Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  My father had no choice but to accept the assignment and he did so with a heavy heart – not only because he had to leave the farm for six weeks at a time but also because of the destruction he was going to have to cause. By the end of the war he had shot thousands of wildebeest and zebra, and I know just how devastating this was for him. At least, if there is any comfort to be had, there was no one better than my father to carry out such work. He was a sensitive naturalist, a man who cared deeply about wildlife, and he ensured that no wounded animal was ever left to suffer the agony of a painful and lingering death. And he certainly helped keep the troops and prisoners-of-war alive, sending over 100 sacks of food every day to Nairobi from Emali, the nearest railway siding to his camp. Disappointed at first that as a farmer he had been assigned a non-combative task, he joined the Kenya Defence Force for part-time duties, but of course my mother was secretly delighted that he had not been sent to the front line, as was his mother, Granny Chart.

  Although I was young, I could tell that the war was of grave concern to the adults. My father would be glued to the radio every time there was a news bulletin, and all the grown-ups would be continually absorbed in deep conversations, their voices low and their expressions troubled. Only Grandpa Webb seemed to be energized, polishing brass buckles and his First World War medals – ‘Getting ready to fight the Germans,’ he told us, with great pride in his voice. Grandpa Webb had a bad leg, and I was very worried about how he was going to manage if he met a German soldier: ‘You will only be able to kick with one leg,’ I pointed out. With his characteristic humour, Grandpa Webb was not to be deterred and took to showing us how he would fight, hopping around on one leg using his fists as a decoy. Later though, in a more deluded moment, he presented himself for call-up to the authorities, resplendent in khaki and with an old-fashioned topi on his head. He was pretty incensed at being told that he was too old to be of much use this time around.

  Aged six, I joined my siblings as a boarder at the school in Nakuru. Mostly I liked school, and though sad when we were dropped off at the start of each term, I soon got used to the routine and to sharing my life with so many others. In that childlike way of wanting everything to fit nicely into place, I remember being confused by the words of the school song, which included a description of Lake Nakuru as ‘the placid lake below’, stating that I thought a lake needed to have water in it in order to be a lake! When we had stopped to take a look on our way from Gilgil, it had been a dry dustbowl where powdered soda soil was picked up by whirlwinds and showered like a sprinkling of acrid-smelling talc all over the town, including, as it turned out, the school. Fortunately, however, a little while later the drought broke and the rains transformed it, tranquil and beautiful; I watched in wonder as the birds came back – over 400 species in all, we were told – to join the pink spectacle of the resident flamingos. The flamingos lent what can only be described as an ethereal presence to the lake, like ballet dancers, their graceful necks bent delicately as they filtered the algae from the surface of the water. The pelicans and the shoals of fish, the little tilapia fish in particular, were equally interesting. At the lakeside you could see the males busily excavating their tiny breeding pits by picking up one particle of sand at a time, spitting it out over the rim and bombarding rival males with invisible jets of water. Whenever a female showed any interest in a pit, she was treated to an eager display by the male, side on, so that the light could reflect the pretty body colouring of the flanks. Mating took place above the pit, but as soon as the eggs were laid and fertilized, the female scooped them into her mouth and there, in due course, they hatched, the fry safe in the haven of her mouth until they were about half an inch long and ready to fend for themselves. Whenever my parents or grandparents came to take us for a picnic outing on the shores of the lake, I would spend ages mesmerized as I studied the fishes’ quaint habits.

  I was less enamoured of the ‘sick-bay’ routine at school. Every day after breakfast those that had to lined up for ‘treatment’, which was meted out by one of our ferocious teacher-spinsters. This was Miss Chart, the Matron, severely clad in starched white and with the gruff voice of a man. When I had first learned her name, I was terrified that she might be a relative of ours, but Granny Chart had assured me that she wasn’t. I was always in the line-up because my mother had arranged that I had to have extra milk, Virol and Scott’s Emulsion in an effort to put some more flesh on my bones – something that today is quite a family joke.

  Our headmaster, Mr Whiddett, dominated our schooldays, meting out the most humiliating punishments – acts that thankfully would not be tolerated today. I can still remember the feeling of dread as he prowled around the room like a leopard looking for pupils who had scored less than five out of ten in the weekly mental arithmetic test. Once spotted you would be hurled into the corner and made to declaim ‘I am stupid’, or literally picked up and thrown outside the door. On one occasion, we had to open our desks, put our heads inside and wait for him to slam down the lid. I ended up with a chipped front tooth but consoled myself that it was better than his usual treatment of girls, which was to fumble our breasts and mutter, ‘Coming along nicely.’ What made my parents invite him to our summer safari one year is something I have never been able to understand. I suppose in those days we did not realize that such behaviour was entirely unacceptable, nor talk as openly to our parents as children do these days.

  Of course there were kindly members of staff too – my class teacher, who took us all the way through primary school level, was a lovely bald-headed Welshman whom we called ‘Pop Davis’, and Sheila’s class teacher was Arthur Brindlay, a tall, genial Englishman. In an incredible turn of events some forty years later, Arthur was to become Sheila’s lover following the break-up of her long-standing marriage, something that floored even my parents!

  In 1940, as soon as the first long holiday came around, my mother took us to my father’s camp at Selengai. As soon as I saw the location of the camp I thought, ‘This is how I would like to live, out here among the animals under the sky.’ My father had established the living area in a grove of tall yellow-barked acacia trees that cast a deep shade over about an acre of land, and he had managed to utilize the area so that it was contained but appeared spacious. A large mosquito net, strung from a branch, covered our dining area, while on the outskirts of the shade was my parents’ sleeping tent with a cot for Betty, each space covered by nets. Peter had his own tent, which the Higginson brothers shared when they joined us, which seemed to be always. Our bathroom was a small enclosure of cut thornbush in which was a canvas bath, and the kitchen was situated to the side of the dining area with an eye to the prevailing wind. My father had made an ingenious safari stove from an upended army gallon drum and it even had a chimney, which meant my mother could bake the things we usually ate at home.

  Aside from drying the meat into biltong – sun-dried meat first soaked in tubs of briny salt water – my father knew exactly what to do with every usable part of the animal. He had set up a ‘biltong factory’ along with his indispensable aides, two Italian prisoners-of-war: Dario, a mechanic who spoke a bit of English and loved to make spaghetti – which, incredibly, he hung out on the washing lines to dry – and Ferrara, who spoke no English but was a skilled hide and skin tanning expert. I was a regular visitor to the ‘factory’, though I balked at the sight of the massive slabs of meat laid out on giant wooden boards. It was there that the forty employees of the Wakamba tribe, wearing their distinctive grass hats with zebra chinstraps and singing at the tops of their voices, soaked the cut-up meat in huge tubs of brine, salt, pepper and vinegar, leaving it overnight before hanging it to dry in strips on an extensive shaded network of wire lines. My father told us that all parts of the animal were put to good use: the hides of the wildebeest and zebra were bagged separately, bound for America, where they were made into machine belting; the bones were ground down into bonemeal for animal feed and fertilizer; the hairs from the manes and tails were turned into bristle
s for brushes and brooms. There was also leftover fresh meat – the offal in particular, which was not suitable for biltong and which my father gave to the Wakamba workers. There had been a drought in their arid tribal land, and by working at the ‘factory’ they were able to take back nourishment for their hungry families. They regarded offal as a delicacy.

  Compared to the sprawling nature of our farm and the winding corridors of my school, the camp was a perfectly organized enclave and I loved the different sections – the mess tent and kitchen area, our sleeping area, the biltong lines and the staff tents – and having all my family so close by. When we had visitors, Sheila and I had to vacate our tent to sleep under a tarpaulin open at one end, where my mother erected a barricade of camp chairs, its sides anchored by two planks of wood. It was at these times that my sister and I became somewhat edgy when darkness set in. The smell of meat attracted predators of all shapes and sizes every night, not least lions. Their roaring kept us awake, but what truly scared us, lying there in the pitch darkness, was the rhythmic rasping of their tongues as they licked the sides of our sleeping shelter. The lions could not resist the flavoursome tarpaulin, which had previously been used to carry salt. The thought that only a flimsy piece of canvas separated lions’ faces from ours was daunting, to say the least, and Sheila and I both wriggled up as close to the middle as possible, often ending up shoving each other out of the way while trying not to disturb the lions. We were much less wary of the resident leopard that lived around the camp, while the eerie calling and laughing sounds of the hyena didn’t worry us at all, for those epitomized the African night. Eventually, however, we would fall asleep, and would wake to the chorus of birdsong and a refreshing silence once all the predators had dispersed by sunrise.

  Every morning before the day’s activities began we had to endure the ritual of tick prevention. Ticks were everywhere and they got into every part of our anatomy, but although they irritated us like mad, I couldn’t help being fascinated by their splendid variety – striped legs, spotted legs, red legs, yellow legs, spotted legs with green stripes, so it went on. We didn’t have any insect repellent or sunblock in those days, so my mother rubbed Great-Granny Aggett’s good old cure-all combination of paraffin and oil over us. It didn’t make much difference, if truth be told, and in the evenings we had to stand still for what seemed like ages while we were ceremoniously de-ticked.

  Days in the bush were full of adventure. I was impressed with my mother as the driver of the carcass-lorry, and we would set off each morning with my father and Muteti, his Wakamba gun-bearer, who was an expert tracker and bushman. He and Muteti would jump out to stalk their quarry on foot, leaving my mother and us children in the lorry. The vultures learned to follow the lorry, knowing it would lead to a kill and a meal, and they would circle overhead eyeing the meat. My father could look up from wherever he was and, from the position of the vultures in the sky, know exactly where we were. I thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of the occasional rhino chase, for this caused a real adrenalin rush. If we stumbled upon a rhino at close quarters and it turned to charge, my mother would have to drive away at a ferocious speed, bouncing over anthills and pig-holes, threading a tortuous route through stunted thickets with an angry rhino huffing and puffing hot on our heels. I can only imagine that her heart must have been racing faster than the engine.

  We were at the camp for the full six-week cycle. I would often remain behind in camp and jump on the lorry heading down to the Sand River – the lifeblood of the area – to fill the drums with water drawn from a deep hole excavated in the sand. The water in this hole was clear and pure, having been filtered through the riverbed sand, and we all drank it without a second thought. We sat in the cool shade, from where we could watch the game come down to drink in the shallow pools: the sand grouse settling in soft sandy clouds to drink, and the little dwarf mongooses that reminded me of Ricky-Ticky-Tavey busily scuffling in the debris beneath the trees, looking for insects and disappearing down the holes of the anthills when disturbed. The Masai would bring their huge herds of cattle to drink at the river, and because of the dry sand it would take the entire morning to get all the animals watered. I was calmed by the patience of two of the young men, who organized them in such an orderly way. Back at camp, local Masai men and women would come round to touch our hair, truly puzzled as to how we made it and attached it so firmly to our heads, but we weren’t really able to talk to them to explain! And when we were playing music on our wind-up gramophone, they would turn away, startled by this talking contraption which for them bordered on magic. For me, as well, it seemed close to magic, for I could not yet fathom how it worked either. Sitting for hours by the water we children were able, through gestures and expression, to communicate with these young Masai men. They seemed to like children, for every few days they would come to the camp and offer my parents and us a calabash of milk and blood, which had a strong smell of smoke. The blood bit did not appeal to us at all, but we thanked them politely and in exchange often gave them empty bottles, something they truly appreciated as receptacles for milk.

  These were days of discovery. That is how I remember Selengai as a child, but later, when I heard my parents talk of this period of our lives, I realized just how difficult the upheaval was for them and what a grim toll that work took on my father. For me, the hours of observing the habits and patterns of such a wide variety of wildlife at such close quarters contributed hugely to my lifelong connection to Nature. I learned a great deal, not least from an orphan of the time named Punda, a tiny zebra foal. Out one day on the plains, a heavily pregnant mare fell to Dario’s gun, and when one of the helpers immediately opened up her stomach cavity to haul out the viscera there was a uterus in which a foetus was stirring, obviously waiting to be born. A quick slash of the knife opened the bag and the baby, all wet and sticky and kicking feebly, gasped to draw its first breath. It had entered a cruel world in a tragic way, and when my father arrived on the scene he extracted some of the vital colostrum milk from the mother’s still warm udder to reinforce the foal’s natural immune system. We were the first moving objects that the baby saw, and, having staggered on to wobbly legs, he walked straight up to me with an innocence and an implicit trust that touched my heart and made me want to protect him for ever. We lifted him on to the lorry, where he snuggled up beside me, and as soon as we got back to camp, my mother and I mixed the colostrum milk with some sweetened condensed milk in a baby’s bottle and I fed him with as much love as I could show. Thereafter, observing Punda develop from the moment of his birth allowed me a valuable insight into zebras, as we brought him back to the farm with us where he settled in well, making friends with everyone, especially the dogs. Sadly, this was to be his undoing, as several months later he followed the dogs down to the sawmill in the forest and was never seen again.

  And so, as I edged into double figures, the war years passed. Near Gilgil town there was a large army staging depot, which was always a constant buzz of activity as supplies and soldiers came in and out. My parents offered our farm as a retreat for injured servicemen and women from the fighting in neighbouring Abyssinia or Italian Somaliland, and I can still vividly recall some who stayed with us – not only because they spent so much time recounting their experiences but also because they brought us treats of imported biscuits and sweets. My parents formed deep and lasting friendships with some whose paths would never have crossed with ours in less forbidding circumstances. When peace was declared, even though the main fields of battle were so far away in Europe and Burma, there was much talk in our community of the atrocities of war, the loss of so many valuable lives, of lessons being learned, and prayers for a better future for our generation across the world.

  Back at school, I did well at the academic side and applied myself diligently to the curriculum. My mother had given us a good grounding. When news came from home that my father’s biltong location had been changed to the Narok district and our safari would now take place in the Mara – a lush area that be
nefits from Lake Victoria and higher rainfall, providing a good habitat for animals – Sheila and I ran around in great excitement, but when my sister turned the page over to read on, her face fell. ‘They have invited Mr Whiddett to come too,’ she said, and in the look we then exchanged, it was clear that we were appalled and would not be going to make things easy for him.

  However, even this blow could not spoil our excitement as the holidays drew near again. Today the Mara is the most famous tourist wildlife paradise on earth, but back then it was undeveloped and untouched, pristine and beautiful, with a greater abundance of animals than even the Southern Game Reserve. Our camp was near Subutai, a sugarloaf hill in an extensive grove of tall yellow-barked acacias about thirty miles from the Uaso Nyiro River. We thought it might even have been on Great-Grandpa Aggett’s original holding, and were entranced all over again by my father’s stories of his pioneering family. Setting up camp, Sheila and I made sure we were as far away as possible from Mr Whiddett, managing with a bit of prompting to get his tent erected way out on a limb on the far side of the camp.