by Clay Wilson
True, the choices of foodstuffs and material goods were limited, but I was a man who was as happy having the choice of two brands of cereal in the supermarket as I was having 50 brands. There was no Wal-Mart, but that was just fine by me. I had camped many times in the bush when on hunts, so my existence in the house on the plateau was comparatively comfortable, even if it wasn’t the Florida Keys. About the only luxury I really need in life is a hot bath or shower every day. Perhaps my only frustration, then, was that both the water and electricity had a habit of disappearing on a semi-regular basis in Kasane. Some days I would have water but no electricity, resulting in a cold bath; other days I would have electricity but no water; and sometimes I would have neither. It was just something I had to get used to.
Moving inland to the south, away from the river, the land rises quickly into the part of town known as the plateau. This is where most of the locals live, in basic but neatly ordered homes on a grid of planned streets. It’s nothing flashy, but I was able to find a small brick-and-tile house to rent while I got myself set up and took stock of the inventory of my new life.
Six weeks after I landed, the shipping containers with my more substantial assets arrived. It was good to have wheels, but my dreams of soaring over the land like a modern-day Denys Finch-Hatton from Out of Africa were brought back to Earth as soon as I opened the container door. My Cessna had crashed before I’d even started up the engine. In fact, starting up the engine wasn’t even an option. The aircraft had been strapped down inside the container for the sea voyage, but the cargo ship had encountered a hurricane somewhere near the Dominican Republic, and in the rough weather the restraints had snapped and the Cessna had fallen off its mountings inside the shipping box. The aircraft had pitched forward in a nosedive and the engine had been driven through the firewall. It was in no shape to fly and I was, literally, grounded.
However, I had terrestrial transport, and I wasted no time driving around the local area and into the national park. From where I was living on the plateau, it was only about five kilometres to the Sedudu Gate entrance to Chobe National Park. Usually I’d start seeing animals before I even reached the park boundary, as plenty of wildlife lived in the forestry area bordering the reserve.
I was living on what was basically an elephant highway. While three countries met on the river, the fourth, Zimbabwe, was about 30 kilometres up the road to the east. Just across the border was Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe’s flagship game reserve and home to a semi-migratory population of between 30 000 and 50 000 elephants. These elephants would migrate across the border into Botswana as the water evaporated in Hwange at the end of the dry season, and make their way towards the cool, clear waters of the Chobe. Their route took them right past my back fence.
Not all the elephants took the high road, along the plateau. Many also moved through the town of Kasane, along the edge of the river towards the national park, with some drawn to the promise not only of water but of crops. It was an amazing sight to see herds of elephants crossing main highways and busy local streets, and wandering about in the midst of people going about their daily business. For tourists, this sight was a charming novelty, but I would learn all too soon that it was also a portent for drama and tragedy.
My first order of business was to set up a veterinary clinic in Kasane. While I hoped to make money out of the lodge I had bought into – we were waiting on government approval before we could start operating it commercially – I also wanted to offer the community my services.
I rented a building to set up my clinic at a cost of 18 000 pula (about 2 400 US dollars) per month. In Setswana, pula, the name of the national currency, means “rain”. It’s a nice analogy, but it certainly didn’t start pouring for me. On top of the rent money, I also forked out about a million pula for an x-ray machine and blood analysis equipment, as I had been unable to bring this type of stuff with me from the States.
I soon learnt some hard lessons about doing business in Botswana. Whereas my surgery in Florida would see maybe 40 animal patients a day, in Kasane I was lucky if I had two a month. If someone did bring a dog in, it would more often than not be at death’s door.
“My dog hasn’t eaten for three weeks and it isn’t well. Can you save it?” a man asked, depositing his flea-ridden mutt on my operating table. I could clearly see the panting dog’s ribs through its mangy coat. Three weeks! It was no wonder the creature was almost dead. People would put off seeking care for their animals until the last minute and then when it did die, like that one did, they would point the finger of blame at me and refuse to pay their bill. When I was able to successfully treat an animal, more often than not I would then be told by the owner that he or she had no money. Sometimes I’d take payment in kind – a basket of eggs from someone’s chicken coop or perhaps a fishing trip on the Chobe River if it was a fishing guide’s beloved dog I’d just saved. It was no way to run a business, but it was how things were done here, and I had chosen this as my new life.
And it was a different life, with different attitudes to it. Whereas in the States I’d had patients who would threaten to sue me if their dog’s skin was nipped by a clipper, I found that in this part of rural Africa people did not have the same priorities for their animals. They might have loved them, but they were rarely prepared or able to pay money to have them treated. It was depressing, but it was the local way, and I would have to get used to it.
I had sourced a new engine for my aeroplane and had it fitted, but with the rickety way my new business had started the aircraft was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I ended up selling it. The money I was paying in rent was not being recouped, and it was siphoning my finite bank balance.
I looked at my new situation philosophically. I was here for a change of lifestyle, not to make money, and I also wanted to follow a dream I’d cherished for many years, of working with wildlife in the African bush. That was what I was here for and the sooner I could start learning more about and working with wild animals, the better.
Government buildings in Kasane are, as is the case in most African towns, the biggest and most impressive. I’d had a meeting with the chief warden of Chobe National Park, but he was replaced six months later, so I went through the process again of presenting my credentials at the local Department of Wildlife and National Parks offices when the new man was appointed. There I met the two top men in Chobe National Park, Doctor Thuto Seema, now chief warden, and Kabo Mogau, also recently appointed as chief warden in charge of research for Chobe, and Seema’s second in command.
I offered them my services as a vet. The DWNP, the National Parks authority, did not have its own vet at Chobe, and I felt I had a lot to offer. They agreed, and offered to put me to work immediately.
It became clear from the outset that the DWNP would not be able to pay me, but they later offered me an appointment as an honorary game warden, which, at the time, was more important to me than any remuneration they could have offered. As part of looking for new challenges, I wanted to learn, on the job, how to deal with the animals and problems unique to this part of the world.
I couldn’t wait to get out into the national park and help the wildlife. To me, back then, the bush felt like one great big playground waiting to be explored. I took my responsibilities as a vet seriously, but I could not deny the excitement I was feeling as I eagerly anticipated my first call-out as a bush vet. This was a world away, in every sense, from an existence that had become humdrum and predictable in Florida. Here, I had no idea what the new day would bring.
One sunny spring morning the phone rang.
“Clay Wilson.”
“Clay, it’s Kabo. How are you?” This young officer from Chobe was fast shaping up to be one of my best friends in the tight-knit, insular local community. Unlike some people, Mogau seemed happy to welcome a stranger in town. I was learning a lot from him and I hoped the affection I felt was mutual.
After we exchanged the ritual African greetings – it’s impolite not to ask how someone is
when you first speak to them on the phone or in person – I asked Mogau what I could do for him.
“It is an elephant, Clay. It is very sick. Near the dump, on the edge of town.”
The fact that Mogau had called, asking for my help, was momentous for me. While I had offered my services to the DWNP, this was the first time they had actually called me and asked me to do something.
I knew that the municipal garbage dump was unfenced, and a Mecca for scavengers such as hyenas and jackals and various birds such as crows and yellow-billed kites. As I learnt from Kabo that day, hungry elephants sometimes detoured via the dump as they neared the end of their long trek from Zimbabwe in search of the waters of the Chobe River.
I packed my veterinary bag and my rifle, got into my bakkie and raced down from the plateau. The dump, as usual, was visible a long way off, thanks to the crows and marabou storks swooping above it. The marabou is perhaps the ugliest bird in the world, and resembles an elderly undertaker. It has a hanging goitre at its throat, a balding bristly head, stooped shoulders, and it looks like it is wearing a black top coat. It feeds on carrion and always looks like it’s patiently waiting for something or someone to die.
I got out of the truck with my bag and strode over to where Mogau was waiting with a couple of National Parks rangers from the DWNP. Nearby was the great, grey mass of an elephant lying on its side. I walked over to them, awed by being so close to an elephant, but rattled, too, by the situation.
The elephant, a mature female, was screaming a high-pitched call of distress and pain. I could see, immediately, that her stomach was hugely distended. “Plastic bags.”
Mogau nodded.
I had not yet seen the problem manifested in a living animal, but as I’d moved about town and walked through the bush I had come across elephant stools with plastic bags woven in among the semi-digested leaves, bark and grass that made up their diet. Elephants have a love of fruit, especially citrus fruit, and it was probably the smell of rotting peels and discarded fruits that lured them to the rubbish dump. Unfortunately, they would often ingest plastic garbage bags.
The elephant had clearly been lying down for some time, probably through the night. Her big ears were ragged and bleeding, clear evidence that the hyenas that roamed the dump at night had been chewing on them. She must have been in terrible pain and fear during her torment as the spotted hyenas whooped and danced around her, nipping at her hide. Her trunk flailed at the earth and she tried to raise her head, but I knew this grand old dame would never stand again, and, worse still, that there was nothing I could do for her here out in the open by the side of the road. “We’re going to have to put her down,” I said to Mogau.
“I agree,” he said to me. It was a sad moment.
I went to the bakkie and got out my .375 rifle and cartridge belt. I had never hunted an elephant – it went against my grain to do so – and so had never thought about shooting one. She wailed again and I steeled myself for the task at hand; I’d known this sort of thing would be part of my job. This was the first time in my life I had been close enough to touch an elephant and now I would have to take its life.
I laid my hand on her. Her wrinkled grey skin was so tough, yet, funnily enough, so soft at the same time, covered in a coat of bristly hair that was invisible from a distance. I am sorry, old mother, I said to her silently. I was sorry that something as stupid as a plastic bag had caused this grand creature’s innards to cease working, and that this would be the cause of her death. I was angry at the local authorities for not having the sense to fence off their rubbish dump.
I loaded the .375, braced the rifle against my shoulder, took aim and squeezed the trigger. The rifle’s report echoed through the morning, but to my horror the elephant did not die. Instead, she writhed and screamed even louder as blood spurted from her. I quickly worked the bolt, chambering another round, then fired again. As I stood back, still she kept bucking and kicking. I felt tears start to well in my eyes as I fired a third time. How could this be happening? Why wasn’t she dying? I was firing from point blank range into her skull, between the eyes. Still she lived, her body now full of lead bullets and the trash that had killed her. It was only after my fourth shot that she finally lay still, her big head pillowed for the last time in the dust.
There had been adrenalin coursing through my body as I had prepared to shoot this animal and now, as it flooded from me, so too did my emotions. As I cleared my rifle I tried to work out what had gone wrong. I had aimed in the right place, but why had it taken so long for her to die? “Soft points,” I realised.
It dawned on me, too late for that poor suffering creature, that I had only brought soft-point bullets with me. These were okay for shooting soft-skinned animals in the heart, but for an elephant, with its thick honeycombed skull and small brain, I should have realised that I needed solid-point rounds that would penetrate instead of mushroom, as soft points do. Just one of these would have put her out of her misery. I had learnt a hard lesson, but it tore me apart to think of the suffering, however brief, that elephant had gone through.
I said goodbye to Mogau and his men and got back into my truck. As I drove away, the tears that had been bubbling below the surface welled up and rolled down my face. I sobbed like a baby. Angry, self-pitying tears for the elephant and for the distress I had caused her. I am not a man who cries – I can think of perhaps five times in my life when I have – and that day the dam broke. I thought of my own failing and the lesson I had learnt. I resolved to do something about the unfenced dump, and to look for ways to avoid elephants suffering because of man’s neglect.
A switch went off in my brain as the tears carved scars through the dust on my face. While I knew that this would not be the last time I would have to kill an irrevocably injured animal, I resolved then and there that I would never hunt again.
Chapter 3
Finding my way in the bush
Doctor John Wakasu was the senior National Parks veterinarian in Botswana, although he was a Ugandan, living a long way south of his home country.
Apparently, qualified local Batswana veterinarians were thin on the ground as this was not an overly popular area of study. I hit it off with Doctor Wakasu immediately. He exuded an air of genuine goodness – there’s no other way to describe it – and had a quick smile that made you feel accepted straight away.
Like the local authorities, John Wakasu had also accepted my offer to work for the DWNP as an unpaid wildlife vet, and after our first meeting we decided to take a drive into Chobe National Park. As luck would have it, we came across a young male lion that had recently taken a severe beating, most probably from a dominant pride male.
Young males are kicked out of their prides when they reach sexual maturity. In the grand scheme of nature, this makes sense, as the last thing any family wants is for the male offspring to be mating with his mothers, sisters and aunts. These young males sometimes form coalitions. If there are, say, two or three or more from the same litter, they are usually all kicked out of the pride by their father at the same time. These groups of young males can fare well for themselves. But if a young male is on his own when it’s time to leave the family, he can have a very difficult time. Sometimes he might not make it. Single males, and even coalitions, can run into trouble when they come into contact with other prides whose dominant pride males will chase them away from their females and, if they catch them, engage in fights to the death. For the young males, their goal is not only to survive by catching their own prey, but to take on a pride of their own, by force.
John and I had not gone far into the park when we came across the young male lying panting in the shade of a mopane tree. He was in a terrible condition. His face and front legs were covered in scratches and his skin was a mess of weeping abscesses where his wounds had become infected. He was so thin that we could see his ribs as his chest rose and fell. As well as suffering from his injuries, which we took to have been inflicted by another lion, his wounds were obviously preventing h
im from hunting. He was, we judged, close to death.
There is a very good argument for the “do nothing” option when you come across an animal that has suffered as part of the rigours of life in the wild. In the strictest ethical definition, the best thing for us to do would have been to let this lion die, but I had a problem with that on a couple of counts.
First, he was in pain, and at the rate he was going he would die a lingering death until either his infections overcame him or he starved. I suppose the best he could hope for in terms of natural justice was for the big lion or lions who had whipped him to come back and finish the job quickly. As he deteriorated, he would probably attract the attention of hyenas and they would show their traditional foe no mercy as they nipped at him until they immobilised him and took their time killing him. I could not come back over the next couple of days to watch this animal, so full of promise as a future pride male and super predator, dying his slow and painful death.
Second, lion numbers had suffered because of man and I felt a duty to try to do something for this one. By my best reckoning, there were only about 30 lions in Chobe National Park at the time. In my opinion, the park could not afford to lose this fellow. He deserved a second chance. In the end, it was John’s call as he was the senior veterinarian, paid by the government of Botswana.
John and I discussed the lion and we came to a mutual decision that we would try to help him. I was the new kid on the block, and I was relieved and pleased that my Ugandan colleague had the same feelings about this animal as I had. We pulled over a distance away from the big cat and set to work preparing for my first close encounter with the so-called king of beasts. This was what I had been waiting for, and what I had come here to do, to make a difference. We drove a short distance from the lion to prepare.
I drew up a dart full of Zoletil under John’s supervision, as he had darted many more animals than me; I would learn a good deal from this man. I had brought with me a new pneumodart dart gun; each dart had a small charge built in to propel the injectable substance into the animal on contact. Unlike older-style darts, which had to be loaded and pressurised with air, the pneumodarts were more reliable and easier to use.
