Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  In 1961, Peter had come back from the northern area to Tsavo East to work with David and moved into the house further round the hill where Bill and I had lived when we were first married. Huppety struck up an immediate friendship with his tame bushbuck, Mr Koo, so much so that Huppety refused to return home, preferring instead to spend nights out with Mr Koo. Having already eaten Peter’s unopened correspondence, containing a letter from his fiancée in which meticulous wedding plans were outlined, Huppety made herself even more unpopular by chewing up more of my brother’s possessions, including the paintwork of his precious red sports car. This last misdemeanour turned Peter positively apoplectic, with much of his fury directed my way for ‘not being able to control that blasted zebra’. Before he left Tsavo for his wedding, he put his car in the workshop garage and fortified the entrance to his house with a barricade of barbed wire and drums.

  Peter’s wedding to his English-born fiancée, Sarah Woodall, took place in Nanyuki, just beyond Nyeri, north of Nairobi, the 17,000-foot snow-clad peaks of Mount Kenya providing a stunning backdrop. David was anxious throughout the proceedings, fearing that our baby would make its appearance at any minute. Knowing that this was a distinct possibility, I was glad of my mother’s calming presence. Jill loved her pale yellow bridesmaid’s dress and being able to run around with her cousins at the reception in the beautiful grounds of the Burguret Estate. Afterwards we returned to Nairobi, where we were staying with my younger sister Betty and her husband, Graham, until the baby was born. David seized the opportunity to undergo training for his private pilot’s licence, so that he could fly Tsavo East’s newly acquired Supercub aircraft. In typical David fashion, he was sufficiently proficient to go solo after only eight hours. Having a plane at Tsavo would be transformative, enabling us to conduct aerial surveillance over the entire Park, track the movements and patterns of different species more easily, ferry supplies to the Field Force rangers operating in remote corners, and observe changes to the habitat.

  During the evening of 30 June, five days after my due date, I went into labour, so David took me to hospital and dropped me there, there being no question in those days of a man being present at the birth. We were confident that our baby would be born within a few hours, but how wrong we were! Our baby daughter, Angela Mara, arrived seventeen hours later, at 11 a.m. on 1 July – ‘a funny little Pip-Squeak’, said David, gazing into her somewhat wrinkled face. From that moment on, she became known as Pip, sometimes interspersed with Squeak. She was a great delight to Jill, since at eight years old she was happy to both help look after and play with her baby sister.

  I remained with Betty for a few extra weeks, David returning to Tsavo by air, piloting the Park’s new Supercub registration 5Y–KTP, known to all thereafter as Tango Papa, and it was in Tango Papa that David took Angela and me back home to Tsavo. In the interim, Peter had arrived back from his honeymoon and had ‘dealt’ with Huppety as threatened. He had taken her back to the Galana River, not far from a wild herd of zebra, who had taken a great interest as this pretty young filly emerged from the back of a truck. I hoped that in time Huppety would become a mother herself and enjoy her life back in the wild. Although I was upset at first, I was relieved that I did not have to worry about Huppety and her impish ways. I was busy enough looking after my new baby.

  Angela was just over five months old when Kenya became fully independent on 12 December 1963. We sat listening to the radio as the announcer described the lowering of the Union Jack and the hoisting of the new Kenyan flag – a shield and crossed spears against a black, red and green backdrop. The Duke of Edinburgh represented the Queen, handing over the instruments of government to Jomo Kenyatta, the new President of Kenya. There had been changes in the Royal National Parks also, which again became just the Kenya National Parks, dropping the ‘Royal’ prefix. The first ‘expatriate’ to be ‘Africanized’ was the founding director, Colonel Mervyn Cowie, but down in Tsavo we carried on pretty much as usual, answerable now to a new Kenyan director, Mr Perez Olindo, who was accommodating and amiable. Most of the white members of the Board of Trustees were replaced by indigenous black Kenyans, and many of our Game Department colleagues took their ‘golden bowlers’ and either retired into civilian life or left the country, also replaced by local Africans.

  Since the arrival of our Supercub, safaris had become much less frequent as David could now cover the Park by air, communicating with the field patrols through the plane’s radio network. So when he had to make a journey by car to the Athi, I decided to go along, taking Angela on her first ever safari. It was with some degree of nostalgia that we passed the baobab tree where Gregory had been born, the nests still clustered along its mighty boughs, and when, further along, we passed the high ground where our camp had stood during the floods, I thought with fondness of Old Spice. I have to admit that this safari was something of a challenge. Our six-month-old baby required a serious amount of paraphernalia, and the heat of Tsavo made her fractious, so there were frequent stops en route to fill up the little canvas basin, plonk Angela in it and sponge her down. Once settled at our old Kitani ya Ndundu campsite, I sat Angela in the portable seat that hooked on to the outside of the car door and then proceeded to spend most of each day trying to wash soiled nappies, which took on the colour of the brown river water, or sterilizing bottles and teats in cleaner river water collected in a hole dug in the sand. Our campsite was just a shadow of its former self, many of the huge shade trees and doum palms lost to the 1961 floods. However, it was encouraging to find that rhinos were still numerous along the river, and every drive from our camp was an adventure, with huffing and puffing rhinos charging as we passed by.

  During one early morning drive we came upon six crocodiles feeding on a waterbuck in shallow waters, and we watched as the crocodiles spun over and over, twisting pieces of flesh from the carcass, throwing their heads back and gulping it down with snapping jaws. Several marabou storks stood around, bravely taking an interest in the scraps that drifted their way. As usual, my sympathies were with the victim, visualizing the desperate struggle that must have taken place before our arrival. David had once witnessed a crocodile seize a waterbuck doe in shallow water, and in response to her agonized bellows, her mate ferociously and repeatedly tried to horn the crocodile in an attempt to force it to relinquish its hold. The crocodile never even flinched, steadily dragging its terror-stricken victim to a deep channel where soon only a few bubbles were evidence of the doe’s last struggle for life. The male watched the place where his mate had disappeared for several minutes, breathing heavily, before turning and slowly walking back to the bank. Of course dramas such as this were enacted several times a day, every day of every year, in the natural circle of life, but witnessing the suffering of any animal was very painful for me.

  On arriving back home, we learned that our young orphaned rhino, Rufus, had been involved in a scuffle with a fully-grown wild rhino that had rushed out of a nearby thicket and with a tremendous snort tossed him high into the air, injuring him where it hurt most. His keeper had shinned up the nearest tree in fright, leaving Samson to come to Rufus’s rescue, which he duly did, trumpeting and charging at the aggressor. Since the departure of Fatuma and Kanderi, Samson and Rufus had become comically inseparable. When they played, Samson would kneel or lie down, whereupon Rufus would lower his head, roll his eyes until the whites showed, snort defiantly and charge at Samson, butting him as hard as he could with his horn. This never made much impression on Samson, who managed to ward off the impact with his trunk, wrapping it around Rufus’s neck in a vice-like grip that almost throttled him. Puffing with indignation, Rufus would then have to hastily reverse in order to disentangle himself but within a few seconds would mount a fresh onslaught, which ended up exactly as before, until eventually Rufus would accept defeat and begin to wander off. Angela adored all the orphans, clapping her chubby hands in delight every time she saw them. A great treat for her was a ride on Rufus, sitting on his broad back held in place by ei
ther David or myself. Rufus didn’t mind a bit and even seemed to enjoy the extra attention, as well as the sensation of having Angela aboard.

  Interestingly it was Rufus who donated the most intriguing sample to David’s ‘museum’. This was my husband’s ongoing delight, a treasure trove of artefacts painstakingly collected over the years. He was always looking for intriguing items to add to his collection, though I did not think that a large beetle-like bot from Rufus’s freshly passed dung would have been of so much interest. Carefully housed in a bottle with a layer of soil at the bottom and a closed lid in which small holes allowed the passage of air, the bot very soon disappeared into the soil and the jar was placed in a corner of the room where we promptly forgot all about it. All of us that is, except David, who a few weeks later noticed a large metallic blue insect inside the jar.

  This creature turned out to be the gyrostigma fly – this one artificially hatched – a curious insect whose very existence depends upon being able to locate a living rhino within five days of being hatched, so that it can anchor its tiny white oblong eggs firmly in the soft indentations of the rhino’s skin. After six days, tiny looped worm-like creatures the size of a comma emerge which, it had been assumed, gained access to the stomach through either the nose or the mouth of the rhino. However, we soon discovered that they simply bored straight through the hide to enter the bloodstream and from there somehow finally ended up as the large beetle-like bots present in the stomach of almost every living rhino. Even today very little is known about this fly other than that different established rhino populations have their slightly different versions of the fly that have evolved alongside them down the ages. Most of the fly’s life cycle is thought to be in the bot stage, actually inside its host’s stomach, feeding off the contents in a seemingly symbiotic relationship, though David felt sure that a high infestation might turn parasitic when the rhino became old or fell into poor condition during periods of drought. How long the bot stage lasts within the stomach of the rhino before being expelled remains a mystery, but one thing we did find out was that the bots had the ability to assess conditions in the outside world at the onset of the wet season by appearing briefly at the anal opening and, if the prospects were not to their liking, retreating back from whence they had come. If conditions were looking good, mature bots emerged with the dung, pupated in the ground and eventually emerged into the metallic blue, wasp-mimicking fly that David found fluttering in his bottle.

  It was rare that David had much time for his ‘museum’. By the mid-60s the Park was busier, with more visitors coming in each week. The new self-catering bungalows at Aruba Lodge, bordering David’s man-made lake (this, his original Aruba Dam, was large enough to be termed a lake), were particularly popular, being booked up months in advance. A small shop had been established, selling tinned food and soft drinks, and petrol was available through hand-pumps. David had stocked the lake with tilapia, and by now a thriving fishery at the lake edge brought in a steady stream of income for the Park as well as providing a fresh source of protein for the rangers, keepers and other members of staff. Gill nets were set at night and the morning’s catch was gutted and stored in large insulated tanks that were filled with the dry ice brought up twice a week by a supplier, who came to collect the tank’s contents to sell them in Mombasa. Angela and I were often down by the dam as the nets were brought in to get some of the fish for our supper.

  I was living a full and varied life, deeply in love with David, but happiest when Jill returned from school and my family was complete. David was a wonderful and loving father to Angela and a very attentive and caring stepfather to Jill, and he was careful never to usurp the role of her real father. With an aircraft now at his disposal, aerial surveillance sorties of the Park became a daily routine. David would take to the air after the 7 a.m. radio exchange between the Nairobi Headquarters and all field stations, fly for several hours and, on his return, buzz the house, throttling back the engines and shouting out of the window: ‘Get the coffee ready.’ We could hear his words clearly from the ground, and at the sound of ‘coffee’, the person nearest to the kitchen would switch on the kettle. I was also immensely busy during this period and the days would whiz by in a frenzy of activity. Evenings were special, especially when David and I could have some time for ourselves and discuss the day’s events.

  With the poaching threat of the 1950s having receded, the elephants now understood that Tsavo provided protection for them; their numbers multiplied and this had a massive impact on the Park’s vegetation. David worried that browsing species such as gerenuk, kudu, dikdiks and rhinos might be affected adversely and continued to press for an in-depth scientific study to try to unravel the effects of such changes. He was resolute in his wish to avoid the artificial slaughter of elephants, South African style. There, elephant numbers were being strictly regulated by the annual cull, which, although surgical in proficiency, was particularly cruel and unpalatable to those who understood the very human emotional side of elephants. We knew only too well that there, family units were targeted from helicopters using the immobilizing drug scholine, in order to avoid contamination of the meat that would render it unfit for consumption. Scholine collapsed the muscles, leaving the elephants fully conscious yet unable to move even an eyelid while they waited for the gunmen to move in on the ground and systematically finish them off with a shot through the brain. Sickening scenes were recorded on film of men jumping on huge inert bodies to get a better vantage point from which to end the life of others, paralysed elephants knowing exactly what was going on and having to watch helpless as their family members were butchered one by one. We were stunned at the distressing images of panic-stricken calves crying for help from adults incapable of movement. Calves that might be able to survive without milk were then captured for subsequent sale to circuses or zoos. The fully milk-dependent tiny calves were usually the last to be slaughtered, but at least they were spared a lifetime of suffering and bondage in far-off lands where animal welfare was still apparently a very alien concept.

  Once the entire elephant family was either dead or subjugated, the merciless butchers then moved in to cut up the carcasses and remove all the meat to huge abattoirs for processing, after which it was either dried and sold as biltong, or canned for pet food and even for human consumption. And having completed the grisly annual slaughter, grieving elephant survivors were allowed a brief reprieve of just one year to mourn their lost loved ones before the helicopters were mobilized and the carnage began all over again. We had been told that just the beat of a helicopter sent every elephant into panic-stricken flight, running for their very life, knowing that this time it could be their turn. In the elephant world, word silently spreads over distance like wildfire through their mysterious means of infrasound communication, so even those far removed were getting the message.

  David had an intimate knowledge of elephant intelligence and sensitivity, of the strength of their family ties, and their very real sense of death. He knew how deeply they mourned their loved ones and that their powers of memory far exceeded our own. Few people understood what David had learned during the anti-poaching campaign and from the close observation of our orphans. We talked a lot about how best to handle Tsavo’s so-called ‘elephant problem’, knowing that a cull had already been suggested by the powers-that-be. Before all else, an accurate count of Tsavo’s elephant population was needed, for there was little idea of the true number. Fortunately, the British Army was willing to help in an intensive count as a training exercise. There was great excitement the day the Army Air Corps arrived, bringing with them three Beaver aircraft and two helicopters, maintenance and ground crew, petrol tanks, camouflage gear and all the usual equipment necessary for a training exercise. It so happened that on that day the orphans were feeding close to the Park’s new state-of-the-art airstrip, so they came by and lent a hand, Samson rolling drums of fuel along the ground and inspecting the aircraft with his trunk and Rufus less eager to become involved, huffing and sno
rting suspiciously at the strange intruders into his territory.

  Together with the commanding officer, David worked out details of how the count would be undertaken. The Park was divided into blocks, each of which could be covered in a day and, in order to avoid duplication, arranged so that adjoining blocks could be counted simultaneously by different aircraft. The aerial count went like clockwork; with military precision, each aircraft, with experienced observers on board, was assigned a specific block to count during the course of a day, at the end of which dots, each representing ten elephants, were marked on a map.

  Final figures of the count showed that instead of the 5,000, as originally estimated, there were in fact 9,000 counted elephants, with some 15,000 in the ecosystem overall encompassing an area of some 16,000 square miles, twice the size of the Park itself. ‘Seeing is believing,’ observed David. He now had a minimum number, but suspected that there were probably more. Operation Count had been a huge success and it was with some sadness that we said goodbye to the soldiers. They had been a lively presence in the Park and their assistance had been invaluable.

  From regular aerial surveys over the Park, and now that the elephants were opening up the commiphora thickets, it was evident that the grazing species were proliferating and becoming much more visible. Formerly small isolated groups of zebra, buffalo, oryx and other antelopes were joining up to form sizeable herds in what were now becoming open plains. However, the untidy debris of trees knocked over by the elephants, which littered the landscape, was the focus of public attention and pressure was mounting through the press for something to be done. Conditioned to the belief that only a reduction in the number of elephants South African style would save the Park from degenerating into desert, armchair experts raised their voices in growing numbers. Every scarred baobab became a talking point, and every pile of bones was linked to starvation and the ‘destruction’ of the habitat caused by ‘too many elephants’.