Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  Ominous words. But from those very early days, I really did come to love Tsavo. Every dawn gently wove a subtle spell on me as the sun rose in a fiery crimson ball, shedding a warm glow over the immense and mysterious landscape. I fell in love with Tsavo’s wilderness and its space and with the natural world it sheltered.

  And as the years ahead unfolded, it would not be just the landscape with which I would find myself in love.

  5. Falling in Love

  ‘There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm. There is delight in the hardy life of the open…Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer sees the awe-full glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed only by the slow changes of the ages through time everlasting.’

  – Theodore Roosevelt, African Game Trails

  Since I was a trained shorthand typist and book-keeper, I offered to help David out in the office. In between looking after Jill, running our home and planting up our garden with seeds and cuttings sent by my mother, I soon became immersed in the day-to-day workings of the Park. I loved being a part of the thrum and vibrancy of all that was going on. I shared David’s office – it was the only one in the Headquarters – and it was a hub of activity: the radio network buzzed constantly, reports from the rangers coming in from afar. As David’s anti-poaching campaign gained momentum, I took on responsibility for the upkeep of the ‘rogues’ gallery’, detailed, exhaustive files on every known poacher. I came to understand the severity of the poaching crisis, for during patrols Bill came across the sickening signs of slaughter at almost every waterhole – tusk butts, vacated hideouts, ashes from poachers’ fires, bones and broken calabashes. Carnage on a huge scale was going on.

  David’s brief was to develop the eastern 5,000 square miles of Tsavo and turn this vast, unexplored and inhospitable region into an accessible National Park that would attract and accommodate paying visitors – Tsavo East, lying to the east of the railway line from Nairobi to Mombasa. The remaining 3,000 square miles of Tsavo, the other side of the line, would become Tsavo West. David’s task was not easy. Carving out roads and paths in this hostile land of interminable scrub and barbed entangled undergrowth was back-breaking work. In the early days there was no earth-moving equipment, so huge stumps and boulders had to be levered laboriously by hand out of earth baked as hard as concrete. So intense was the heat that David had to allow all work to be routinely discontinued between ten in the morning and three in the afternoon so that the exhausted workforce could flop flat out under what shade they could find. Water, more precious than gold, had to be rationed, every drop carted from base. It was a very scarce commodity, since the 5,000 square miles of Tsavo East had just two permanent rivers. Both Bill and David suffered constant bouts of malaria, not to mention minor hazards such as scorpions, snakes, and charging rhinos and elephants that resented the intrusion of humans into their world.

  The northern section of the Park was very remote, with just one means of access, since the Galana River dissected the Park into two distinct halves, isolating the north. During the dry seasons, when the river was at low ebb, one could, of course, brave the crocodiles and hippos to wade the shallows and swim deeper channels – which the rangers did regularly during their routine patrolling. Nevertheless they were then confronted by a huge stretch of waterless country forming yet another effective barrier, with the next likely source of water the seasonal Tiva sand river some sixty miles away. During the two wet seasons of the year, both the Galana and the Tiva flooded, leaving an area of country in virtual isolation for several months on end. David recognized the urgency of establishing better access to the north and early on began work on a giant causeway to span the Galana River at one of its narrowest points. This entailed tramping up and down searching for a suitable rock seam that could form the foundation, and eventually he found a place just above Lugard’s Falls, where the Galana River was channelled into a narrow rock chasm of turbulent waters. The construction took a full year, with months spent breaking up the tons of ballast needed and frustrating delays every time the river swelled. But once it was done and the first vehicles were able to cross, the 3,000 square miles of the northern area became more easily accessible. Fifty years later, this original structure, made entirely by hand, remains a lifeline across the Galana, a living testimony to the skill and endurance of those pioneer wardens.

  While developing the Park, David also had the preservation of its natural habitat at heart. Tsavo was renowned for its elephants and black rhinos – in fact there were more black rhinos in the Park than anywhere else in the whole of Africa, as well as some of the largest tusked elephants in the world, giants that carried over 100lb of ivory on each side. It was these magnificent creatures that had, for countless years, been the target of both White Hunters and poachers. It was estimated that in the mid 1950s over 1,200 elephants and hundreds of rhinos were being poached each year, both ivory and rhino horn being valuable commodities, sold by the poaching fraternity to corrupt Asian and Arabic middlemen dealers at the coast before being smuggled to Far Eastern countries, where they fetched large sums of money.

  Ivory has long been coveted, fashioned by stone-age men into crude implements or used to prop up dwellings; as adornments to the palaces of Biblical princes and kings or carved into objects used by the ancient Greeks, the Romans and the Chinese. It saddened me that it should be no less prized in the twentieth century, when we had discovered so many alternatives. Elephant tusks were fashioned for modern-day Western markets into piano keys, billiard balls, carvings and chessmen, and in the East into chopsticks, marriage bangles and signature seals – hardly essential items. There was evidence too that it was used as a ‘white gold’ hedge against inflation and the vulnerability of paper money. Rhino horn was valued in the East for supposedly medicinal properties alleged to have mythical powers that cured a host of human ailments, such as impotence, rheumatism, fevers and poor eyesight. In truth, rhino horn is comprised of nothing more than keratin, the substance of a fingernail, so consumers could get the same thing simply through biting their nails.

  Poaching was taking an enormous toll of the Park’s wildlife, and David was determined to get it under control. The newly appointed rangers were not drawn from the fighting tribes and were reluctant to confront poachers armed with deadly poisoned arrows and also unwilling to apprehend members of their own tribe for fear of reprisals. David made impassioned pleas to the National Park Headquarters in Nairobi for the right sort of men and equipment so that he could at least begin to cope with the crisis, but Tsavo East was of low priority compared to other more attractive areas, so he had to make do with limited resources and foot patrols of inexperienced, under-resourced and reluctant men.

  Beyond the eastern Park boundary south of the Galana River was the home of the Waliangulu people, who were the professional elephant poachers, with elephants interwoven into their tribal culture. By the time we arrived at the Park, the monetary value of ivory had eroded their hitherto strict code of ethics and commercialism had taken hold. Now the very animal upon which their tribal structure and livelihood was based was being ruthlessly killed for gain. An even more sinister threat came from the Wakamba tribe, which hailed from the Park’s extreme northern boundary. Although not as skilled or fearless as their Waliangulu counterparts, they were proficient killers, hunting in gangs of up to fifty men. The two tribes seldom trespassed on each other’s hunting preserves, mutually observing an unwritten law reinforced by the threat of reprisals through witchcraft. In fact the Waliangulu despised the Wakamba, scorning them as inferior in hunting prowess, courage and bushcraft.

  Both tribes used poison to kill elephants and rhinos. Poison-making was a highly specialized profession, and a closely guarded secret of the Giriama tribe – the people of Bantu Swahili origin from t
he Mombasa coastal belt – who brewed and sold it. Ingredients included bark and leaves taken from the particularly toxic acokanthera trees, which were boiled in water for about seven hours with a few other ingredients added to the potion as it was rendered down to a sticky tar-like substance. The poison was deadly, active as soon as it entered the bloodstream, and could kill an elephant within a couple of hours and humans within minutes, disrupting the muscular rhythm of the arteries and heart. Before sale, its potency and effectiveness was tested on a frog or lizard jabbed by a thorn dipped in poison or injected into an egg that apparently exploded. In the absence of a live specimen or an egg, the seller would prick his own arm to make the blood flow, place a little poison in its path and see how quickly the blood turned dark. There was no known antidote to acokanthera arrow poison. Poison-making was a lucrative trade.

  The poison was applied to the arrowhead and its steel attachment and bound with cloth or hide as a protective measure. Upon impact, the arrowhead and its attachment separated from the wooden shaft, which was embedded with vulture feathers at the end as an aid to flight. Once detached, the poisoned arrowhead and steel attachment travelled on deep into the body, so that the poison entered the bloodstream while the wooden shaft could be retrieved by the owner and used again. The arrowhead was always marked with the owner’s special insignia, showing who owned the carcass, irrespective of who came across it first. Poachers usually waylaid their quarry by waiting in ambush at a strategic vantage point overlooking either a drinking place or a well-used elephant path, and when a suitable target presented itself, an arrow was fired into any part of the anatomy, avoiding the stomach. The stomach was not a good target, since stomach contents could neutralize the effects of the poison. A second arrow directed to the foot of an elephant ensured lameness, so that the animal would not be able to travel too far before dying.

  Meat from an animal that had died of acokanthera poisoning was in no way contaminated and could be safely eaten, usually being sun-dried in long strips back at a bush hideout. Tusks were hacked out of the skull with an axe if the carcass was fresh, or else drawn with ease once putrefaction had set in. They were then sawn into manageable lengths or buried in caches for collection at some future date, usually at the onset of the rains, when there was less chance of being apprehended. Occasionally, if the haul warranted the expense, porters were hired to carry the booty back to a base or to a rendezvous with a middleman buyer. He would then pass it on at a handsome profit to some unscrupulous dealer at the coast and from there it would be smuggled out aboard a dhow, ending up in the Far East where it fetched its true market value.

  Dying from the effects of acokanthera poison, particularly if the poison is not fresh, is cruel and agonizing, and some images still haunt me to this day: the torment of a dying cow elephant, surrounded by her distraught loved ones, frantic in their attempts to try to keep her on her feet, her tiny newborn calf already doomed by her impending death, but still desperately suckling a shrivelled udder that would yield no milk; a wounded bull drawing water from his stomach by inserting his trunk deep down his throat in order to suck it out and spray it over his fevered body, standing helpless in the baking sun, stress ‘tears’ pouring from his temporal glands, anchored by a foot too painful to put to the ground, five times its normal size; emaciated victims with festering wounds oozing black poisoned blood surrounded by flies, crippled giants in agony, hobbling along, every footfall torment. David voiced my thoughts graphically, saying: ‘I wish those responsible for this could suffer just a little of the pain that has been paid for their ivory trinkets.’ Difficult as it was for me to witness animals in such pain, I could see the anguish and strain felt by Bill and David, as they had to end the lives of those animals found beyond hope. The bodies of many were so poisoned that they simply exploded when a merciful bullet ended their agony.

  It wasn’t just poisoned arrows that killed the Park’s wildlife. Sinister double-ended hooks, baited with meat and welded to stout steel cables tethered to trees, were uncovered in the Galana River, set to poach the crocodiles so that they could be pulled clear of the water and clobbered to death. On another boundary of the Park, game pits dug into the ground by the Wateita tribe also took a heavy toll of wildlife. Cunningly camouflaged, these pits were often up to twelve feet long, three feet wide and nine feet deep and were positioned in long lines along well-used game trails, brush barriers several miles long laid at an angle of forty-five degrees to funnel unsuspecting animals towards the deadly traps. Sometimes beaters were employed to actively drive the animals in the desired direction. Normally the Wateita poachers visited the pits only sporadically, being mainly agricultural people, and any victim that had not already died of thirst was speared from above. One such fence-line discovered by Bill extended over 100 miles. Snaring through the use of wire nooses was another indiscriminate form of poaching, the nooses anchored to trees and shrubs, some positioned high up to trap taller animals such as giraffe by the neck. When an animal either stepped in, or put its head into a noose and tugged to free itself, the wire tightened to hold it fast, cutting deeper into the flesh as the animal struggled. Larger species such as elephants and rhinos usually managed to break free, but faced an excruciatingly painful death from horrific suppurating leg or neck injuries.

  Early on, the method of combating poaching had been to operate from a series of outposts situated at strategic points, but this system had proved ineffectual due to tribal affinities; many rangers were discovered to be actually colluding with poachers of the same tribe. When David found two elephant carcasses near the Sala Road – seventy miles from the Voi Park Headquarters – and the resident rangers based close by pleaded ignorance, he knew things had to change. Drawing on his army experience, he decided to train a mo bile force on paramilitary lines and recruited an ex King’s African Rifles Somali sergeant-major, along with a seasoned soldier who had served under him in Abyssinia and Burma. Meanwhile Bill was dispatched to the remoter regions of Kenya to recruit the new force – instinctive, fearless men from the Turkana, Samburu, Somali and Orma tribes who were skilled in bushcraft. On arrival they looked a pretty unlikely bunch – not one of them spoke a single word of Swahili, and from the way they stared wide-eyed at their new surroundings it was clear that this was their first contact with the outside world. And, from the way they stared wide-eyed at me, it was also clear that I was probably the first white woman they had ever seen. Astonishingly, however, within three months, after being put through intense military training, drill and target practice, these same wild tribesmen metamorphosed into a smart, disciplined unit which David named the Field Force. Now they were ready to go out into the field, as the embryo of what would become an extremely effective anti-poaching unit that would prove the blueprint for all the other National Park forces in East Africa.

  Over time, the new Field Force brought poaching under control within the Park, but this did not provide the lasting solution needed. The long arm of the law needed to be able to follow the poachers beyond the Park borders when they managed to escape with the loot, and, of course, there was an urgent need to tackle the sinister octopus of middlemen traders both at field level and at the coast. After endless discussions and reams of red tape, it was agreed in Nairobi that the same powers of search and arrest vested in the Government Game Department scouts and police should be extended to the Field Force rangers, thereby empowering them to arrest poachers in their home villages whenever there was sufficient evidence for a conviction. Anti-poaching patrols usually spent many weeks out in the bush before returning to base, so invariably captors and captives came to know each other quite well by the end of it all, even establishing friendships based on mutual respect and a common interest. Bill would spend unhurried hours happily chatting to prisoners over a campfire when out on patrol. Any discussion usually involved big tuskers and this always broke the ice, the poachers recounting tales of such encounters and other exciting bush incidents. As time went on they invariably became more relaxed and ever mo
re talkative, and in this way Bill was able to gather much useful information for the ‘rogues’ gallery’. Sometimes, if a prisoner proved very cooperative and volunteered information that led to the arrest of others, he was released against a promise not to transgress again or possibly even enlisted as a paid informer.

  The Waliangulu village of Kisiki-cha-Mzungu, some twenty miles from the Park’s eastern boundary, was known to harbour a host of wanted poachers. So, fortified by these new powers, members of the Field Force launched a series of night raids on this and neighbouring settlements. During one particular sortie, while his men rounded up known suspects, David came across a cluster of huts at the far end of the village and there, quietly contemplating the moonlight, sat a man who rose politely at his approach. ‘What is your name?’ asked David. ‘I am Galogalo – Galogalo Kafonde,’ was the reply.

  Galogalo Kafonde was the most famous of all the Waliangulu poachers – revered among his people for having killed hundreds of elephants – and for a moment David was rendered speechless, he was so taken aback. Having asked to search the huts and plot, he came across two enormous tusks hidden in undergrowth nearby, so Galogalo was duly arrested. During subsequent questioning he revealed that his four sons were operating in the Park from a hideout on the Yatta and he readily agreed to lead a patrol to them. Under the dim light of the moon and handcuffed to one of the rangers, he led the party along a narrow elephant trail, but when they were about two hours into the long walk he managed to slip out of the handcuffs and sped off into the night. David knew at once that it would be hopeless to try to follow; bitterly disappointed that one of the most notorious poachers had managed to escape, he ordered his men back to base. I had never seen David so crestfallen.