few sights are as awesome, and frightening, as a serious musth bull fight. One day, a clash of ivory, usually just a pleasing playful sound, signals the start of a battle between two dominant bulls. This conflict leaves one of them dead, having suffered a fatal tusk wound to his head. His own imposing tusks are over two metres long. It’s a dreadful shock to Cynthia and others who’d known him for almost 30 years, ever since he was a cheeky teenager. I walk up to his body, lying still and noble on the ground, and place some grass in his mouth.

  ‘For your journey,’ I whisper sadly to him. At least it is a natural way to die.

  Cynthia and Joyce ask after some of Zimbabwe’s past elephant personalities, but I’m unable to shed much light. I am aware, though, that some of Zimbabwe’s elephant management practices (like culling families and leaving babies alive, tied to their dead mothers, for later sale to the captive industry) haven’t always been well regarded by others. I hope they won’t tar me with the same tainted brush.

  Zimbabwe’s government press has also recently been declaring that there are some 75,000 elephants inside Hwange National Park, a figure widely believed to be inflated by around 300 per cent. ‘Don’t they know how to count in Zimbabwe?’ is a rhetorical question that I’m often asked. On top of everything else going on, it’s distressing to work with a species that is often the target of misinformation. The government loves to exaggerate things like birth rates, population growth and some vegetation impacts. Figures are blindly repeated until they become ‘fact’.

  I return to Hwange fortified with new information and techniques for identification and observation. I will also soon know first-hand exactly how frequently Hwange elephants are giving birth, and from what age, to then be able to dispel some of the myths.

  There are certainly times when I feel a need to try and escape all of the misinformation and exaggerated talk. On these occasions, I sit on the roof of my 4x4 and watch the sun nudge the horizon, imagining what it would sound like if elephants could laugh.

  Thankfully, things start to improve in the field. As the months pass it becomes clear that the snaring problem on the estate is under better control. Greg’s Painted Dog project now has an additional anti-poaching unit, larger than the estate one, which also patrols the surrounds. Fewer snares are being uncovered these days, and I’m not finding as many snared animals. It feels like, at last, we are winning the battle.

  And then, in July, another catastrophe strikes.

  I’m getting ready to go to Bulawayo to buy supplies. I don’t drive myself, since scarce fuel is better kept for field work, and besides, I don’t like to risk my old 4x4 on long journeys. Instead I get a lift there and back in a truck that delivers supplies to various lodges in the area. The truck is due to collect me at any minute, when I overhear anxious chatter about Greg. He was flying the project’s ultralight this morning, tracking rhinos rather than dogs. He didn’t land where and when he should have.

  Nobody knows if Greg is alive or dead. It’s a bit like Andy’s accident all over again. Andy had taken off from Sinamatella, the same National Parks base, and was also tracking rhino. He was in a helicopter, rather than a flimsy ultralight, and he didn’t survive. So many of us had whispered to each other that we would never go up in that ultralight with Greg.

  I first spent time with Greg back in the 1990s, when I was a tourist doing short-term voluntary stints. I opened his kitchen cupboard to see rows and rows of tins of beans. This is what he was living on. He had little funding at the time but he persevered with his conservation work regardless. At one stage his only way of getting around in the field had been a motorbike. With all those lions around. And when it comes to snakes, he is fearless. He once removed a deadly black mamba from the engine of a game-drive vehicle without thinking twice.

  July days can be very warm, and the nights very cold. We don’t know it yet but Greg is alive, and in excruciating pain. He has crashed far from his expected route and the search has been in the wrong area. Like his radio, both of his legs are broken in multiple places, as are his ankles and pelvis. He drags himself to shelter under the flammable remains of his plane. He makes what noises he can to fend off elephants, lions and hyenas during the 28 hours that he is alone and in agony, deep in the Hwange bush.

  Late next morning he’s finally found. Dehydrated and broken, he is airlifted out.

  It will take years of rehabilitation for Greg to be able to walk again, and even then his legs will never be quite the same. He’s exceptionally lucky not to lose them both—and not to have lost his life. If he had though, as dedicated as he is to the wildlife cause, I suspect he would not have regretted his fate.

  A MILLION MILES FROM MY CHILDHOOD

  2003

  By October Julia is making plans to leave Hwange, having decided that it is ‘too heartbreaking’ for her to remain in Zimbabwe. Her hyena colleague, Marion, is long gone. Val is living in Australia. John is living in South Africa. And now it’s sounding like Dinks could be moving to greener pastures soon too.

  And so I’m already feeling a little vulnerable, when there’s an unexpected knock at the door of my rondavel. Standing in front of me is a manager from a nearby tourist lodge who delivers a message to me in the laid-back way of Africa. He tells me that a large portion of the Hwange Estate—the area called Kanondo and the adjoining area called Khatshana, where I spend much of my time—has been claimed by the governor of this province, a personal appointee of the president and the very government official responsible for handling land reform in this area. He has allocated this Presidential Elephant land to himself and to his relatives. No money or title deeds have changed hands. He has simply decided that it is now his own private property. Inconceivably, he has also managed to obtain licences from Parks and the Wildlife Ministry to hunt for sport. His approved hunting quota includes several elephants.

  I am stunned. Feeling faint, I lean heavily against my door-frame, listening to this messenger in sheer disbelief.

  White sport-hunters here and across the country are among those who have lost their land under the land reform program, to those calling themselves ‘new farmers’. But this is an area that has not been hunted for more than 30 years. This is an area where wildlife has become habituated over these years to close proximity with humans. This is the key home range of the ‘protected’ Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe and a key tourism area. This area is not white-owned. In fact Kanondo, according to old certified maps, has for decades been classified as ‘State Land’; that is, protected land that at least some in government are clearly declaring can’t be claimed.

  How could anyone possibly now consider this claimable land? And how could the Wildlife Minister, Comrade Francis Nhema, have signed an appr
oval to hunt for sport here?

  Logic plays no part. This is Zimbabwe after all, and Mugabe’s men do as they please. Equally concerning is the fact that Parks management, too afraid to do anything else, simply bow down to them.

  From tomorrow, I’m told, I am no longer permitted in the Kanondo and Khatshana areas. From tomorrow tourists will no longer be allowed into these areas on game-drives, and the anti-poaching team will be banned too. From tomorrow, they will kill animals there.

  Rich foreigners pay tens of thousands of US dollars to come to Africa and bag animal heads to hang on the walls of their homes. Since there are so many prime animal species on this land, this is easy money; nothing but a greedy get-rich-quick scam. It makes me shudder with fear and horror. So many joys that flourish only in the peace and quiet of the African bush will now be shattered by gunfire. As if the horrific snaring wasn’t bad enough.

  ‘What about the protected Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe?’ I challenge.

  I get no response.

  ‘What is being done to try to fix this?’ I plead.

  Still, there is no response. All I get is a shrug of the shoulders.

  Is it really all over just like that? It is inconceivable. Of all the awful things that could happen, I never imagined it would be this: a high-level government official claiming Presidential Elephant land as his own. And worse, claiming it to hunt upon.

  The whole situation holds the promise of deep pain, and I try—unsuccessfully—to shake the horror. Although I immediately set about informing the few people who I think may be able to assist, and draft my own pleas to government ministries, there is no stopping what is going to happen tomorrow.

  I sink down on my sofa. I’d left Kanondo pan just a couple of hours ago, not knowing that it wouldn’t be there again in the same way that it has always been, wild and free, a place with a light that is often indescribable. It’s where I’d had my most memorable Presidential Elephant encounters, and where the best opportunities exist, in its open areas, to look closely for snare injuries. It is a place of life. Its wildness has called out to so many, who came with cameras and never with guns. It is simply impossible to come to terms with this new development.

  My body will, I suppose, eventually recover from the shock, but my heart and mind won’t heal nearly so quickly. Another very precious part of my Africa is gone forever. This though, is not the result of an accident. This is nothing but blatant, uncaring greed.

  I find Lady in an adjoining area called Acacia Grove and I put my hand on her trunk. It is not a happy meeting. Her family is so often in the now-grabbed areas. Born wild. Living wild. Like all of the Presidential Elephants, they are extraordinarily trusting of human beings. I can only manage to say two words to her: ‘I’m sorry.’

  Ten days pass in a blur. Not unlike me, the gods are angry. Deafening cracks of thunder boom continuously in the night, and the rain finally comes. And it comes early.

  ‘Let it rain. Let it rain. Let it rain,’ I beg. ‘Let the wildlife disperse, away from all of these new hunters.’ I will it not to stop. It does stop, but not before depressions and waterholes, turned dry and cracked by the burning sun months earlier, once again hold life-giving water. It’s good news for the wildlife, the animals no longer forced to congregate around just the few pumped pans that were the only sources of water before the downpour.

  This first deluge doesn’t penetrate very deeply into the baked ground. The fresh run-off water won’t last for long without supplementary rain. But these first downpours are important: preparing the pans, enhancing their water retention capacity for when next the rain comes. Although this time I barely notice the smell of the first rain, it is in fact delightful, etched into the minds of all of us who live in the African bush. The lingering dust of the long dry months is washed away.

  Out in the field, close to Acacia Grove, I’m near a pair of mating lions, now dozing only metres from my vehicle. Both male and female have been radiating a wild energy as they mate over and over again, muscles bulging around their necks. However, I’m not the only one taking an interest. A hunting vehicle pulls up beside these lions too, in this one small area that has escaped being re-designated for hunting.

  I thought that my capacity for astonishment had been exhausted, but I was mistaken. This is a photographic area—one of the very few photographic safari areas left now—and the white hunters’ brazen appearance here does astonish me. These men were seen a few days ago inspecting lion spoor. They want this lion—to hang on a wall. I can practically see them salivating.

  They’re hunting in an area full of habituated wildlife. There is no need here to track an animal for days, or weeks. There is no skill whatsoever involved in these hunts. So many of these animals walk right up to you—or at least they used to, before the gunfire started.

  These hunters are, I decide, nothing but soulless, greedy men. When I look to memorise their number plate, I find there is no number plate at all. Why have they felt a need to remove it?

  They move off, not soon enough for my liking, leaving my mind full of a thousand resentments. I try to enjoy the setting sun as it casts a stunning light on the lion lovers. They roll on their backs in lazy abandon, mouths wide with yawns of indifference. Thousands of white moths erupt from the damp earth, fluttering like snowflakes around them. It is beautiful, but my mind is elsewhere.

  Suddenly I feel afraid, very afraid. By now it is painfully apparent to me that there are only a few people who truly seem to care about the wildlife tragedy that is unfolding here. Others just offer cursory acknowledgement. ‘But this is Africa,’ I am told repeatedly. And they know the risks of getting involved.

  It is a response that exasperates me. I don’t care that this is Africa, I don’t care who owns land in this country, and I don’t care who these land grabbers are. But I do care about the Presidential Elephants and about all of the wildlife that I’ve come to know so well over the past three years. Given that the head claimant is considered ‘a big man’ (politically connected), with an unsavoury reputation, most people are afraid of getting too involved. Thankfully, though, there are some who are genuinely concerned. There is some support from wildlife conservation organisations on this frightening road. The wildlife will not have to walk it entirely alone. And more importantly, there are two government officials who have indicated that they will try to help.

  Back at my rondavel there is no power. Thousands of flying ants, making their regular appearance after the first rain, swarm around the few lights of a nearby lodge being powered by a generator. A toad jumps against my leg, giving me a slimy fright and a strange sense of connection to all wildlife. I am definitely on their side. My spirit hasn’t quite failed me yet. By candlelight, a glass of Amarula—six times the price that it was twelve months ago, as inflation takes hold—warms what hope is left within me.

  But the Presidential Elephant families are staying away, making close monitoring impossible. They do not like the sound of gunshots, and neither do I.

  The next day in the field I’m reading Flamingo Feather by Laurens Van Der Post, waiting and hoping that some elephants will arrive. One sentence resonates with me: ‘his life will achieve . . . something which is greater than happiness and unhappiness: and that is meaning’.

  I read these words once, and then a second time, and a third. The familiar sound of the rainbird takes me back to times long gone, to my childhood home in Grantham and my parents who always linked its distinctive call with the rain that the farmers bank on. It was always just ‘the rainbird’ to me, calling unseen from the mulberry tree in our leafy, well-tended backyard. I listen to this same call now, in this different era and distant land far removed from my childhood, longing for the rain to return; longing for the hunters to leave.

  The silence becomes intolerably loud inside my head. Fearing reprisal, so very few are speaking out. This is not a country of free and fair, and everybody knows it. I’m aware that my permit could be cancelled at a moment’s notice, but I can�
��t turn a blind eye. I continue to pass on whatever information I can to those who may be able to help.

  My own thoughts and feelings are sometimes so intense they become unbearable, and my disillusionment grows daily. It’s a heavy and unhappy burden, but I know that I must dig deep and find courage to continue on. Everything now though is soured with fear. And I am stricken with unease and deep sorrow: ‘. . . his life will achieve . . . something which is greater than happiness and unhappiness: and that is meaning’.

  I am so pleased for John that he is gone. The house that he used to rent on the Khatshana side of the estate is now in the hands of the governor. The governor’s brother-in-law walks around, threatening to bring out his AK-47 machine gun. It’s a family affair and the governor’s son is also on the scene. Already, nearby lodge staff have been forced to the ground, hands behind their heads, as gun-toting land claimants try to seize other wildlife land. One man, crudely calling himself ‘Black Jesus’, enjoys his own reign of terror.

  My close friends email regularly to check on my wellbeing, but they’re all hours, or oceans, away. While in the bush I’ve had to learn to get through things on my own and have become self-reliant. There are still wildlife researchers working in the area, but for the most part they’re focused on their degrees and seem to care little about what’s happening to the wildlife just down the road from them. To speak out would mean risking the permits that enable them to do their research work, and therefore their careers.

  I keep looking for Lady and her family around Acacia Grove, the only part of the Hwange Estate not claimed. She has no hand for me to hold, but I want to hold her trunk; to tell her that everything will be okay; to beg her to stay safe. I look for all of the other families too, desperate to find out if they’re still intact.