Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  We all shared his frustration, but a few days later pulses were once again racing, for a signal from the Game Department at Kilifi, on the coast, informed us that another infamous poacher, Wambua Makula, had been arrested. He turned out to be a very valuable informant. As well as knowing partners in crime from his own tribe, the Wakamba, he could also tell us a lot about the Waliangulu poaching fraternity, having been associated with them and having no liking for them. Consequently, my ‘rogues’ gallery’ swelled with information. All charges were dropped against him and he became an official informer and interpreter and a vital member of the anti-poaching team, leading the patrols to hidden hideouts near hitherto unknown water seepages along the walls of the Yatta. Wambua was a real character: wiry, slightly built, and short on teeth, he had a hollow-cheeked, cadaverous appearance and when he spoke, his nose bounced up and down against his chin, which mesmerized me. His encounters with animals were legendary and certainly livened up the office. He’d been tossed by buffaloes, gored by rhinos, mauled by lions, grabbed by a crocodile, caught by a python, and had narrowly escaped death on many occasions from elephants. With his help many poachers were eventually rounded up and brought to justice.

  Of course one informant, however informative, could not put an end to poaching, any more than one Field Force could. So it was with enormous relief that soon David got formal recognition from Nairobi that poaching was indeed reaching crisis proportions and needed to be dealt with more forcefully. Noel Simon, the executive head of the newly established East African Wildlife Society, was a far-sighted and practical man who took up David’s cause and lobbied the great and the good with amazing effectiveness. The Army Commander-in-Chief, the Commissioner of Police and the Chief Game Warden of Kenya all ended up convinced, pledging support to the creation of an enlarged unit that would be capable of covering the entire southeastern region of Kenya. In addition to radio field sets, a police Airwing plane and pilot and a police prosecuting officer were seconded to David. The Governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, gave the campaign his blessing, with a directive to all magistrates to issue deterrent sentencing to those found guilty of wildlife offences and to be especially tough on the dealers. This entire operation came under David’s overall command from Park Headquarters near Voi, now named ‘Poacher Control’. The Park’s Field Force was expanded and became known as Voi Force, and two additional Game Department anti-poaching units were also created – ‘Makindu’ force, which would operate between Voi and Nairobi, and ‘Hola’ force in the north, near the Tana River.

  David and Bill were elated. This was exactly what they needed to manage a truly effective anti-poaching campaign, and while a lot of developmental work around Tsavo had to go on hold, our HQ now became a hive of fevered activity. Several new officers joined us: Hugh Massey, an ex-army major, as well as three Game Department personnel, Ian ‘Chickweed’ Parker, David ‘Makebi’ McCabe and David Brown. The Prosecution Officer who shared the office with David and me was Alan ‘Chillicracker’ Childs. All the nicknames were mine. I have always had a tendency to attach appropriate nicknames that stuck to acquaintances, something that used to amuse my mother and the rest of the family. For me, a welcome addition to our staff was my brother Peter, who had been serving as an assistant warden in Tsavo West and was sent to join Bill in Tsavo East for the anti-poaching campaign. It was a busy time as the new forces were trained up and new staff accommodated. I was more than happy to be playing even a small part in support of wildlife, and happier still to have been given a brand new manual Remington typewriter.

  Jill was a calm and contented child and I liked to think she had inherited these traits from my mother and Granny Webb. She could amuse herself for hours, playing with whatever Nature could provide – sticks, pebbles or, better still, a beetle or ant that could be gently manoeuvred about in a make-believe game all of her own, steered along her various ‘roads’ and into a ‘house’ beneath a little stone or bush. As she became older, we settled into a routine: at 8 a.m. we ambled over to the Headquarters together, where she would play with her ‘Ayah’ while I worked. She was a great favourite at the office and particularly loved it when her father and uncle stopped to play with her. I, on the other hand, was becoming less enamoured with her father. His casual time-keeping had long been a source of frustration, even before we were married, for he would think nothing of turning up at any hour for a meal and expect me to produce something, or even not turning up at all after I had gone to a great deal of trouble. He was essentially laid back and happy-go-lucky in his attitude to life, and as we settled into marriage it became clear that I was expected to shoulder all responsibility for running our everyday affairs. In addition to bringing up Jill without much input from him, I was expected to handle our finances, settle the bills and cope with income returns and bureaucracy solo, ensure that the car was licensed and manage all domestic staff matters. I was the opposite of Bill. Like my father, punctuality was a priority for me and I liked to be organized and orderly. There were times when I yearned for a more assertive partner, someone who would share the load and at times take the lead. The seeds of incompatibility were sown early on in our relationship, and as married life progressed they became ever more pronounced, raising ever-louder alarm bells within me.

  One thing that Bill was not laid back about was hunting, and the hunting of elephants in particular. I had known this of course from the day I met him, for he purchased an annual elephant-hunting licence from the moment he was eligible. Although this disturbed me, while the stars were in my eyes I had overlooked it; however, here in Tsavo I found it difficult to reconcile the obvious pleasure he derived from it with his role as the custodian of the elephants’ safety. Furthermore, this passion of his was impacting on our life together, for whenever his annual leave came round, and I expected the two of us to take Jill on holiday to my parents, who were now living at Malindi, Bill would have an elephant-hunting expedition as a priority. Since in the course of his anti-poaching duties he was away a great deal, this meant that I hardly saw him and we were gradually drifting apart.

  The professional hunting fraternity – of which Bill was a part – was a vexing part of the Park’s fabric. Areas adjacent to Tsavo were classified as hunting blocks under the jurisdiction of the Government Game Department, where licensed professional hunters and their clients were allowed to shoot whatever animals appeared on their licence, for which they paid a fee. This was irrespective of the fact that the Game Department had no idea what stocks of game the hunting blocks held. It was feasible that a licensed hunter might shoot the last living lion in the area for all they knew, so their supposed ‘control’ of these areas was a myth. Furthermore, poaching was rife in these areas, since the Game Department personnel were thin on the ground and were usually fully occupied with dealing with wild animals that had intruded into settlements and were in conflict with the interests of humans. Discipline within the Game Department was lax, with a great deal of shooting ‘for the pot’ condoned and even practised among the officers, many of whom had joined more because they enjoyed the hunt than because they held any ideals on conservation. David was particularly intolerant of the professional hunters who skulked around the periphery of the Park hoping that one of its magnificent giants would put a foot across the border. I felt a sense of embarrassment that Bill derived so much pleasure from shooting an elephant, and even the National Parks’ director, Colonel Mervyn Cowie, frowned upon that fact, and voiced it to David. There had been a time when David had also hunted elephants during his professional hunting days, but since acquiring Samson and Fatuma, and as Warden of Tsavo learning so much about them, nothing was further from his mind.

  Having now been married to Bill for some six years, I found myself in a state of inner turmoil. In truth I could not blame this entirely on Bill’s inadequacies as a husband, for my initial feelings of respect and admiration for David were turning into something confusing and troubling. Every time I set eyes on him, something shifted inside me. I could not
avoid seeing him because he was part of my everyday life and I worked alongside him in the office. I realized, not without some guilt, that we had also been spending a lot of time together – time that was not strictly work-related. When Bill was away in remoter parts of the Park or on one of his hunting expeditions, rather than leave me on my own, David would take me along on game drives and sometimes to the Voi Hotel Saturday night gatherings.

  Saturday-Night-at-the-Voi-Hotel were words that fitted together as one, since it was almost an institution, mandatory for everyone in the district who happened to be around at the time to gravitate there after a week of hard labour and, for many, isolation. Voi was, after all, quite a social place during colonial times, for in addition to the Frenchmen brought over to install the new water pipeline from Mzima to Mombasa in the mid-fifties, there were about seventy other local expatriate European government officials as well as several managers on neighbouring ranches.

  It was at these parties that I saw the wilder side of David. Disciplined, focused and hard-working throughout the week, he certainly let his hair down at the Voi Hotel, renowned for his ‘paraffin trick’, which entailed blowing out a mouthful of paraffin and igniting it so that a long jet of flame shot across the bar. He enjoyed playing mischievous and amusing tricks on visiting revellers and winding up the rather long-suffering manager, Henry Hayes, a large genial Yorkshireman.

  I found my heart stirring with jealousy when I saw how attractive David was to other women. He was by far the most attractive man in the district and I soon noticed that he was the perpetual target of female admirers. There was one hot-blooded woman in particular who was an outrageous flirt, capable of drinking any man under the table, and she would home in on David the moment he set foot in the hotel. Shaking her dark curls and draping her arms around his neck, she would come on to him in a shameless manner. Although she was married, she had no qualms about seducing other men, even when her husband was present. David handled her masterfully, with a quiet amusement that simply enhanced the attraction, for he managed to retain an air of unassailability, even though her pursuit of him was relentless. It was interesting to observe David in the company of other women. They were invariably drawn to him, vying for his attention, even though he made no secret of the fact that he was relieved to be free of his matrimonial shackles, and repeated over and over again that he would never be tempted to fall into the same trap again. ‘I’m a loner,’ he told me, ‘far too selfish ever to make a girl happy.’ But when I danced with him and he held me in his arms, my knees went weak and my heart raced. I told myself over and over again that David was thirty-seven, way beyond my reach, and that I had a husband and daughter to consider, so I was careful to keep my feelings well hidden, happy to enjoy what I could of him while it was possible.

  David made the rugged aspect of Tsavo come alive for me, opening my eyes to the spell of space and the contrasts that transformed the semi-desert of brick red earth and grim leafless trees in the dry season to a vibrant painted paradise after the first rains. The first precious drops of rain had an intoxicating effect on us all, much as they had in Gilgil when my father had stood on the verandah with his arms outstretched, watching a curtain of rain approach. In Tsavo, when rainwater ran in red torrents down the roads and luggas, and the seasonal, normally dry Voi River ran in response to rain from the Taita Hills, we would pile into David’s little rubber dinghy and launch it into the flooding river, wobbling precariously as we battled to keep afloat amid all the debris being carried midstream.

  David and I sometimes went for a walk, times that were for me an enthralling nature study. No two walks were ever alike. David was a fount of knowledge, pointing out all sorts of things that most people would not even notice – the silken-lined hole of a trapdoor spider with its little lid neatly attached; a gallant dung beetle battling to roll his enormous ball before burying it deep in the ground; the frothy white baubles of the tree-frogs attached to the branches that held the spawn until the little hatchlings plopped into the puddles and pools beneath; the water beetles that could torpedo in any direction. As we went along, he would tell me how everything we saw fitted together. For him every living organism, however humble, was an integral and vital cog in the complex wheel of life, each with its own function, important to the wellbeing of the whole. He taught me to trust my instinct and common sense rather than seek complicated explanations to Nature’s riddles. He said: ‘You can always count on one thing and that is that Nature usually knows best and can provide the best solution under any set of circumstances, for Nature is adaptable. Don’t ever be fooled into believing that man must be obliged to play God, because when he does, he usually messes things up and triggers another set of problems.’

  Sometimes Jill and I would accompany David on expeditions to remoter parts of the Park when he had to visit various works-in-progress. As it could take all day to get to our destination, we would set up camp in the bush, sometimes for several days at a time, before heading home. Travelling to and from these sites provided an ideal opportunity to catch up on a backlog of paperwork, and I would take down dictation in shorthand as we went along and type it all up on our return. These excursions afforded me an opportunity to see places I had not visited before, for instance the 6,000-gallon water tank on Kiasa Hill – midway between the Galana and Tiva Rivers – established so that the anti-poaching patrols could operate in the north during the dry season, when there was no permanent water for over seventy miles. Over time, I came to know and love many of the remoter parts of Tsavo that I might never have otherwise seen. At Lugard’s Falls the force of water moulded the rocks into sculptural formations bejewelled with red garnet chippings; the Yatta Plateau, Tsavo East’s most striking feature, ran like a thin spine the entire length of the Park and beyond, the longest lava flow in the entire world; the Mopea Gap, one of two natural passes in the plateau, was worn down by the passage of millions of elephant feet over the ages, where we always apologized to ‘Rudolf’, an old bull rhino who had lived there in seclusion until the road disturbed his peace. Thabangunji was the second natural pass in the Yatta, where a lone boulder stood sentinel to graves of the forgotten braves killed in fierce fighting during ancient battles as they defended stolen livestock. David explained that warlike nomads had used this route long ago, preying on others less powerful, and in passing each warrior had tossed a pebble on to the rock, a ritual that was deemed to bring luck. I found it a moving experience to sit quietly by this huge rock, with the whisper of the wind sweeping down the pass, and contemplate ancient battles and fallen men buried under mounds of stone on the shoulders of the pass.

  There were many species in Tsavo that were new to me: little Peter’s gazelles; the graceful fringe-eared oryx; Somali ostriches, the males of which had blue legs and necks, and cerise shins and beaks in breeding plumage; the gerenuk, a graceful rust-coloured antelope that had abandoned its dependence on water entirely and which stood on its back legs to browse at a higher level. The black leaf-like patterning of their ears captivated me. Even under conditions of extreme aridity, gerenuk shunned water, resorting when hard-pressed to drinking one another’s urine, the moisture extracted from the vegetation they ate apparently adequate for their needs. David could talk about the habits of any animal we came across, but it was his insight into the elephants and their role in Nature that impressed me most and that made me realize just how knowledgeable he really was. He had told me of his interest in wildlife since his childhood, how his father had instilled a foundation that David had continued to build upon during his schooldays in England, his job as a professional hunter after the war and his time living in Nyeri. Yet listening to him, I could sense that this was his passion, something that came from knowledge but also from deep within his soul. Long before any studies of elephants had ever been undertaken, he said to me: ‘In order to interpret elephant behaviour, you must simply analyse it from a human point of view and that way, you will usually end up close to the truth, something the scientists have yet to l
earn. They seem to have an arrogant mental block about attributing to animals human aspects of behaviour, particularly in terms of emotion.’ Later, I would recall these conversational foundations upon which my own work rested.

  David called the northern area and its Tiva River ‘the jewel in the crown of Tsavo East’. Whenever duty called in the north, we tried to engineer a night at Tundani around the full moon, erecting our low Hounsfield camp beds in a row on top of a large outcropping of rock from where we could watch the nocturnal action. When the moonlight played on the pale sand, elephants emerged silently, as though from nowhere, dark galleons moving sedately, ivory trapping the moonbeams and gleaming silvery white. Then the rhinos arrived from the shadows on the riverbanks, each one intent on gaining possession of water in a hole in the sand dug by the elephants and, having got one, modifying it to accommodate head and horn. And after night-long activity the theatre opened for the diurnal cast – monkeys and baboons came down from the trees; mongooses scampered about, followed by giraffe, zebras, elands, flocks of sand grouse; doves, weavers, starlings, vulturine guinea fowl and then the raptors, falcons, hawks and eagles, in search of easy pickings. Gradually more and more creatures stepped into the riverbed to slake their thirst at the elephant holes, a symbiotic mass of coexistence, until an alarm sounded at the approach of a predator – a leopard, the lions, hyenas or large packs of hunting dogs. At this point the stage was rapidly vacated in a thundering of hooves and a flurry of flapping wings.