Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  I remember one occasion when, as humans, we experienced a magical moment, accepted as ‘belonging’ within the animal kingdom. We were in the riverbed, inspecting footprints in the sand, when a shy kudu appeared on the opposite bank. ‘Crouch down and pretend to drink,’ whispered David urgently. Then, with infinite grace, this beautiful animal with ivory-tipped spiral horns picked its way down the slope, walked straight up alongside us and began to drink from the neighbouring hole just a pace or two away. It was a special thrill to be trusted and accepted as a harmless member of the natural world and I shall never forget that moment as long as I live.

  For me these trips were heavenly, providing David with a brief respite from the intensity of the anti-poaching campaign and the day-to-day running of the Park. But it was soon back to business, and while conviction of the dealers who managed to slip through the net eluded us, there was every reason to be pleased with progress. By the end of 1957 almost the entire population of the Waliangulu tribe had either served, or were serving prison sentences – except of course Galogalo Kafonde, who still managed to keep one step ahead. At the end of their prison terms, David and Bill always tried to find employment for the ex-poachers that would keep them otherwise occupied. They were much in demand by safari operators in the country for work as spotters and trackers.

  Up-country, events were unfolding that would have a direct effect on the white settlers. Deep in the Aberdare forest, Operation ‘Hot Scrum’ had finally closed the net on the last of the Mau Mau insurgents, including the legendary Dedan Kimathi. Just prior to capture, this famous Mau Mau general seemed to have an inkling that his time was up. He had been seen dashing daringly across open spaces, something no seasoned Mau Mau fugitive would normally ever do, and having been on the run for twenty-eight consecutive hours, covering a distance of eighty miles, he collapsed and spent a lonely night on the edge of the forest. The next day he crept along the fringe of trees until he came to a point from where he could see the place where much of his childhood had been spent, and there he sat quietly all day gazing down at the sprawling patchwork of smallholdings and thatched huts. That night, driven by hunger, for the first time in more than forty months he set foot back in the Kikuyu reserve to snatch some sugarcane and unripe bananas before darting back into the shelter of the forest, and three days later, it was all over. He was captured by tribal policemen, who halted him with a shot in the thigh, and although he managed to drag himself back into the forest, he was found some time later. Once his wounds had healed, he was tried in the Supreme Court of Kenya, his charisma evident throughout the trial, the courtroom packed with people who had come from miles around to see this legendary figure. He was found guilty by a jury of African assessors and was hanged in February 1957; in the years ahead an independent Kenya would come to view Dedan Kimathi as a freedom fighter who epitomized the struggle to break free from colonial rule.

  With Kimathi’s capture, the last of the Mau Mau resistance crumbled and the five-year-long state of emergency officially ended. This was cause for celebration among the white community, of course, and we hoped that life would return to normal. But it was not to be. The winds of change were gathering in far-off Whitehall, blowing in towards the White Highlands, of which Cedar Park, my family’s farm, was a part. The strain of the Emergency years had taken a toll on my father and he began to talk of selling up, something we all found inconceivable. I had many sleepless nights thinking about how catastrophic it would be for him and my mother to give up thirty years of hard work and investment. The farm was our anchorage, our homeport in any storm. My father and his farmhands had laboured without rest, without bank mortgages, loans or help from anyone. I was relieved when I learned that he was putting the sale on hold and instead was leasing the farm while he and my mother took a long rest in Malindi.

  Malindi is only three hours away from Voi, on the direct route through the Park’s Sala entrance gate on the eastern boundary, and it was comforting to know that my parents would now be much more accessible. En route, they stopped to stay with us and catch up with Peter. We could see at once that my father was far from well. Disconcertingly, my mother noticed that things between Bill and me were not quite as they should be. She questioned me closely about David, and although I vehemently denied anything more than a close friendship, she knew me far too well to be fooled. ‘I can see the attraction myself,’ she said quietly. But thankfully she did not probe me any deeper.

  If she had done so, she would have intuitively realized within seconds how deeply in love I was with David. I had seen the fire of desire sometimes burn fleetingly in his eyes when he looked at me, but he was always quick to turn away and envelope himself in aloofness, leaving me confused. I was desperate to know how he felt towards me, but didn’t dare ask.

  6. Decisions

  ‘Man requires three things in Life: Identity, Stimulation and Security and the most important of these is Identity.’

  – David Sheldrick

  David filled my dreams as well as my days, thoughts of him flickering constantly in my mind. Knowing that our paths would inevitably separate at some point and I would have to live a lifetime without him, I made a conscious decision to make the most of the time we spent together. I had been getting to know him slowly over the years, storing away the thrilling biographical fragments he shared with me. I didn’t discover for quite some time that he had actually been born in Egypt, where his father had been serving in Alexandria during the First World War. He had come to Kenya as a child when his father took up a Soldier Settler Scheme to become a coffee farmer at Mweiga. However, while he would tell me things about himself, it was not easy to penetrate his reserve and get beyond the facts of his life, and I doubt that I would have become close to him had I not had the opportunity to work and sometimes party with him. I was sensitive to his inner quietness and soon learned not to pry and enquire too deeply. Of course, in my heart, I wanted to know everything there was to know about him.

  David kept his innermost thoughts to himself, no doubt the legacy of being sent to boarding school in England from the age of seven to seventeen. When I asked him if he had found it difficult being away from his parents for so long, he said, ‘I missed them and our home sorely to begin with, crying quietly into my pillow at night for months. But that passed and by the time I came home, I could hardly remember them. In fact, at the end of my time at school, I walked straight past my mother at Nyeri station.’ Actually David was the pride and joy of his parents, an only child, whom they adored. At school he excelled in sport, as a lightweight boxer and a fine horseman. When I met his mother, I could sense the fierce love she felt for her son and it made me realize the inconceivable sacrifices his parents had made in sending him abroad for his education. They must have been overjoyed when he came back to Kenya in 1930, after which he worked as a farm manager on the Kinangop. Never one to boast of his achievements, I had heard from many people that his outstanding ability as a polo player would have qualified him for the Kenyan national team had not the Second World War intervened. While David served in Abyssinia, Somalia and Burma, his parents once again waited stoically for him to return. They were rewarded when he was among those chosen to represent the East African contingent of King’s African Rifles at the victory parade in London.

  While he kept his thoughts strictly under wraps, I could sense that David was not entirely indifferent to me. When we danced together at the Voi Hotel and he held me close, I could feel his heart racing in unison with mine. On the rare occasions that I saw the fire of desire in his eyes when off guard, my heart sang, only to become disillusioned again when he became detached and apparently indifferent, too preoccupied by other things to even notice my presence. When one day he murmured, ‘Bill is a really lucky bloke,’ I was euphoric for days. Bill was not ‘lucky’, for our marriage had long been devoid of any passion. Now we were more like brother and sister than husband and wife, and when Bill confessed that he had made contact with Eugene, an old flame, I was surprised to find th
at I cared less about this than I did when David was pursued by other women.

  Jill was my greatest source of comfort and happiness, her childlike innocence so refreshing, her inquisitive and adventurous spirit blossoming. She adored David’s baby orphaned elephants Samson and Fatuma, and in the early evening we would sit together and watch them with a running commentary between us about what they were up to, what we thought they were thinking and what we thought they were ‘saying’ to each other. Jill already knew Fatuma very well. Even at the tender age of five Fatuma was showing a strong motherly instinct; she would often make a point of seeking Jill out and with her trunk would gently try to steer my little daughter between her forelegs, as a mother elephant would her calf. Jill, of course, had been brought up with the baby elephants and viewed them just as another child would a tame dog or cat. When Fatuma’s displays of affection happened to interrupt a special game, it was amusing to watch Jill fearlessly try to push the elephant aside. Fatuma was endlessly patient and gentle but she was also determined in her protectiveness, so it usually ended in a compromise, with Jill merely incorporating the elephant’s four column-like legs as she carried on with her game beneath Fatuma’s expansive belly. I knew enough to know that elephants never unwittingly step on anything they don’t intend to, and I could see that Jill’s every move was monitored by Fatuma’s highly sensitive trunk, as her soft brown eyes fringed with lashes as long as my hand gazed downwards shining with a calm intelligence, the eyes of an animal that thinks and understands.

  These were special times, of great consolation to me. Watching the tame orphaned elephants also took me outside of myself and I began to build a good understanding of their behaviour and habits, becoming absorbed in their routines and emotions. When you begin to look, you see things you did not notice before, or you look beneath the surface and ask yourself questions. I watched the myriad ways in which Samson and Fatuma used their trunks, marvelling at their dexterity. The trunk was an ultra-sensitive nose that could be raised like a periscope to test scent on the wind, or a hugely flexible and powerful arm, its tip divided into two nimble fingers to pluck or pick up food and water and carry it to their mouths. The trunk also added the loud ‘trumpet’ tone to an elephant’s voice that at first had startled Jill, although she was now completely used to it. We knew, of course, that the trunk could also be dangerous, capable of extinguishing life with just one swipe. A few years before, a young soldier stationed at the local army camp had walked jauntily up to an elephant and offered it a bun, just as he would an elephant in his English zoo, and with just one quick flick of the trunk the elephant had hurled him into the air, instantly crushing every bone in his body as though it were matchwood.

  I could spend hours watching the ways in which Samson and Fatuma browsed, deftly using their trunks to carefully search out one tiny shoot or strip an entire branch of its leaves in one swift operation. We marvelled at the ingenious way in which they removed bark, using their trunks to swivel a branch round their mouths, chomping a neat circle with their massive molars and then taking hold of a loose end with a finger of the trunk, allowing the branch to fall so that the bark peeled off in a long sliver. Alternatively, if they wanted a plant where nourishment was stored in the roots, they would uproot it, and with their trunks flap it against their forelegs to shake off the earth before eating it. And if a plant was difficult to grip because it grew too low, they used a front foot in conjunction with the trunk to lever it up from the ground.

  Both Samson and Fatuma knew how to turn on a tap with a twist of the trunk and would often pick up the hosepipe to place it directly in their mouths, thereby sparing themselves the trouble of first having to fill their trunks with water. However, not even David could convince them of the necessity of turning off a tap once they had quenched their thirst, which, to me, was perfectly logical from the elephant point of view. If, by a twist of the trunk, water could be made to flow in a parched land, why on earth would they want to stop it? Samson also had a flair for manipulating gates and early on had mastered the art of opening the door to his stable, stretching his trunk through the bars at the top to lift the latch, at the same time pushing against the door with his body to open it. And, ever the gentleman, having let himself out, he would then go round to Fatuma’s stable and open her door as well, this time reversing the procedure, pulling the door open instead of pushing it. David had been forced to devise an elaborate system of bars, locks and wires in order to keep Samson confined and out of his garden at night.

  I was constantly amazed at the sensitivity of their skin, for although it was thick and covered in rigid hairs, it was spongy and they could feel the touch of even a feather. Segmented like a giant patchwork quilt, the hide hung loosely over the hindlegs like baggy harem pants. The hairs of the tail were long and pliable and much sought after by the rangers, who plucked them from the bodies of the dead they came across in the Park to fashion beautiful, adjustable bracelets – that is, if the poachers hadn’t got there first. These bracelets were very popular and everyone, regardless of sex, in those days wore them with pride, for they were the stamp of a bush-loving person.

  The great ears, as soft and as smooth as silk on the hind side, were also accurate mood indicators that played a significant role in the subtle body language of the elephants. Sometimes we would see Samson and Fatuma spread their ears as though listening to far-off sounds, and when Jill and I were hot and bothered, we wished we could use our ears like fans as they did.

  I illustrated to Jill the role of elephants in ancient times by telling her about Hannibal’s legendary crossing of the Alps, and their service to men during war. They were depicted in early African rock paintings, and on ancient coinage. Of course I knew all too grimly how elephants were sought after for the ivory of their tusks and about the exquisitely carved objects dating from the past to the present day. However, in spite of long historical interest, by the mid 1950s there was a noticeable absence of scientific data about elephants, no detailed observational studies about their habits or the pattern and movements of herds. And while scientists often visited Tsavo, generally David’s opinion of them was not altogether favourable. I had seen him at his most frustrated once, when trying to persuade one group that in times of extremity, elephants were capable of drawing on reserves of stomach water by inserting their trunk down the back of the throat and drawing it out to spray over a fevered body, something he had witnessed many times – as had I – but astoundingly the scientists remained sceptical. He said, ‘I suppose it won’t be “scientific” until one of them writes it up as his own discovery in one of those scientific rigmaroles that no layman can interpret.’ Actually, in this case it was the camera that settled the matter once and for all.

  David had long set about gathering data in order to solve some of the unanswered questions about elephants himself. Having noticed my interest, he asked me if I had the time and inclination to help document the various experiments he was planning. Little did I know at the time how my involvement would come to shape my life.

  To begin with David believed it was crucial to ascertain the movements of the herds in the Park as accurately as possible, so as to assess the extent of their range. There were no such things as radio transmitters on collars then, so we had to find a way of marking as many elephants as we could. David constructed a rather primitive marking gun consisting of a container filled with paint, with a nozzle at one end and connected to a compressed air cylinder at the other. We decided to test it on Samson, in order to test its range, so one afternoon, as he was browsing just below the workshops, David squirted him with water. Looking puzzled and a little put out, Samson removed himself to more peaceful surroundings, eyeing David most suspiciously first over one shoulder and then the other, with his ears slightly raised. We couldn’t help laughing at his wounded ego, but David was satisfied with the result.

  We then took the marking contraption to a popular waterhole on the road to Mudanda Rock. From the top of a small rocky promontory my job wa
s to signal when a herd was approaching; David and a ranger meanwhile crouched hidden behind a spindly little sapling that I considered was barely adequate protection against an elephant. We were rewarded when a group of eight elephants turned up, led by a cantankerous old cow known to us as Flop Ears. She waded into the water ahead of the others, thirstily sucking up trunkfuls of water while I signalled to David. Anxiously awaiting the moment when a jet of white paint would hit Flop Ears, instead all I could hear was a faint hissing noise as a dribble of white paint oozed out of the end of the nozzle, dripping on to David’s shoes! Attempts to remedy the device immediately attracted the attention of old Flop Ears, who let out a blood-curdling trumpet, turned and hurled herself at the sapling, sending both David and his assistant into full-blown retreat. By the time David had been able to deal with the blocked nozzle and the next herd arrived, it was already getting dark, but fortunately this time the experiment was successful, marking a matriarch’s rump with a large splodge of white. As soon as she felt the spray, however, she too spun round and put on a furious demonstration that sent the men scrambling once more up the rock, while the rest of the herd stampeded. Obviously the rather limited range of David’s marking device was a handicap, but in spite of this, over the following weeks, we managed to successfully mark eighteen wild elephants.

  Keeping tabs on these elephants was another matter, for this was long before the days of any aerial surveillance capability. However, we chanced upon the marked individuals intermittently during our travels around the Park, one spotted close on seventy miles from where it had been marked, way out in the middle of the northern area. Coupled with regular sightings of elephants with distinctive tusk configurations, this meant that David now knew that Tsavo’s elephant herds were not restricted in their movements, but instead utilized the entire Park and beyond, depending on where rain had brought on a green flush of vegetation and been sufficient to replenish dried-out waterholes. They could be in the southern section of the Park one day and in the far north the next, for 100 miles was just a little stroll for an elephant. Although our paint experiment lasted only until the onset of rain, when the elephants plastered their bodies in red mud, it had served its purpose.