Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  So we set off to the final meeting with the Maralal councillors, as though nothing was amiss. During the meeting only I knew that David was in pain, due to the flexing of his jaw muscles and his greyish pallor. When we returned to the car he asked for another pill, and as the pain gradually fell away, he told me how much he had enjoyed our time together and how the meetings and plans for the Reserves could not have gone better. The road from Maralal to Rumuriti was, to put it mildly, diabolical. We bounced, bumped and banged our way from one pothole to the next, so much so that all the crockery in the lunch box was smashed, as were the binoculars and David’s prized large camera lens. I was relieved when we arrived at Thomson’s Falls, for the road from that point on was tarred. While at Thomson’s Falls, David insisted on negotiating the steep slope to get a better view of the 300-foot cascading waterfall, named in honour of the early explorer Joseph Thomson, and I reprimanded him for doing this, noticing that he stumbled on the way back, ashen and drawn. He asked for another tablet and I remonstrated with him as we set off once more, but he was silent.

  Finally we hit the outskirts of Nairobi, and I suggested that we should drive straight to Nairobi Hospital, but he adamantly ruled this out, saying that all he needed was a warm bath and his own bed, promising however to ring the doctor as soon as we got in. Once at home, uncharacteristically, he allowed me to do the unpacking and went straight in for a bath, during which an old friend from our Tsavo days popped by. David emerged in his dressing-gown to greet him and in the comfort of our living room, over whisky and soda, they discussed the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Leaving them to it, I rang John McCaldin, our doctor, who asked to speak to David directly. Dr McCaldin said he would come to the house if David was worried, but David assured him that this was not necessary and that he would come to his rooms first thing in the morning. Dr McCaldin thought that the symptoms suggested a gall-bladder problem.

  Once our guest had left, I suggested David go to bed, and although it was early, I turned in myself, feeling utterly exhausted from the night before. Sick with anxiety and worry, I just wanted to get through the night so that we could get to the doctor. David was composed and relaxed, insisting that I lie with him while he read. I was overwhelmed with relief that we had made it back in one piece, and that help was not far off. I fell into an exhausted, jittery sleep.

  14. Grief

  ‘He lieth under the shady trees in the covert of the reed, and fens.

  The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about.’

  – Job 40: 21, 22

  During the night David asked for another pill, and as he placed it under his tongue, he asked the time. It was 11.30 p.m. Before I could answer, he fell back gasping, his eyes rolling back in his head. I knew at once that he was dying.

  My hands shaking uncontrollably, I fumbled for the phone and called the doctor at his home number, but there was no reply. I dialled Sheila instead and stammered out a cry for help. Lifting David’s head, I tried slapping his cheeks but he didn’t respond, so I put my mouth to his and desperately attempted to breathe life back into him. His eyes were open and unseeing. I dashed to the back door, calling out in my distress until Mwangangi, our loyal member of staff who had come with us from Voi, emerged, bleary-eyed. As soon as he saw David, he jumped into action; together we hauled the mattress off the bed with David on it and carried him to our station wagon, hurriedly putting down the back passenger seat so that he could lie in the back with his legs sticking through the boot door. Mwangangi sat holding David’s lifeless body to stop him falling out of the car. Barefoot and in my dressing-gown, I drove to the Nairobi National Park Service entrance, yelling for someone to come and open the gate, and it seemed an eternity before anyone did. At break-neck speed I made straight for the hospital, screeching to a halt just outside the casualty section. I ran in, shouting for help, and though it was only a few moments later, it seemed like an eternity before a stretcher, an oxygen cylinder, a doctor and nurses were mobilized and hurrying past me to the car to collect David.

  For the next twenty minutes everyone battled to try and restore him, and as they did so, I went out into the dark car park and prayed to God to please spare him and not let him die. When the doctor came and stood beside me, I did not need any words because his silence and his arm round my shoulders said it all. The world seemed to stop turning. I was in such deep shock that I felt as though I would faint. The doctor was talking, but I had no idea what he was saying. I wanted to die as well.

  They took me to him. He was lying on a concrete slab clad only in his kikoy. He looked his handsome self, peaceful as though just sleeping. But when I bent to kiss him for the last time, I was shocked to feel that his body had already turned clammy and cold, and as reality began to dawn, so came the tears. The nurses covered his face with a blanket and I began to cry, silently and slowly, overcome with grief as I turned to leave the room. Upon hearing the doctor mutter ‘post mortem’ I spun round, for I could not bear the thought of David being hacked around. I pleaded through my tears to spare us this indignity. The cause of death was surely obvious – massive cardiac arrest. The doctor promised to prevent any interference. It was distressing enough that David was going to be taken to the mortuary. I wanted to take him home with me.

  By now the sun was beginning to rise above a distant horizon, the world around me stirring to greet a new morning. I was outraged that life could go on as normal. Startled, my thoughts turned to Angela, away at boarding school in South Africa, not knowing that her beloved father had died. It was impossible to think that David would never see his Pip again, not live to see her grow up and become a woman. I needed to speak to Betty and my parents and ask them to go to the school to break the news to Angela and bring her back to me. A feeling of immense hopelessness seized me – how could I face the future alone, without my soulmate by my side? This wasn’t supposed to happen now – David was only fifty-seven, I was only forty-three, and we had just spent many happy hours talking about our retirement plans. All our dreams for the future were now as nothing.

  Sheila and Jim came to the hospital and took me back to their home. A deep weariness seized me, and as I sank into an exhausted sleep, a strange calmness overcame me as I realized that nothing worse could ever befall me in my lifetime. For too long I had suppressed what I suspected – that David’s cramps were a manifestation of something grave – and now at least that nagging worry was ended. I knew that he would want me to have courage, to face the coming days with his spirit of moving forward, and in a dazed semi-consciousness, I vowed to do my best for his sake.

  The following days were a blur of messages, flowers, tears, people and more people, letters, telegrams and a great void in my heart. Betty arrived with a grief-stricken Angela, who had mysteriously sensed that her father had died even before being told. When she, Jill and I were reunited, at least we had each other, and I felt less alone. My father’s health had deteriorated and my parents were unable to travel to the funeral, but Betty and her family came to be with me. Actually, everyone rallied round, not least the officials of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department, who could not have been kinder, as stunned as anyone by David’s sudden death. The director assured me that I could occupy the National Park’s house for as long as I needed, a compassionate gesture that I appreciated enormously.

  The Karen church was filled with so many people that they spilled out into the courtyard and beyond, from all walks of life, and from all races. It seemed as if time were suspended, all these people brought together to share in my grief – it was incredibly touching. As my daughters, sisters and I walked past the sea of eyes to the front row, Jim filled the church with soothing organ music and the scent of the many wreaths and bouquets permeated the air. David would have liked this combination of pathos and beauty. His coffin was brought to the church in the back of our treasured Poon wagon, draped in the National Parks flag that had once proudly fluttered above the dak bungal
ow offices in Tsavo. It seemed right that it should be buried with him to mark the end of an era – the end of an era in more ways than one.

  My husband’s coffin was carried in to the tune of ‘Amazing Grace’, borne by his closest family, friends and colleagues. The padre – an old school friend of Peter and Bill’s from their Patch days – gave a moving sermon drawing on the books of Isaiah and Job, highlighting how God cared about the natural world and his creation that inhabited such places as Tsavo. He reassured us that David would find favour with the Creator for devoting his life so selflessly to Nature’s protection. ‘Thou shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain’ were the words from Isaiah that I chose to be engraved on the huge Tsavo rock that would later be brought to the cemetery in Nairobi to provide the headstone for David’s grave. The address was followed by ‘Abide with Me’, most of us now in tears, and David was carried out to the signature tune of the old King’s African Rifles, ‘Funga Safari’ (‘Pack for Safari’), a tune he often used to hum as we set off to do what he loved most – being out in the bush.

  David was laid to rest in the Langata Cemetery. When the coffin was lowered into the ground, I broke down – my daughters the only comfort to me at this, the bleakest of my life’s moments – as I tossed the soil into the ground. We gathered for a wake at Sheila’s house, and I thought if only David could have seen all this admiration, respect, fondness and love for him, as well as the disbelief and grief, he would have been so touched. I returned to his graveside the next day and had a quiet, private talk with him as I planted a seedling of the yellow-barked fever tree that his friend Leslie Brown had germinated for me. This type of acacia epitomized the places David loved most, a vibrant tree that Rudyard Kipling had immortalized in one of his Just So stories, ‘The Elephant’s Child’.

  Angela, Jill and I went to my parents, who had returned to be in Grandpa Webb’s little bungalow in Malindi. It was a huge comfort to be with them at this hour of need, and I unburdened my heart to them. When it was time for them to return to South Africa with the girls, I headed to Nairobi with Sheila to begin the painful process of picking up the pieces of my shattered life. I was worried about earning a living – having no wage or pension to speak of – and about where I would set up another home for Angela and me. Before too long another official would take over the Nairobi Park house that David and I had shared. I even thought about asking the Director if I could erect a tent in the Park until I sorted out my life, but miraculously, Granny Webb’s dictum – ‘when one door closes another opens’ – came true and within a few months I was offered both work and a place to live permanently.

  Bob Poole, Director of the Nairobi Office of the African Wildlife Foundation, commissioned me to write wildlife articles for the magazine of the country’s Wildlife Clubs. These had been established in many of Kenya’s schools to generate awareness among local children of the value of their wildlife heritage, wildlife having hitherto been viewed in negative terms, simply as a nuisance, out to destroy crops and kill the odd pedestrian on the footpaths of the forest. Peter, Bill, John Sutton and other close friends managed to obtain permission from the Government for me to erect a small dwelling in the Nairobi National Park so that I could continue working with the wildlife. Mrs Poon, the kind Samaritan who had gifted the Poon wagon to David, generously stepped in to provide the wherewithal to erect a small Timsales prefabricated wooden bungalow for me. All the while I was convinced that David was still nearby, and this was reinforced when I found myself in the house of a spiritualist. I had never met her before and she had no idea who I was, but she described David accurately, assuring me that he was with me.

  Peter and I chose a spot for my new house. The one stipulation made by the Wildlife authorities was that my new home had to be constructed within range of the existing Nairobi National Park power and water points, so we chose a place on some rocky terrain overlooking a small seasonal watercourse about 200 yards from the home I now occupied. I liked the idea of being near a little stream, even if it only carried floodwaters at certain times of the year, for having lived so long in arid country, the possibility of the soothing sound of running water was very appealing. The actual site for my new home was bleak, devoid of shade trees and surrounded by low croton bushes and rock. But the Park forest was not far off, and my brother pointed out the advantage of having a ready-made rock seam as a firm foundation for the building. At that point in time I would have been content to be anywhere, or in anything, as long as the natural world was within reach, for all likes and dislikes were nothing more than trivia. I was profoundly grateful to the Kenyan Government for granting me the unique privilege of residing in the Nairobi National Park, my chance at least for stability.

  People were immeasurably kind to me during this period and I was profoundly moved by their solicitous empathy. Bob Poole, Peter, Bill and John Sutton were there to support me every inch of the way. Unbeknownst to me they were hatching another plan that would end up shaping the rest of my life. Through Bob Poole and the African Wildlife Foundation, they initiated the David Sheldrick Memorial Appeal, aimed at disbursing the stream of donations in David’s memory and to solicit additional funds in support of conservation projects. The response was amazing, and Bob suggested that I head a small committee to identify projects that would have had David’s blessing. I was delighted to oblige – proud and deeply touched by the legacy David had left. His accomplishments remained very much alive in the mindset of people all around the world. Tragically, just a few months after David’s death, Bob Poole was himself killed in a car crash on the Mombasa road – another good man snatched from the conservation world who, like David, was far too young to die. His death came as another great blow to me, especially as he had been with me just the day before, and had told me that his parents were long-lived, so he would be at the helm of the African Wildlife Foundation to oversee the David Sheldrick Memorial Appeal for many years to come.

  It took a year before my Timsales house was ready to occupy. I watched it being erected, as it was so close to where I was living. During the construction the foreman, Mr Muturi, and I became good friends, discussing a great many things, from the Mau Mau emergency to the recent accession of Daniel Arap Moi, the new President of Kenya, appointed after the death of Jomo Kenyatta in 1978. Mr Muturi very kindly ensured that I had bookcases to house David’s collection, shelves on which to place my ornaments, and a large fireplace in the lounge to add warmth on cold bleak nights. He was kindness itself to me.

  On moving day, Mwangangi, Mr Muturi and I laboriously man-handled all my belongings through the barbed wire fence that segregated the Park Staff compound from the Park proper. My first night alone in the new house was particularly lonely. Jill was in Namibia, and Angela had recently returned to school. I longed to have a piece of Tsavo with me, so the next day I asked the Director of Wildlife, Daniel Sindiyo, whether when next a lorry was coming from Tsavo it could possibly bring some flat Galana rocks. He agreed, and when the rocks arrived, Mr Muturi organized for them to be laid on the verandah. Much later on, when I needed an office attached to the house, he very kindly built it for me, lining it with cedar panels so that it reminded me of Cedar Park.

  I sourced mineralized sediment from the shores of Lake Magadi, another of the Rift Valley’s extremely saline lakes, and spread it on the rocks near the Park forest for the animals to enjoy, since Nairobi Park was deficient in certain minerals craved by larger species such as rhino, buffalo and giraffe. I noticed that the rocky terrain between my house and the Park forest served as the path for many wild creatures en route from the forest to the plains below, so giraffe, buffalo and rhino appreciated the salt lick, as did elands, bushbuck and a small impala herd that I watched with a deep and aching nostalgia. The wild animals were my solace, my companions and my sanity, and because of them I was never entirely alone, at least during the hours of daylight. However, the nights were long, empty and very lonely without David. At such times I thought about the elephants and felt humb
led, knowing how stoically they dealt with the loss of loved ones on an almost daily basis, how deeply they grieved but how they did so with courage, never forgetting the needs of the living. Their example gave me the strength I needed to ‘turn the page’.

  I kept myself busy during the day, writing the wildlife articles, passing on all that David had taught me about animals and opening my eyes to the wildlife that lived around me. I fed the birds, enjoying them as they became tamer, lining up each afternoon for their daily handout of mealworms and crumbs. Some that I named the ‘Chippy Chips’ included the robin chats, tropical boubous, yellow-vented bulbuls and an olive thrush that knocked at my window each morning. I was amused by the warthog family living in a burrow nearby who were quick to take advantage of my presence as protection from predators. When the mother pig appeared with her one remaining tiny piglet hobbling along holding a broken leg off the ground, I was in a quandary as to what to do, hesitant to alert the Wildlife authorities for fear that the piglet would be taken from its mother and would end up as an exhibit in the rather dubious zoo, or whether I should look after the mother and piglet myself. In the end I fell back on David’s philosophy of ‘when in doubt, don’t’, feeling it was better for both mother and baby to remain together.