Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  I dedicate this book to Wilderness and all that it embraces, to the memory of David and the pioneer wardens of Kenya’s National Parks, and to my family and grandchildren so that they may know how it was once upon a time.

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Maps

  Prologue

  1: Settlers

  2: Childhood

  3: Growing Up

  4: Married Life

  5: Falling in Love

  6: Decisions

  7: New Beginnings

  8: Love and Orphans

  9: Settled

  10: Conflict

  11: Discovery

  12: Expansion

  13: Turmoil

  14: Grief

  15: Growth

  16: Achievement

  Epilogue: David

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  Section One

  1. Sheila, me on Mother’s lap and Peter

  2. Cedar Park – our Gilgil home

  3. Betty and me at Malindi

  4. Bill and me at our reception at Cedar Park after our wedding

  5. With Jill, aged six months

  6. Bill, Jill and Fatuma

  7. Bill on a foot patrol

  8. Carving out the roads by hand in the 1940s and 1950s

  9. David in the Second World War

  10. Bill, David and me in the flooded Voi River

  11. David in the ivory room

  12. Tiva River anti-poaching patrol, 1958

  13. David, a friend, Jill and me camp at Ndiandaza, 1957

  14. Jill with recovered trophies, 1958

  15. Samson, Fatuma, Higglety (in foreground), me and a friend, with Jill sitting on the boat, 1961

  16. Jill and Huppety, 1963

  17. David with Old Spice

  18. Myself and David with newborn Angela, 1963

  19. Four generations – family group with Granny Chart in the middle, 1963

  20. Kitani ya Ndundu campsite on the Athi River

  21. Angela in her safari chair

  22. David with orphans Eleanor and Rufus

  23. Hugging Wiffle, 1968

  24. Rains in Tsavo, always a most welcome sight

  25. On the Tiva with my parents, Angela and Peter

  26. David with Angela on Rufus

  27. Tsavo’s big elephant herds, 1970

  28. Tsavo, big bull elephant

  29. Angela, me, Eleanor and keeper, 1968

  30. Myself and Angela at feeding time, with Stub and Lollipa

  31. The ostriches and rangers, 1976

  32. Angela feeding Stub, 1968

  33. Myself and Angela with Bias, our orphaned duiker

  34. Our house at Voi

  35. Angela and me with Lollipa and Stroppy

  36. Jill, aged twelve

  37. Evening walk to the river with the orphans

  38. The translocation of Grévy’s zebra to Tsavo East

  39. David, my soulmate

  40. The rangers return with an arrested poacher and recovered rhino horn and ivory

  41. David helped by rangers and keepers at the rescue of Sobo

  42. Punda, the rascal, persecuting Sobo, with Raru looking on

  43. Bukanesi, Raru, Eleanor and Sobo

  44. Stroppy with Raru

  45. Stroppy and Punda, inseparable friends

  46. Angela, me and David with the orphaned elephants, 1973

  47. At midday Bunty gives birth to Bouncer, with me by her side

  48. Jill, me, Bunty and David in our front garden

  49. Bunty in the garden with her sons

  50. Bunty, vulturine guinea fowl and me in the garden

  51. Pop in the Land Rover, crossing the river at Lugard’s Falls causeway

  52. David helps rescue an elephant stuck in a drying mud wallow

  53. Jill with her father, Bill, on her wedding day

  54. Mixing the milk for Aisha

  Section Two

  55. Playing with Aisha on a sand pile

  56. With Aisha

  57. Aisha having her mud bath

  58. With Eleanor in the 1980s

  59. Myself with Boobalub, one of our orphaned eland

  60. Olmeg was rescued from Maralal on 4 March 1987, estimated one month old, sunburnt and emaciated

  61. Olmeg, two years later

  62. With the orphan elephants, Voi, 1990s

  63. Eleanor with the Tsavo orphans

  64. Ithumba orphans in the mud

  65. Myself and David Read

  66. Angela’s wedding, 1996

  67. The Nairobi nursery, 2007

  68. Communities visit the orphan project

  69. Nursery, 2009

  70. Mishak, 2005

  71. Baby Mara just after being rescued

  72. Suguta with keeper Benson

  73. Myself and Wendi, 2011

  74. With my grandchildren

  75. I am made a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire

  76. Jill, 2009

  77. Angela with Makena as a nursery baby

  All photographs © the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

  Prologue

  The day had begun well. My friend and I were in Tsavo National Park, among the tangled vegetation and wild herds, searching for Eleanor. I was eager to find my most treasured orphaned elephant. Over my many years of involvement with elephants, there was no doubt about it: Eleanor had taught me the most about her kind. We had been through many ups and downs together. She was my old friend.

  Finding her was not an easy task. Tsavo spreads over 8,000 square miles. We were looking now in the place where I had heard she had been just the day before. There had been many occasions in the past when, suspecting that Eleanor might be among a wild herd, I had simply called her name and she had turned quietly from her group and come to me. We had shared many tender moments, her massive trunk prickly as she wrapped it gently around my neck, one huge foot raised in greeting for me to hug with both my arms.

  I had known Eleanor since she had become an orphan at two – now she was in her forties, almost the same age as Jill, my elder daughter – and there existed between us an amazing bond of friendship and trust that had persisted beyond her return to the wild.

  At last – in the right area – we spotted a wild herd. From a distance it was never easy to identify Eleanor among a milling crowd of her fellow adults, and I had never felt the need to do so, certain that she would always know me. Unlike the other wild elephants of Tsavo, who had no reason to either like or trust humans, Eleanor would always want to come when called, to greet me, simply for old times’ sake. I have come to know a lot about elephant memory and how very similar to ourselves elephants are in terms of emotion – after all, greeting an old friend makes you feel good, remembered, wanted.

  There stood a large cow elephant drinking at a muddy pool, her family already moving off among the bushes. From this distance, it didn’t look much like Eleanor, for although as large, this elephant was stockier. I told my friend as much.

  ‘How disappointing,’ he said. ‘I was so hoping to meet her.’

  ‘I’ll call her,’ I replied, ‘and if this is Eleanor, she will respond.’

  She did. The elephant looked up at me, her ears slightly raised, curious. She left the pool and walked straight up to us.

  ‘Hello, Eleanor,’ I said. ‘You’ve put on weight.’

  I looked into her eyes, which curiously were pale amber. I had a fleeting thought that Eleanor’s eyes were darker, but I dismissed this instantly. This must be Eleanor. Wild elephants in Tsavo simply did not behave in this way, approaching humans so trustingly. The Tsavo
herds were now innately suspicious of our kind, having been relentlessly persecuted in the poaching holocaust of the 70s, 80s and early 90s.

  ‘Yes,’ I said to my friend. ‘This is Eleanor.’

  Reaching up, I touched her cheeks and felt the cool ivory of her tusks, caressing her below the chin in greeting. Her eyes were gentle and friendly, fringed with long dark lashes; her manner was welcoming.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ murmured my friend. ‘Stand next to her so that I can take a photo.’

  I positioned myself beside one massive foreleg, reaching up my hand to stroke her behind the ear, something that I loved doing with Eleanor. The hind side of an elephant’s ear is as soft and smooth to the touch as silk and always deliciously cool.

  I was totally unprepared for what happened next.

  The elephant took a pace backwards, swung her giant head and, using her trunk to lift my body, threw me like a piece of weightless flotsam high through the air with such force that I smashed down onto a giant clump of boulders some twenty paces away. I knew at once that the impact had shattered my right leg, for I could hear and feel the bones crunch as I struggled to sit up. I could see too that I was already bleeding copiously from an open wound in my thigh. Astonishingly, there was no pain – not yet, anyway.

  My friend screamed. The elephant – I knew for certain now that this was not Eleanor – rushed at me, towering above my broken body as I braced myself for the end. I closed my eyes and began to pray. I had a lot to be thankful for, but I did not want to leave this world quite yet. Inside I began to panic, jumbled thoughts crowding my mind. But suddenly there was a moment of pure stillness – as if the world had simply stopped turning – and as I opened my eyes I could feel the elephant gently insert her tusks between my body and the rocks. Rather than a desire to kill, I realized that the elephant was actually trying to help me by lifting me to my feet, encouraging me to stand. I thought: this is how they respond to their young.

  But lifting me now could be catastrophic for my broken body.

  ‘No!’ I shouted, as I smacked the tip of the wet trunk that reached down to touch my face.

  She gazed down at me, her ears splayed open in the shape of Africa, her eyes kind and concerned. Then, lifting one huge foot, she began to feel me gently all over, barely touching me. Her great ears stood out at right angles to her huge head as she contemplated me lying helpless, merely inches from the tip of two long, sharp tusks. I knew then that she did not intend to kill me – elephants are careful where they tread and do not stamp on their victims. If they do intend to kill, they kneel down and use the top of the trunk and forehead.

  And it was at this moment – with an astonishing clarity of thought that I can still feel within me to this day – I realized that if I were to live, I needed to fulfil the debt I owed to Nature and all the animals that had so enriched my life. For even as I could feel the broken bones within my crumpled body, feel the fire of pain now engulfing me, and even though it was one of my beloved creatures that had caused me this distress, I knew then and there that I had an absolute duty to pass on my intimate knowledge and understanding of Africa’s wild animals and my belonging to Kenya.

  I thought: if I survive this, I will write. This will be my legacy. I will set down everything I have learned in my efforts to contribute to the conservation, preservation and protection of wildlife in this magical land.

  It was as if the elephant had heard my thoughts. There was a tense silence as she took one more look at me and moved slowly off. I would live on. In a state of some distress, my friend managed to find his way back to our driver to fetch help.

  After many hours of lying beneath that boulder, experiencing agonizing pain such as never before, I was rescued by the Flying Doctors. My ordeal was far from over. I was to endure endless operations, raging infections, bone grafts and a lengthy convalescence in which it took me months of learning to walk again. But I was alive, still here in Africa. I had survived because of elephants’ extraordinary ability to communicate very sophisticated messages to each other, messages that often go against all their natural instinct. For we discovered that Eleanor knew Catherine – as we subsequently named my wild attacker – and had somehow told her that I was a friend.

  As for my epiphany – the certainty that I had to write about my life and my work – here it is, some years down the line. This is the story of my settler ancestors; of growing up on my parents’ farm; of safaris and nights under the stars; of my soulmate David, my daughters Jill and Angela, the birth of our elephant orphanage, my life lived – all interwoven with spellbinding stories of the many different animals that have immeasurably enriched my life, animals I have reared and loved and come to know as a surrogate mother.

  Set against the majestic land of Africa, the birthplace of mankind, my story begins.

  1 Settlers

  ‘What we are is God’s gift to us; what we become is our gift to God.’

  – Anon

  It was quite by chance that my ancestors came to settle in Kenya.

  In the early 1900s my Great-Uncle Will was living a relatively prosperous life in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. His family – my great-grandmother was Will’s sister – had left rural Scotland for Africa in the mid 1820s. A truly capable and resourceful man, Will had worked hard in difficult conditions, farming the land, raising a family and helping others around him to survive the effects of the Boer Wars. He was garrulous and charismatic, a twinkle in his eye, passionate about big game hunting, and from time to time could afford a ticket to Kenya on one of the early steamships to satiate his lust for the land and the animals. The great profusion of wildlife, the rolling grass plains – the storehouse of life itself – Kenya was where his heart seemed to soar, where he was transformed from the inside out.

  It was during one of these hunting expeditions, in the spring of 1907, that Will befriended Sir Charles Eliot, Governor of the fledgling British colony of Kenya. The two men were drawn to each other: Will, a true pioneer, was the sort of man who made things happen, and Eliot, a true politician, was the sort of man who made other men offers to make things happen. Out in the bush one morning, Eliot put an intriguing proposition to my great-uncle: if he could bring in twenty families to Kenya, then the Government would allocate them free land on which to settle. Just that week, Eliot had received an order from the authorities back home to speed up the colony’s development, to get on with expanding the single track beyond Nairobi and to get white settlers in to increase trade and the resources for the railway. The British Government had so far forked out around £5 million and they wanted to see some return, sooner rather than later.

  The reason for Britain’s involvement in East Africa was not actually Kenya itself – it was Uganda and the source of the Nile. The Government wanted to prevent the Germans or French jeopardizing access to the Suez Canal, as this was the British trade route to India, the jewel in the Imperial crown. Building the railway was a massive undertaking, and thousands of Sikh labourers from British India were shipped in to undertake its construction. The railway snaked its way through the diverse habitats of Kenya from the port town of Mombasa – through dense inhospitable scrubland leading on to open grassland plains, once the native Masai’s best grazing land. Once the dominant tribe, their numbers had been depleted by smallpox during the late 1900s.

  Great-Uncle Will was so smitten with the Kenyan bush, so captivated by the idea of actually living in this astonishing country, that he cut short his trip to return home, determined to recruit the families that Eliot required. He didn’t need to look too far, as this branch of my family was full of prolific breeders. He himself had spawned seventeen children from his three wives, and they in turn had produced many others. Excited and alive to this opportunity, he did a good job persuading some of his immediate family to agree. Then he turned to his sister – my Great-Granny Aggett. She and her husband – and their not inconsiderable brood of eight children – were perfect targets. Things had not been going too well for Great-
Grandpa Aggett. Having acquired a taste for alcohol and gambling, in cahoots with none other than the local bank manager, who saw to it that his mounting overdraft was conveniently overlooked, he was up to his eyes in debt. The family’s precious old homestead and once prosperous farm in the Eastern Cape had been sold off and he was much chastened by the consequence of his addictions. Despite approaching sixty, he was keen to be rid of his tarnished reputation, to begin a new life. Will was offering him that lifeline and he rather gratefully signed up.

  The Aggetts’ eldest daughter, Ellen Margaret, had been widowed early on in her marriage. Left with two young sons, Stanley and Bryan, she had returned to live with my great-grandparents. Ellen was a feisty young woman, known for her fortitude and resourcefulness, and was more than willing to taste adventure. As it turns out, this decision was to have a direct effect on me: Ellen was my grandmother, and her seven-year-old son Bryan would eventually become my father.

  Will was a marvellous storyteller, and his golden words conjured up the magnificence of Kenya, breathing life into his images of the land, the people and the wildlife. Quite simply, he saw Kenya as another Eden, the prospect of living there an invitation to paradise. In just a few months his powers of persuasion were enough to convince twenty families to want to up sticks from the Eastern Cape, to trek through the uncharted interior of Eastern Africa and begin life over. These were people descended from solid pioneering stock – stoical, adventurous, enamoured of Africa – the ability to uproot, survive and build new lives in their blood. They had listened to their parents’ epic stories of crossing new lands and were somewhere hardwired to feel the desire to experience the challenges for themselves. I would love to be able to listen back down the years to what was discussed at Will’s legendary planning meetings. To us, in these days of sophisticated travel when we can get almost anything we need anywhere in the world, an unimaginable amount of planning and thought had to go into the journey. Although the landing post in Mombasa was still the ancient coastal hub it had always been, and inland the railway had reached Nairobi, the travellers had to be self-supporting in every respect. There would be nothing to help them on the way – no roads, no shops, no doctors, dentists or chemists. They would be entirely responsible for keeping themselves, their babies, their children and their livestock alive and well.