Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  Eleanor came to befriend a wild cow with a family of her own, who was so often seen in Eleanor’s company and had become so accepting of the keepers that, although they never usually named wild elephants, they gave her the name Catherine. On that ill-fated visit to Tsavo, in search of Eleanor, it was Catherine who tossed me into the air, leaving me with a smashed leg that took fifteen months to rebuild. Eager to find Eleanor to show her off to one of the Trust’s visitors, I made a mistake that I should really never have made. I was so convinced that no wild Tsavo elephant would ever walk up to strange humans that when Catherine did respond to my call – even though instinctively I was troubled by the build and eye colour of this elephant – I convinced myself in those split seconds that she was indeed Eleanor. After all, why else would she approach us so trustingly? She allowed us to touch her face and trunk and to feel the coolness of her tusks, but when I extended my arm to the hind side of her ear – something I always did with Eleanor – I felt her flinch and the next thing I knew, I was being hurled through the air, landing with such force against a pile of boulders that my right leg shattered on impact. I lay in a pool of blood in which I could see chips of my own bone, a curious crunching sensation enveloping my body.

  Every time I reflect back on this terrifying incident, I remind myself how lucky I am to still be alive. And I have come to understand that on that day I was given a valuable lesson, in which I experienced the sophistication and complexity of inter-elephant communication. For, having thrown me into the air, Catherine towered menacingly above me and could easily have snuffed out my life. After the cruelty inflicted on her species by humans, I am astounded that she chose not to. Instead, having been ‘told’ by Eleanor that I was, in fact, a friend, she behaved differently, inserting her tusks beneath my broken body to try to lift me back on to my feet.

  Catherine’s handiwork entailed emergency blood transfusions and surgery the moment the Flying Doctors delivered me to the casualty department of the hospital in Nairobi. After a nine-hour operation I woke to find my leg in plaster from hip to toe, with a great deal of hardware implanted along my smashed femur and broken knee, plus massive blood blisters left by the tourniquet that had encircled my thigh to limit the bleeding. These blisters turned out to be almost as problematic as the leg, and rendered me out of action for some time. Fortunately, Jill and JF took over all the responsibilities of the nursery, JF having to combine his film work with running around delivering wages, maintaining vehicles and buildings and collecting supplies for the orphans, for Jill was heavily pregnant with her second daughter, who was born on 22 October while I was still in Nairobi hospital. She was named Zoe Emma Marjorie, and I was overjoyed to see her the moment that I came home on crutches, although the joy of her arrival was tempered by sad news as well, because Bill’s wife, Ruth, had lost her long battle against cancer. Ruth had been a close friend to me and a kind and loving stepmother to Jill, so we were devastated by her untimely death, as, of course, were Jill, Bill himself and Ruth’s three sons, Jill’s half-brothers.

  Bedridden, for the next six months I watched enviously through my bedroom window as the birds soared high in the sky and the little house martins swooped down to nest as usual in the rafters of my verandah. However, I was able to work and my bed became my office, my portable typewriter perched on my lap and the telephone at my side. A steady stream of friends and well-wishers kept my spirits up, as did periodic visits from the Old M whenever he happened to hit town. However, five months later I was still in excruciating agony, and an X-ray confirmed that an immediate bone graft was necessary, the femur having failed to knit.

  Fortunately Angela happened to arrive home just in time to persuade me to travel to South Africa, rather than risk a bone graft in Nairobi. She contacted a university colleague who was now an orthopaedic surgeon and he urged that I travel immediately to South Africa, since bone grafting was a complicated procedure and not one to be taken lightly. He referred me to Dr Paul Firer, who was considered the best in the business and who was always known as ‘Ponky’ – apparently meaning ‘wild dog’ – which seemed somewhat disconcerting.

  And so, occupying three seats of one entire row of the aircraft, with my leg rigid and encased in plaster, I flew to South Africa. During another gruelling ten-hour operation, everything that had been done in Nairobi had to be undone and I woke up with one hip on fire as well as the leg, since stem cells had now been taken from the hip for insertion into the broken leg. As my leg had been so infected, Ponky had not been able to do the bone graft, and instead his colleague, Dr Jeff Sochen, had inserted bone irrigation pipes while I was still under. ‘You’re a good conservationist given the ten different bacteria in your leg,’ joked Ponky when I came round. ‘Thanks a lot,’ I replied, ‘Get them out!’

  Getting them out entailed another six weeks on my back undergoing bone irrigation. I didn’t need to stay in hospital for this, and my niece Sally offered to accommodate me – and all the required paraphernalia – in her Johannesburg home. Betty flew up from Durban to nurse me, while I was anchored to a bed, lying on an eggshell mattress and sheepskins, with a thirty-pound weight attached to my foot to keep the length of my leg intact. Sally set up a small television and video at the end of my bed and together Betty and I watched every episode of Dad’s Army, in between reminiscing about our childhood days. My sister and her daughter were angels who made my bone irrigation ordeal pleasurable. Those weeks spent in Sally’s home were the turning point that saved my leg, precious time that I felt grateful to have had, for four years separated Betty and me, a large gap during our childhood years.

  I had to wait another month for all the irrigation holes to heal entirely, this time in Betty’s Durban home, before returning to Johannesburg for another ten-hour operation and, on this occasion, a successful bone graft with cell material taken from the other hip. Ponky also now designed a pin for the break in my knee, having been able to assess the actual damage first-hand during the first graft attempt. However, this time the agony on waking up was so acute that I was on morphine for a few days, before enduring the misery of the ‘bending machine’ and physiotherapy to try to get flexibility back into a knee that looked as though it would never move again. I was told in no uncertain terms that only when I could walk the length of the ward on crutches without fainting would I be released from hospital. I was so feeble that at first I thought I would never do it, collapsing frequently in the chair that a nurse constantly moved up behind me. Ponky monitored my progress daily, doubtful that I would ever get more than a forty-degree bend back in the damaged knee, and gently prepared me for the prospect of having to live with the extensive hardware he had inserted, since at my age my bones were too fragile to risk its removal.

  Unbeknownst to me, many friends and sympathetic elephant supporters, along with Jin Tatsamura’s Gaia Symphony fans, had donated money to Jill to cover the cost of my treatment, with others pledging further help if necessary. I was immeasurably touched by this, and the fact that I now have a working leg is entirely thanks to those kind folk, the expertise of Ponky, and Dr Jeff Sochen, one of the few specialists worldwide at that particular time in the relatively new field of bone irrigation. To all those incredibly kind and generous people I shall always be eternally grateful.

  Jin and his Japanese supporters treated Angela and me like royalty when we went to Japan, showering us with gifts and donations in support of the elephants. At each major city we visited, Jin organized a lecture hall which was always filled to capacity so that I could pass on the message about elephants and ivory. Every day I was treated by a top acupuncturist, a herbal specialist and a masseuse, who worked wonders on my leg. I was particularly taken with one ‘alternative’ remedy that involved immersing myself in the hot springs, known to have curative healing powers, which bubbled from an active volcano in the mountains. There was a succession of spas ranging from very hot, to much cooler further down. Entry to the spa was a bit of an ordeal for me! You had to leave your shoes outside the door,
strip naked, place your clothes in a small locker, and, along with all the others taking the waters, get in. For me, no lightweight as were most trim Japanese ladies, this appeared daunting, but my acupuncturist was adamant that it had to be, so I sent Angela along during the lunch hour to assess the number of shoes outside each door before deciding which spa to select. She returned with the news that only the very hot one seemed vacant. Hurriedly I went off and got in, but to my dismay and embarrassment, several Japanese ladies turned up to share the spa with me. I was determined not to expose myself and was becoming redder and redder, literally being boiled like a lobster as I waited for them to leave, Angela all the while castigating me for being such a ‘wimp’.

  As promised, upon my return to Nairobi, Dr Ponky Firer visited me, having initially appeared somewhat sceptical about whether the alternative remedies would, in fact, make a difference. He was pleasantly surprised to find me with a fully functional knee, conceding that my Japanese trip had done wonders for the ‘elephant leg’. And all these years on I walk with no problems, only occasionally returning to crutches when a certain sideways twist of the body makes the old knee remind me to treat it more gently.

  Jill kept me in touch with events at home while I was away. Upon my return, the first phone call I received was from her father. Bill and I had a long chat, catching up on each other’s news, so it came as a terrible shock to learn the next day that he had suffered a massive stroke that plunged him into a coma from which he would never emerge. Jill and her half-brothers insisted that he be transferred to Nanyuki Cottage Hospital to be near his friends and the Mountain National Parks which he so loved. When he died, his ashes were scattered on the Aberdares and Mount Kenya along with those of Ruth. Bill had been my first love, my first husband, Jill’s devoted father and my life-long friend as well as an essential element in the spirit and workings of the Trust. We also shared a thirty-five-year love of Eleanor.

  Meanwhile, Angela’s life was changing. She had fallen in love with Robert Carr-Hartley and he with her. I was astounded that she had not known him before, because the Carr-Hartley family were old friends of our family; Robert and his two siblings had grown up on their grandfather’s farm at Rumuruti, not far from our Cedar Park, the progeny of an old Kenya settler family who had been neighbours to many of our Aggett relatives in the early days. Like Angela, Robert had ridden a rhino long before a horse, was passionate about wildlife and the bush, but was also proficient in a city, fulfilling two of the requirements Angela was seeking in a partner. His family had been professional game trappers in the early days, capturing animals rodeo style for sale to zoos long before the days of immobilizing drugs. In fact, Robert’s father, Roy, often came to help Jill and me move our nursery elephants to the rehabilitation centre in Tsavo.

  On 7 December 1996 they were married in the Karen church where the funeral service for David had taken place. Angela looked stunning in a gown of pale champagne-coloured silk, with five little bridesmaids in attendance, Robert’s three angelic blonde nieces – his sister’s children – and my two granddaughters, Emily and Zoe, both of whom let the side down by firmly refusing to follow the bridal entourage into the church. Angela entered the church on the arm of her half-brother Kenneth, David’s son by Diana. I had wanted Angela to have a traditional Kenya settler wedding, so friends and family came from afar, many from South Africa and England, turning it into a wonderful social gathering. It was a grand occasion, and I knew that David would have wanted me to do her proud.

  After a honeymoon at the coast, the newly-weds settled down at the Borana Lodge near Nanyuki, Robert having recently acquired the management lease from the landowners. Together, he and Angela transformed the lodge into one of the most prestigious safari venues in Kenya. I knew that David would have approved of Angela’s choice of husband, as did I, delighted that she had returned home rather than settle in southern Africa, and proud of the daughter who was so like him in many ways. At Borana she was in charge of stocking and managing a beautiful up-market shop, as well as overseeing all the menus and catering arrangements. With her innate flair for all the special details that make a lodge stay memorable, she and Robert turned Borana into one of the most sought-after safari destinations. Every guest enjoyed personalized attention, assured of everything they could possibly want, so for Jill, JF and I, who were used to a simple life in Nairobi, a few days in Borana with Angela and Robert made a luxurious and very enjoyable break.

  Meanwhile, the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust had grown and become a lot more efficient. Our fledgling orphanage was becoming well known, and we were welcoming visitors each afternoon to enjoy our growing herd of orphaned elephants. People from all parts of the world were eager to mingle with the orphans, including growing numbers of the local African schoolchildren, which was very heartening.

  We lived a privileged life, surrounded in our Nairobi Park home by our animals – the warthogs, whose lives we had now followed for some fifteen generations; the two wild bushbuck, who fed from an outstretched hand and slept beside the night-watchmen, knowing that there they were safe from predators; the birds and the squirrels, who came for mealworms when called and whose fortunes and misfortunes we shared; and the old wild buffalo bulls, whom we named Horatio, Hardnut, Hellier and Helmet, who drank regularly at our waterhole and contributed to our security at night. I had a vested interest in these buffalo, who might well have been direct descendants of the sixteen-plus orphans of our Tsavo days who had founded the current established resident buffalo herd of the Nairobi Park.

  The Trust invested in some land along the southern bank of the Athi, an area that before his death David had campaigned to protect as a National Reserve because it had long provided a launch pad into the Park for bush meat poachers as well as for the ivory and rhino horn hunters. Although the new Ngai Ndethya Reserve had been agreed, it had never been signed into law before David died and had since been occupied by squatters. A prerequisite to owning land in Kenya was to establish a presence, so having purchased the land from the African squatter owner, our Trustees went with us to choose a site for the building that would ultimately be known as Saa Nane and serve the interests of the Trust as a venue for important donors, as well as being a base for our Tsavo field operations. David had often spoken wistfully of owning a parcel of wilderness and its wild inhabitants, and since he was never likely to have been in a position to do so, we knew this project would definitely have had his approval. Saa Nane (called by David’s African nickname) was designed by Angela and Robert and constructed on the south bank of the Athi River by Robert’s cousin, overlooking the smoky Yatta Plateau where David’s presence lingers still. Saa Nane generates money for the Trust by hosting up-market Trust donors who pay for the privilege of enjoying it, as do the clientele of mobile safari operators in between camp moves. It also serves as our Tsavo home when duty calls there. Huge basement rock slabs bejewelled with garnets, which formed part of the original kopje, or outcrop, are incorporated into the building, as are some of the original trees – a candelabra euphorbia and a boscia both protruding through the concrete of the verandah overlooking the river, while ridges within the strata of the rock reflect the geography of Tsavo’s terrain. My only input was to insist that Saa Nane must have a flat roof on which we could sleep and enjoy the stars on clear Tsavo nights, something that always reminded me of my mother, who made a point each night of stepping outside to gaze in wonderment at the stars in the universe above.

  Later, the Trust would purchase Kaluku Farm from Jill and JF. The two of them had long harboured dreams of a simple lifestyle living off the land, and when a plot on the Mtito Andei watercourse boundary to the Park came up for sale, they bought it at the same time that the Trust bought the land on which Saa Nane stands. Making use of the original mud dwellings, they added a simple living rondavel, created a tree nursery and initiated the first anti-poaching de-snaring patrols to collect and destroy wire snares set to trap wild game for bush meat. JF, an old hand at saving unfortunate capti
ves, populated the farm with some scruffy chickens rescued from the main Nairobi–Mombasa highway; a cantankerous male duiker and a crocodile from the wild animal ‘orphanage’ at the Nairobi Park main entrance; and a couple of large tortoises ‘freed’ from a tiny cage at a roadside lodge. He also built a special house for bats so that they could perch on rails inside without disturbance, and provided hives for the bees, not with the intention of taking their honey but simply to assist them. It was this compassionate side of JF and his passion for an animal’s quality of life that Jill so admired and cherished, plus the fact that he could dispatch a suffering victim quickly, cleanly and efficiently should the need arise. The two of them were instrumental in pioneering the Trust’s community input by providing sports equipment, textbooks and a mobile cinema to neighbouring schools, work that the Trust has since enlarged to encompass a host of other community schools abutting Tsavo.