Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  It was tough going for my ageing great-grandpa. On one particularly ill-fated morning, he rode out as usual on his favourite horse, Princess, leading his second mare, Daisy, who needed exercising. He tethered Princess in the shade of the large trees that lined the banks of the Uaso Nyiro River, leaving Daisy free, confident that she would not stray far from her companion. He then walked out to his irrigation furrow, which by this time was quite a long way from the river. He had been digging this for some time, in an attempt to bring water from the river to a vegetable patch he was cultivating. On this particular day he returned at dusk, spent and exhausted, only to find to his horror that his precious Princess was in the process of being devoured by a huge black-maned lion, crouched menacingly over its kill, while Daisy nervously circled the attacker at dangerously close quarters. On this one day, Great-Grandpa had broken his golden rule and not brought his gun, so there was nothing for it but to try to catch his surviving horse.

  The lion meanwhile was becoming more and more angry, pivoting around on its haunches, growling and snarling and lashing its tail ominously, following Great-Grandpa’s every move with blazing eyes. It seemed that time stopped as my great-grandfather willed Daisy to stand still just for a moment so that he could scramble aboard. Finally he sensed that it had to be now or never, and with one last herculean effort he lunged towards her and somehow – he never knew how – managed to get himself across her back, jamming his heels hard into the horse’s flanks. At this very moment the lion charged, letting out the most spine-chilling roar, and Daisy was just able to leap clear, barely escaping the lion’s cleaving claws.

  It was a very shaken, tired and broken old man who stumbled into the house that night, for quite apart from his ordeal he had loved Princess dearly, as can only a man who is totally reliant on his horse. Princess had carried him faithfully many hundreds of miles both in South Africa and Kenya, and between them they had developed that almost tangible telepathic rapport – an empathy, binding and strong, that defied definition. For the first time he acknowledged that he was beaten and could battle no more against such insurmountable odds. I suspect he also wished that he had never left South Africa. That night, he and Great-Granny Aggett hardly slept a wink, mulling over their predicament, and by the next morning they had made up their minds. There was no way they were going to make it where they were: they had to move. The next day Great-Grandpa Aggett saddled Daisy and rode off to Nairobi to seek advice from the colonial Government.

  In fact, it had already dawned on the authorities that the isolated and vulnerable white settlers of Masailand would have to be moved elsewhere, and negotiations with the relevant elders and chiefs were already under way to bring the Masai people from around Kenya to the area around Narok so that they were settled in one place, away from their enemies, the Kikuyu. By the time Great-Grandpa arrived in Nairobi, the decision had already been taken to move him and his family out of Masailand, and offer them alternative holdings on the Laikipia Plateau. This was prize ranching country, where wildlife also abounded in numbers that matched the endless herds of the Athi plains and the Masai lands of Narok.

  And so once again the family loaded up their wagons and were on the move, laboriously retracing their steps, with what remained of their livestock. At the same time, the Masai living on the Laikipia Plateau filed down into the Rift, led by thousands of warriors in full battle regalia and accompanied by 100,000 head of cattle, half a million sheep, and hundreds of loaded donkeys. The women, children and elders walked slowly beside the donkeys that carried their few possessions, while another vanguard of warriors brought up the rear – all overseen by a contingent of the King’s African Rifles, just in case the warriors caused a diversion on the way. It must have been an unforgettable sight, this exodus of the Masai from Laikipia back to Narok, which coincided with the move to Laikipia of most of my Aggett relations.

  The younger generation were excited and eager to establish themselves in their new holdings, but my great-grandparents, physically and emotionally drained by the past few years, settled on a small-holding seven miles from the lakeside town of Naivasha. There they set up a home that was to become a warm, hospitable focal point for the rest of the clan, offering unfettered freedom for the children to roam the great expanse of the plains that bordered that freshwater lake within the Great Rift Valley.

  Meanwhile my father, Bryan, was growing up fast in Nairobi. His life had changed somewhat since the arrival of two younger half-brothers, Fred and Harry. His mother, Ellen – widowed when Bryan was so young – had subsequently married Ernest Nye Chart. She had established Nairobi’s first grill room in the Grand Hotel, and now she and Ernest were taking over the management of the hotel itself, having achieved some success as local entrepreneurs. And despite all the initial hardships, my father’s uncles and aunts were also becoming established and successful in their new homeland, setting up professional hunting parties, cattle-ranching establishments, farms, hotels, transport and trading companies. Bryan moved effortlessly between his extended family, his aunts, uncles and numerous cousins, enjoying a warm welcome and wonderful hospitality at every visit, for he was a very popular member of the family.

  My father was one of the two very first male candidates to sit – and pass – the school-leavers’ exam set by Cambridge University. His academic ability probably saved his life during the First World War, as he was sent to work in an office rather than to fight on the front line. However, like thousands of others, he succumbed to the deadly Spanish flu and was sent back home. Great-Grandma Aggett nursed him back to full health and, once he was strong enough, one of his uncles offered him work. Uncle Boyce, an enterprising settler, had many irons in the fire – a hides and skins trade, a safari business, a store near Narok and a handful of farms. My father excelled in all things practical and proved a great asset to his uncle’s safari business. In those days safaris went out for five or six weeks at a time, and Bryan was adept at giving the clients a memorable and varied time in the bush.

  My grandmother, Ellen, was ambitious for her second son and did not approve of him ‘fooling around with lions’. She urged him to invest in livestock. Always dutiful, Bryan used his £100 of army savings to buy eight cows and three calves, which he then lodged with my great-grandparents while he looked for some suitable land. More and more new settlers had arrived in Kenya after the Great War in response to soldier settlement schemes, and my father and his brother Stan wanted to get in there before things became too competitive. Bryan and Stan farmed sensibly, planting their crops in good time, devising new ways in which to keep them out of harm’s way. However, things did not go quite according to plan, and to add to their woes, at the time of harvest the land they had cultivated went up in smoke. Once again Bryan secured work with another of his uncles, this time hunting buffalo for their hides. And once again Ellen signalled her disapproval, this time taking decisive action: convinced that Bryan needed refining, she shipped him off to South Africa.

  Actually, Bryan was a willing participant in this scheme, as his brother Stan had already been dispatched for a bit of Ellen’s civilizing process and had sent back glowing accounts of rather beautiful – and eligible – women. And so it was there that my father met Marjorie Webb, a slender, immaculately turned-out young woman. He was smitten with her at once, falling in love with her inherent grace and bouncing blonde curls. And the feeling was mutual: Marjorie told her friends it was love at first sight. By the end of his stay – much to the horror of her parents – Marjorie and Bryan were so deeply in love that they wanted to get married. Her father, in particular, had issues with the Aggett contingent, considering them to be uncultured, rough and domineering. He was not keen for his daughter to spend the rest of her life in ‘darkest Africa’, and even though he liked Bryan – everyone did – he did not think him ‘good enough’ for his precious daughter. He was canny, though, knowing that to deny their request would be counter-productive, and he bought Marjorie a ticket to Kenya so that she could accompany Brya
n on his return journey and experience life in the raw for herself for a couple of months.

  Far from being put off, Marjorie fell in love with Kenya. She was enraptured by the majestic beauty of the land and the thrumming diversity of the country. She returned to South Africa more determined than ever to marry Bryan. And what a sense of purpose she brought to my father! Fuelled by love, over the next two years Bryan worked as never before, eventually purchasing 770 acres of land near Gilgil. Using the farm’s quarry for stone and cedar trees for timber, he built a house on the land. He installed a sawmill on the farm and set up a small timber concern. Touchingly, full of hope for the future, he named the farm L’Esperance. When news reached Dick Webb of Bryan’s achievements, he knew that he could no longer hold on to his daughter.

  Two years after they first met, Marjorie – not without a touch of trepidation – steamed out of East London harbour to be reunited with Bryan. As soon as she saw him on the Mombasa quayside, eagerly scanning the faces on the deck, she knew her decision had been the right one. Poised on the brink of a lifetime together, their journey inland was magical, reminding her of the wonders of Kenya. Marjorie was never to forget arriving at the farm, the smell of the cedar oil pervading the beautifully panelled and polished rooms that my father had built and furnished for her.

  The wedding party was a joyous celebration. The huge Aggett clan travelled from far and wide and the party went on for some days. Marjorie was instantly welcomed into the heart of the family – even Ellen (almost) approved – and she settled happily into life on the farm. A talented homemaker and artist, she set about adding some feminine touches to the house. She also cultivated the garden that in later years was to become one of the most beautiful in the district. Marjorie was a gracious host and soon she and Bryan were entertaining family and friends, the farm filling with life and laughter. In 1930, a year after their wedding, she was to become a mother – a son, Peter, followed eighteen months later by a daughter, Sheila. And then, three years later, in June 1934, I was born. Our little sister Betty arrived four years after me. By this time, my father had built a house for his mother, Ellen – known to us children as Granny Chart – near Gilgil and another for his newly arrived in-laws, Granny and Grandpa Webb, about five miles from our house. They had decided that they wanted to be a part of their grandchildren’s lives and emigrated from South Africa. Our family was complete.

  Nearly thirty years after leaving the Eastern Cape, some of the prominent members of the pioneering vintage had passed away – Great-Uncle Will, Great-Grandpa and Great-Granny Aggett among them. While I was too young when they were old or dying to remember them in person, I am forever indebted to their spirit and determination, the sacrifices they made to ensure the security of the next generations of the family. Thanks to them, my immediate family was secure enough to begin to put down their roots in the land – to feel the powerful stirrings of belonging.

  2. Childhood

  ‘O Lord of love and kindness, who created the beautiful earth and all the creatures walking and flying in it, so that they may proclaim your glory. I thank you to my dying day that you have placed me amongst them.’

  – St Francis of Assisi

  My life-long involvement with animals began with a mother cat and her kittens. My mother told me that I was an inquisitive child, always on the move, wanting to get in on the action. To stop me disturbing my brother and sister during their lessons, my mother would wedge me into the cat-box, the only place apparently where I was guaranteed to be as good as gold. She told me later: ‘You would stay there for hours, sucking your thumb, with a kitten or two snuggled in your lap.’ I was then just a toddler.

  Animals were everywhere, their sounds, their scent, their behaviour part of the everyday fabric of life on the farm, and as soon as I could walk, I would toddle out to the back of the house and squeeze myself into the chicken run so that I could watch the tiny newly hatched chicks. I loved the furriness of them, their little cheeping sounds, and I would babble away at them. I thought it was completely normal when going for a walk in the forest to be accompanied by a huge retinue of humans and animals – as we left the house my mother, father, brother and sisters and I would be joined by all our dogs, Bob the impala, Daisy the waterbuck and Ricky-Ticky-Tavey, the little brown-furred dwarf mongoose who always ran on ahead, leading the way for the rest of us. He was a great favourite and a wonderful pet, always busy and inquisitive. Dwarf mongooses are carnivorous and also love eggs, which they manoeuvre up to a tree or rock and hurl between their back legs to break open. We used to tease Ricky-Ticky-Tavey by giving him a ping-pong ball instead of an egg and this drove him nuts, because it wouldn’t break as he thought it should and he would growl angrily at it. Usually, though, he would make a friendly chirruping birdlike peep as he went about finding food for himself: insects, reptiles and rodents. He had little ears, a long tail and short limbs, and was so gregarious that he wanted to be involved in whatever we were doing. We used to love cuddling him under our jumpers to keep him warm.

  This daily excursion, the vibrancy and chatter of family and animals, was so much a part of me that from a very early age I had no fear of animals whatsoever, more familiar with them, as it turned out, than my own shadow. It’s an old family story how once, when I was about sixteen months old, I thought something dark and sinister had attached itself to me as I tottered on to our verandah through the shade into a brightly sunlit highland morning, followed by my shadow. Apparently I bellowed with such gusto that people erupted from every door in the house. Fearing venomous safari ants, spiders or snakebites, my mother upended me for inspection, but there was nothing evident to account for my screaming. ‘Na lia bure. She cries for nothing!’ confirmed Sega, our Kikuyu cook. ‘Show us, Bay,’ urged my brother, Bay being the pet family name by which I was known (short for ‘Baby’) until Betty was born. I was set down and with trepidation pointed to the shadow behind me. There followed a great burst of laughter that was a mixture of relief and mirth. ‘Oh, Bay. You drip! It’s only your shadow,’ exclaimed Sheila. Oddly the first glimpse of my shadow remains starkly vivid, imprinted on my mind to this very day: that horrible sense of panic at the unknown.

  I was close to my siblings, for we were together daily in early childhood, tangled up in each other’s games and schemes. We spent most of our days outside. I doubt there are few places on earth as stunning as the East African stretch of the Great Rift Valley, born of movements and fractures of the earth’s crust some 15 million years ago. It has been said of the Rift that although it might have its counterpart on another planet, there is nothing like it on earth, for all the other rift valleys of comparable size lie deep beneath the oceans. Some 4,500 miles long and in some places fifty miles wide, the African section of this mighty geological trench runs through the Ethiopian highlands, clear through the highlands of both Kenya and Tanzania, to a point in the south of Tanzania near Mozambique, where it becomes obscure. It is studded with both ancient and recent volcanoes and with beautiful fresh and alkaline lakes, both types of which were within easy access of my father’s farm, situated as it was on one of the outcropping spurs of the Rift’s eastern wall at the foot of the Aberdare mountain range. The altitude of our farm was a little over 7,000 feet, so the temperature was always perfect: sunny days and cool crisp nights.

  My mother kept hundreds of chickens, which were confined in large bomas during the morning so that they would lay their eggs in the boxes provided for the purpose rather than in secret nesting places in the bush. It was the Chicken Toto’s job to keep the poultry out of the garden and vegetable patch when they were let out of their bomas to range free each afternoon, for the garden and front of the house were out of bounds for the feathered members of the farmyard. One of my favourite spots was a small wire-covered chicken run, where the broody hens sat on their clutches of eggs in little tin huts and the tiny newly hatched chickens and ducks followed their clucking mothers, miniature bundles of fluff that I could spend hours just watching. In ano
ther small covered run, near the garage, were our pet angora rabbits and these, too, were very special to me. Whenever I got exasperated with my siblings – a daily occurrence – I would run to the rabbits, ducks, chickens, the broody hens or the mother cat and her kittens in the cat-box and pass a comfortable, peaceful hour or two in their company.

  Like most colonial homes of the period, the rooms at each end of the house had large symmetrical bay windows open to a gorgeous garden and spectacular views and joined by a spacious verandah. My favourite room was our main living area, known as the sitting room. The walls were panelled in polished cedar and hung with lifelike paintings of buffalo, lions and a lone bull elephant. The curtains, easy chairs and settees were covered in floral patterns and the room was airy and light, perfumed by the wonderful scent of roses from the garden, which filled every available vase and were of every conceivable colour. Instead of carpets, leopard-skins lay on the floor, and apart from the piano the most cherished thing in the room was a large hand-carved mvule table, fashioned from one enormous plank of the valuable hardwood, which had been a wedding present to my parents. A windowseat with a lift-up lid, covered in brightly coloured cushions, ran along one wall, and became known as the dungeon – an ideal place for storing things, or in my case, a place to hide from Sheila when I had messed up her dolls’ house.

  My other favourite spot in the house was the kitchen – Sega’s domain – and Peter and I loved nothing better than hanging around the back door trying to get a bit of his delicious irio, a mixture of mashed potato, pumpkin leaves, peas and whole maize. As a reward for all sorts of endless errands, he would allow us a taste, though if we were feeling wicked and daring, we would help ourselves to a chunk when he wasn’t looking. The kitchen was detached from the main house, as a precaution against fire, and was accessed through a covered walkway. It was dominated by the Dover stove, which swallowed wood constantly and on which, in among the simmering brews of soup and other cooking pots boiling the leftovers for dogs and chickens, sat the flat irons used to straighten out our clothes. A small high opened window overlooked the woodpile outside, where, once a week, the African wives of workers on the farm brought a load of wood on their backs in exchange for a weekly portion of maize-meal and the two-acre plot on the farm for each family of workers, which they could cultivate and where they could graze a maximum of thirty goats and sheep. These smallholdings were known as shambas and were set a small distance from our house, and they were alive with the sounds of our workers’ families and smelled of smoke and cooking. Traditionally, the women of the Kikuyu tribe were the load-carriers within the tribe, so it was as normal for them to bring wood to our kitchen as to their own homesteads. The leather straps that attached the huge loads to their heads wore deep grooves into their skulls, and invariably perched on their backs was a toddler or two, while slung in folded hide hanging from the women’s necks would be a tiny suckling baby attended by hordes of flies. We were always incredulous at the weights these women carried on their backs and were fascinated also by their children and babies, who would stare at us as solemnly as we would regard them.