Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  During one of her trips back home, Angela worked in the wardrobe department of the epic film Out of Africa, after which she decided to embark on a course in make-up artistry and prosthetics. She was – and still is – artistically talented, having inherited this from my mother. From David she had a love of design and from his mother a love of clothes, always taking pride in her appearance. She found it just as easy to paint and change faces as to create an image on canvas. Thankfully, once Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, the stigma of Apartheid disappeared overnight, and having completed her training she found herself much in demand, attached to photo shoots for magazine editorials and commercials and travelling to stunning locations all over the world, which satisfied her sense of adventure. But, for me, it was always very special when she chose to come back to be with Jill and me.

  In time Jill’s French boyfriend, Jean-François – known to all simply as JF – decided to move to Kenya on a permanent basis, take on Kenyan citizenship and become an indispensable ingredient of our small and somewhat makeshift team. In between filming assignments, he enlarged and improved Jill’s rustic rondavel and gave us much-needed practical help in building additional accommodation for Olmeg and Taru, who were rapidly outgrowing their original stables. As a sideline he set up a safari company called Bullfrog Safaris, in conjunction with an African partner, and managed to snag a few unsuspecting overseas acquaintances who were treated to a somewhat unconventional, but nevertheless exciting, basic safari experience. His was a one-man show, never short of amusing escapades – not least having to repossess the roast from a thieving baboon who took it up a tree, luckily when his clients happened to be occupied elsewhere. They were none the wiser, while they were enjoying their lunch, that a baboon had been there before them. As a Frenchman, JF was proud of his cooking skills, and soon also took overall charge of Jill’s outdoor kitchen.

  Before his arrival JF had gifted the Trust his bright red Renault 4, affectionately known as the Red Peril, and had had it shipped to Kenya for the use of Jill and the Trust. This proved an enormous help, since previously the only vehicle at our disposal had been my personal car. After arrival in the country, he acquired a second-hand Landcruiser which he turned into his safari workhorse and, as a deterrent to potential carjackers, preferred to leave unwashed. He was a lively character who was never dull and whose presence in the family certainly livened things up a great deal. Being practical, he undertook the maintenance and repair of all the Trust’s mechanical equipment, making himself and his vehicle available to the Trust whenever he was not working on a film shoot.

  Meanwhile, David Read had become more than just a friend. I was not unsusceptible to the advances of a handsome man in the absence of the one I had lost, although David Read could never come close to replacing my David. He filled an important void in my life just when I needed it most, and also introduced a great deal of laughter and fun. He had many admirable traits, but others that I found questionable, not least discovering that I was just one of his many ‘lady friends’, some past but others still current. Having grown up with the Masai, David was in many ways one of them, and saw nothing wrong with safety in numbers, but he wined and dined me and invited me to accompany him on his rounds to ‘flog tractors’ for the President’s firm, Lima Ltd, introducing me to places in Kenya that I had never visited before. During such excursions David took great delight in offering to barter me to passing Masai herdsmen for livestock, speaking in flawless Maa, which always floored the herdsmen. It amused him that the most he could get was only three cows and one Boozie, since I was beyond breeding age.

  After a period flogging tractors, David was asked to manage Kapsitwet, the President’s beautiful ex-settler farm at Kitale in western Kenya not far from the border with Uganda, so from time to time I was invited to enjoy farm life again, which reminded me of my childhood at Cedar Park. I was extremely fortunate that Jill and JF were willing and able to hold the fort back home while I was away. Assuming they could arrange for an elephant sitter, they were able to join us, often bringing Angela along too if she happened to be around. From the first Jill encouraged the warming of my relationship with David – or ‘the Old M’ (shortened from ‘Old Masai’), as we called him – relieved, I think, to see me enjoying the lighter side of life again, but on a visit home from South Africa Angela was not quite so accommodating and was distinctly frosty, obviously viewing my new romance as a betrayal of her adored father. However, one couldn’t help but like the Old M, for he was good company and always hosted us in great style. Like JF he was particularly territorial in his kitchen, where he brooked no interference whatsoever and where he enjoyed tossing pancakes and omelettes in the air like the professionals. Needless to say, more ended up stuck to the ceiling than on a plate. I will never forget Angela’s expression when she noticed pig’s teeth and feet bubbling around with the head-meat in a pot of brawn the Old M was brewing up for lunch. However, both my children were exceedingly sceptical about his kamikaze style of driving, whether in a vehicle or on the motorbike he used for his farm rounds. He would crash headlong over obstacles as though they did not exist, and on one occasion, when I was riding pillion on the back of the motorbike, clean through a barbed wire fence. Needless to say, we both ended up in the ditch.

  It was in the Red Peril that Jill had to make an emergency dash down to Tsavo in 1988 to rescue a three-month-old elephant named Dika, before Eleanor could commandeer him. It was necessary to do this because he needed milk, which Eleanor was unable to provide. Dika came in punctured by hundreds of long acacia thorns, obviously having fled through a dense acacia thorn thicket from the killers who took the life of his mother. In those days we had no lorries or planes, so with the help of a friend, Jill had to wrestle Dika on to the back seat of the Renault, where he was held all the way back to Nairobi. It took us days to extract all the thorns, and weeks to heal the sepsis of his puncture wounds. But it was the grieving of this baby elephant for his lost family that worried us most. For weeks on end he stood dejectedly beside the little tent we still used to feed newcomers, tears oozing from his eyes and his trunk hanging limply to the ground. He took his milk only very reluctantly and slowly, standing alone as though comatose, showing no interest whatsoever in his surroundings, which left us wondering whether he could be brain-damaged. It was only the arrival and subsequent collapse three months later of another orphan, Edo, that made this sad little elephant come back to life.

  Edo was six months old when his mother perished in Amboseli National Reserve, having raided a lodge rubbish tip and eaten plastic bags, bottle tops and even an ash tray in among discarded fruit and vegetables. He was the calf of a famous Amboseli matriarch and an integral part of the researchers’ Amboseli elephant monitoring programme, kept under surveillance from the day he was born, so he was unafraid of all humans other than a Masai in a red blanket; red being the traditional colour worn by men of the tribe. However, the sight of Boozie freaked him out, since he associated sheep with the Masai. The Amboseli elephants were often in conflict with the Masai in competition for water and pasture, and over the years many had been speared. More recently others had been killed for cultural purposes, marking the passage from boyhood to manhood in place of the usual target of a lion, lions having become scarce in the area.

  Edo collapsed upon arrival in the nursery, and as he lay there barely conscious, while Jill and I contemplated what to do about him, to our surprise Dika left the comfort of his little tent and walked straight up to him, rumbling and reaching down his trunk to touch Edo’s face and mouth. Edo opened one eye, just a little at first, then, as reality dawned, wider and wider, struggling to get to his feet, which, with a little help from all the bystanders, he managed. He wobbled unsteadily, watching Dika take milk from a hand-held bottle, then surprised us all by following suit. Much to our joy, after that he never looked back, although he always remained extremely wary of Boozie and went to great lengths to keep all the other nursery elephants between himself and her
.

  A few months later, in April 1989, we were confronted with Ndume and Malaika, who came in together as three-month-olds from the Imenti forest, a small patch of remnant forest in northern Kenya that was now almost entirely encircled by human settlement and agriculture. Isolated within it there remained a dwindling population of elephants who were in trouble every time they stepped out, their ancient migratory route to the Mount Kenya forests now completely overrun with settlement. The local agricultural community viewed all elephants as the enemy, and when at dawn one morning a herd was found in the middle of a maize field, the locals went berserk. Armed with machetes, spears and axes, banging on tins and sounding whistles, every able-bodied person descended on the terrified elephants, who in the ensuing mêlée did not know which way to turn. One elephant was so traumatized that she aborted a full-term calf, which was instantly hacked to death, and as the adults broke through the wall of humanity to freedom, Ndume and Malaika found themselves two of three calves left behind. By the time rangers arrived to control the frenzied crowd, one calf had already been killed, Ndume had been dealt a savage blow to the head and Malaika’s back legs had been slashed by machetes.

  This was an emergency, so we chartered a plane with a vet on board to bring the two surviving babies to the nursery. There Ndume fell unconscious, so the vet hurriedly inserted a saline and dextrose drip into his ear vein before rushing to attend to Malaika, suspecting that Ndume was unlikely to come round, so huge was the bump on his head. All attention now focused on Malaika, cleaning the deep gashes on her legs and doing what we could to soothe her, since she was so traumatized that her entire body was trembling violently. Olmeg, Taru, Dika and Edo were brought round to help comfort her and they touched her face and back gently with their trunks, rumbled to her and showed her how to take milk from a bottle, reassuring her that the people who surrounded her now were very different to those who had been so violent. It came as a huge surprise when Ndume began to stir next door and, having got back on to his feet, began trying to scale the stable door, bellowing piteously. Obviously unable to remember what had taken place, he was so disturbed that we felt it better to let him out so that he could see for himself that his mother was not around, but hopefully might recognize Malaika. Running to and fro, bellowing frantically, he scoured the nearby croton thickets for her with a keeper trying to keep sight of him until he collapsed with exhaustion. Only then could we carry him back to his stable. This same pattern was repeated for the next two days, until he finally had to accept that he would never find his mother again and sank into deep depression, standing dejectedly glued to Malaika’s side. To begin with we were pleasantly surprised because she seemed unusually upbeat for a newcomer, obviously relieved to find herself being treated with kindness and compassion rather than brutalized. Sadly, this did not last long, and soon she also sank into a long, quiet and seemingly lifeless period of intense grieving as reality dawned on her. Both calves had witnessed unspeakable horror and, like Dika, they mourned their lost elephant family for weeks. Fortunately, though, they took their milk throughout the grieving process and both eventually turned the corner and began to thrive.

  Another surprise came when President Moi installed Dr Richard Leakey as Director of Wildlife, charged with trying to revamp the corrupt Wildlife Conservation and Management Department which had failed the country so miserably, Leakey’s brief being to bring the rampant poaching back under some semblance of control. Poaching and bad press were impacting negatively on the country’s lucrative tourism industry, with Tsavo, Meru and other wildlife destinations rapidly becoming no-go areas due to security concerns. Dr Leakey was also given special powers – with his rangers empowered to shoot armed poachers on sight if found within the National Parks. Somali poacher/insurgents known as Shifta were on the rampage after David’s departure, several wildlife rangers having lost their lives in running battles with the Shifta poachers. Wakamba poachers armed with equally lethal poisoned arrows also posed an ongoing threat, many colluding with corrupt elements within the previous Wildlife Department who allegedly were enjoying high-level protection. In Tsavo elephants had been mown down en masse and black rhinos all but exterminated.

  So it was that Dr Leakey created the Kenya Wildlife Service, known as KWS, to replace the previous Wildlife Conservation and Management Department of Government, and reinstated a token Board of Trustees to encourage the flow of incoming donations again, which had all but dried up. He also persuaded President Moi to torch Kenya’s huge stockpile of confiscated ivory and rhino horn at an official ceremony in the Nairobi National Park, in order to send out a powerful message that the new Kenya Wildlife Service was determined to conserve the country’s elephants and rhinos, an event viewed on television screens throughout the world. A beautiful bronze sculpture depicting a dying elephant being supported by its grieving comrades was erected alongside the large pile of ivory ash left by the bonfire, as a lasting and emotive memorial to the suffering of elephants due to the demand for ivory in the Far East.

  With World Bank money, a huge and impressive Headquarters complex sprang up on two levels, surrounded by manicured gardens and even fountains. Many conservationists were sceptical about the wisdom of this, fearful that the demands of a bloated bureaucracy at the Headquarters level could divert funding from the field where it was needed most. Dr Leakey was not allowed the autonomy he would have liked for the new Wildlife Service, which still remained under the overall authority of the Ministry for Tourism and Wild-life, and as such was subject to political meddling. Nevertheless, better field management did begin to bring the poaching back under control, assisted by a blanket ban on the sale of all ivory and rhino horn, agreed at the 1989 International Convention for Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Kenya having lobbied furiously for this against strong opposition from the southern African states bent on selling their ivory stockpiles. By 1989, within the Tsavo ecosystem – an area of 16,000 square miles, twice the size of the Park itself – the population of elephants had fallen from the original 45,000 to just 6,000. The elephant population within Kenya as a whole was estimated in 1973 to be 167,000. By 1989 it had fallen to just 16,000, the social fabric of elephant society literally having been torn asunder. Only in Amboseli were some elephant families still intact, because there the presence of the Masai inhibited intrusion by poaching gangs.

  I attended the next CITES gathering, held in Kyoto, Japan, where the ivory issue again proved a hot topic. Thankfully, after a great deal of heated discussion, the ban held, but I left dismayed at the internal politics inside this important forum and at the elephant supporters, vociferous beyond the hall, who remained strangely silent within, seemingly with a foot in both camps.

  The southern African states would get their way at the next CITES gathering two years hence, despite the fact that there had not been sufficient time for even one generation of elephants to be born to replace the massive losses sustained by most elephant range states north of the Zambezi. The stockpile sales that resulted were supposedly to be subject to strict control, but everyone knew that illegal ivory would again be laundered into the legal system, that poaching would escalate, and that as long as there was a legal trade in ivory, elephants would continue to be killed for their ivory teeth. That such highly intelligent animals – who mirror us humans in terms of emotion, who have the same sense of family and of death, and who are meant to tread the earth for three score years and ten – should die so that their teeth could be turned into trinkets seemed sheer madness.

  It had been a very turbulent and trying few months for us, so it came as both a shock and a pleasant surprise to learn that I had been awarded the MBE in the 1989 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. David had been similarly decorated exactly thirty years earlier, and later on so had Bill and my brother Peter. I was humbled to have also been found deserving of such an honour – that my work had been recognized alongside other notable achievers chosen from the people of Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries. David had opted for hi
s presentation to be undertaken locally, but being an ardent royalist I wanted the pageantry of the Palace and the chance to meet the Queen in person, so I travelled to London for the investiture, and was not disappointed. It came as an even greater surprise when, in the Queen’s 1996 New Year’s Honours List, I was made a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, hitherto to be known as Dame Daphne. I was humbled to hear that it was the first honour of its kind since Kenya had become independent in 1963, which left me dumbfounded but nevertheless extremely proud. My friends and family were amused when the keepers wondered why people were suddenly being disrespectful by calling me ‘Damn Daphne’. It was difficult to explain to them the significance of being a Dame Commander of the British Empire, especially as the British Empire as such had long ceased to exist.

  When the Kenya Wildlife Service decided to move surplus rhinos from the Solio Ranch in northern Kenya to Tsavo East, in an attempt to restock what had once been the bastion of the species and home to 8,000 of Kenya’s previous population of 20,000 black rhinos, it was decided that Sam and Amboseli should be the front runners. Reudi was now the dominant breeding bull of Solio, and Stroppie and Pushmi still lived in their enclosed fifty-acre paddock abutting the main sanctuary, but Sam and Amboseli had taken to invading gardens and fruit stalls beyond the Nairobi Park boundary, near the sprawling suburb of Ongata Rongai. Sadly Boozie was no longer around, having become a glutton and hoovered up a plastic bag containing the leftover lunch of a visiting film crew. She was always eager to sample anything and everything, but on this occasion she blew up like a balloon and died before the vet could come and attend to her. It was a very sad day when we had to bury Boozie in the Park forest behind my house, near the stockades that Sam and Amboseli had once occupied, but there was comfort in knowing that she had enjoyed a better life as a rhino companion than would otherwise have been the case. Sam and Amboseli certainly felt her absence, but strangely enough not nearly as much as the little elephants, who lost their appetites and became unusually subdued, searching the compound and abutting forest for her, in the process affording a reprieve for the Ever Hopefuls, whom they enjoyed chasing. The Ever Hopefuls had proliferated, having benefited from the protection of the elephants and their keepers. They had excavated burrows under all the Trust buildings, begged for handouts at the staff canteen and enjoyed the use of the orphans’ mud bath. In fact, one could be forgiven for believing that they were also hand-reared orphans.