Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  Sadly, it was an armed robbery at our Nairobi orphanage, in which Jill was forced at gunpoint to hand over all the staff wages, that proved the catalyst that later made JF decide that his family had to up sticks and move to France. The only son of ageing French parents, he felt they both needed his presence as well as time with their only grandchildren, added to the fact that he wanted his two daughters to be fluent in French as well as in English. When Jill and my granddaughters left for France I thought my heart would break, and later, when I learned that Jill had been so homesick for Kenya that she had wept almost every day during her first year there, I wished so much that it could have been otherwise. But sometimes things are meant to be, and unfold for the best. Today Jill is happy to have a base in France, as well as a home in Kenya, which the families can share. She is still very much involved, and she and the children spend time with us in Kenya whenever they can, but JF says that to return to the transformed Kaluku establishment would prove too painful for him and he prefers to devote his time to his elderly father, now a widower who needs him more.

  I can only think that someone in the ‘great somewhere’ was still looking out for me after Jill and JF left, for their departure coincided with the return of Robert and Angela, whose Borana Lodge lease had been unexpectedly terminated when the landlord’s son wanted to take over management of the lodge. In fact, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the next few years suffered a tourism decline due to the global economic downturn and this would have made things very difficult for Angela and Robert, who had to shoulder the running costs as well as the lease fee. I have to smile – to one side of my modest Timsales prefab home, which remains unchanged, is the very basic rondavel that Jill left behind, now serving as a guest house, with my own spare room now a strong room following the armed robbery. On the other side is Angela’s beautiful new house, which she and Robert funded and designed, having obtained authority from KWS. These two establishments accurately reflect the very different characters of my two very different daughters: one who shuns the elaborate trappings of modern living and consumerism, preferring simplicity and the old ways; another who loves beautiful things and a beautiful home, with all the latest gadgets. Angela has David’s flair and love of construction. She loves nothing better than upgrading the Trust’s existing buildings to smarten up the establishment, designing and overseeing the construction of any new ones, and, of course, being in overall charge of any interior decorating.

  In May 1998 Angela’s first son and my first grandson was born, named Taru David Roy – Taru because the Taru Desert is, in effect, now the Tsavo National Park, David after his maternal grandfather – my David – and Roy in honour of Robert’s father. Two years later, in July 2000 – millennium year – Angela’s second son, Roan Alexander William, arrived, according to ancient Chinese mythology a very auspicious time to be born, making him a ‘Golden Dragon’. And so I have been blessed with two beautiful granddaughters and two wonderful grandsons, all of whom are equally passionate about wildlife.

  Angela took over as my right arm where Jill had left off, and some of her loyal workers from the Borana Lodge followed her and Robert to work for the Trust as accountants, mechanics, cooks and elephant-keepers. Before their arrival the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust did have a basic website, courtesy of a kind donor, but it was rudimentary at best, since neither Jill nor I were truly computer literate. In contrast, both Robert and Angela are tech-savvy, adept at embracing the latest innovations. Angela designed and created the Trust’s highly successful digital fostering programme, enabling people all over the world to foster an elephant in return for regular educational updates, instilling an interest in the orphaned elephants and our work throughout the world, thanks to the internet age. She has taken the Trust to a new level, as Jill happily acknowledges. Sadly, the escalation of poaching, fuelled by a newly rich China combined with a mounting human population, is depriving elephants of their ancient migration routes and space; this, added to more frequent drought conditions due to global warming, has left mounting numbers of baby elephants orphaned. Additional stables and stockades have been built and existing ones upgraded. Robert, who along with his brother William operates his own high-end mobile safari company, has taken over the supervision of the Trust’s growing fleet of vehicles, water bowsers, generators and other equipment, and has installed tracking devices on all the de-snaring team vehicles so that their movements can be followed. JF’s Kaluku Farm has been transformed into the Trust’s working and efficient field base in Tsavo, Angela having designed a new and more comfortable rondavel home for the field manager/pilot. There are now workshops, offices, staff quarters, a beautiful orchard and vegetable garden that serves the community’s needs and a hangar at the nearby Trust airstrip for the Trust’s new Top Cub aircraft, modelled on the hangar that David built at the Park’s Voi airstrip. The Kaluku Field Headquarters is now fully solar-powered, with wireless coverage over the entire Park to keep in close touch with the de-snaring patrols as well as internet access. My younger daughter and her husband, and their two sons Taru and Roan, have injected a magical energy into the Trust and I am continually surprised by their commitment and dedication. The Trust’s footprint in Tsavo has made a huge difference, and continues to do so.

  Sitting under the stars, I often reflect on how fortunate I am to still be here and remain inextricably entwined with this magical place. I miss Jill and my parents, along with the other special people who have been an integral and important part of my life, and the ache of losing David has never really left me, but I am contented and fulfilled in my twilight years. As I contemplate my grandsons, I know that the continuity of the Trust, along with David’s legacy and vision, has been ensured, and I am eternally deeply humbled by the global support that the Trust’s work has enjoyed from people in faraway places.

  Over the years, I have often wondered what prompted Eleanor to sever her human ties for so long and leave her orphan charges to Catherine. I think I now have the answer. Once pregnant, and never having been through the Nairobi nursery herself, Eleanor thought I might take her calf from her, puzzled as to how I acquired the many elephants I had handed into her care over the years. Thinking as an elephant, she suspected that I had hijacked them from their rightful mothers, just as she had once tried to take Mary’s newborn herself.

  16. Achievement

  ‘And how shall we find the Kingdom of Heaven?’ the disciples asked.

  ‘Follow the birds and the beasts,’ came the reply.

  ‘They will show you the way.’

  – St Thomas, Apocryphal Gospels

  The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust has now become internationally known, thanks to the internet and the international film crews who come to document the elephants and rhinos in our care. Thousands of people all over the world now foster our orphans and follow their progress through the worldwide web. The Trust has a presence in the UK and the USA, where dedicated teams busily submit proposals for projects, organize fund-raising initiatives and generate public awareness of wildlife issues. David would be astonished to know how far his legacy has extended and that his name is now synonymous with the conservation, preservation and protection of wildlife the whole world over.

  The Elephant Diaries, made by the BBC in 2005 and shown globally, did much to raise our profile. Filmed over a year, it was rated one of the most popular programmes of the time, attracting millions of viewers each night in the UK alone and later an even wider audience on the Animal Planet. This generated a marked increase in the number of overseas visitors to the nursery, people keen to see the elephants’ daily mud bath and watch them being fed by their keepers. Many of these visitors go on to explore other parts of Kenya, enjoying safaris, experiencing the thrill of the flamingoes at Lake Nakuru, the migrating wildebeest in the Mara, the spectacular landscape of the arid north, and, of course, Tsavo. It is wonderful that our elephants have been able to contribute so positively to the Kenyan tourist industry. Our profile was further boos
ted when the prestigious American CBS 60 Minutes team came to film, raising awareness of our work across the whole of the United States, being featured in the September 2011 issue of the National Geographic Magazine and mentioned in The Oprah Winfrey Show. We continue to welcome numerous film crews from Europe and the Far East, and recently Warner Brothers made a 3D film of our orphans that ran across the world in IMAX screens and continues in science museums. Born to be Wild featured some of our keeper-dependent orphans as well as those now living wild, and their wild-born babies. This film has enabled even more people to understand the very human nature of elephants – how those now independent and living in the wild still care deeply about others who remain in the care of their surrogate human family. Known as the ex-orphans, they return regularly to escort newcomers out into the wild, introducing them to their new friends. In glorious 3D, the awesome majesty of one of the few huge tuskers left in the world, tusks reaching to the ground, appears life-size, almost within reach. The film also captures the rescue of an orphan and its journey from a terrified wild baby into a loving and trusting elephant.

  Even against the backdrop of this particularly turbulent century, the Trust has continued to provide funding for environmental, educational and social initiatives and has been able to support the Kenya Wildlife Service in its task of protecting Kenya’s wildlife heritage. We continue to provide assistance in many ways. We manage and fund additional mobile anti-poaching de-snaring teams who patrol alongside the Kenya Wildlife Service rangers to keep the Park boundaries free of the wicked wire snares set to trap wildlife. We provide fully equipped mobile veterinary units, staffed by vets seconded from the Kenya Wildlife Service, which patrol and deal with sick or wounded animals promptly, proficiently and unobtrusively, just as David would have wanted. We have drilled boreholes, installed windmills in Tsavo, helped maintain the roads in remote corners of the Park; expanded the Park’s radio network and been able to assist with crucial aerial monitoring and surveillance using the Trust’s Top Cub aircraft. We have also worked tirelessly to secure and protect as much wild land as possible beyond established National Parks.

  All this David would recognize as a continuation and growth of the initiatives he pioneered, but when I see the work of our community outreach programmes, I know that he would be both surprised and delighted. The Trust continues to provide textbooks, desks, sports equipment and additional teaching aids now to twenty-eight schools a year that border the boundaries of Tsavo. In our donated bus, we organize field trips for disadvantaged schoolchildren who would otherwise never have the opportunity to even see the wildlife of their country and experience the orphans in Tsavo, and we have mobile field cinema units that travel around showing films to engender an appreciation of wildlife in the local children. I am also proud that we have been able to supply every National Park in Kenya and many beyond with a copy of The Wilderness Guardian, a comprehensive field manual compiled from David’s field notes and records, as well as those of other experienced field wardens, by Tim Corfield (whose grandmother was a sister of my Granny Chart), so that vital knowledge and first-hand field experience are not lost in the mists of time.

  My little Timsales house has remained unchanged over the years, apart from the huge thorn trees that now tower over it, having been planted as tiny seedlings thirty-five years ago, and the groves around it, also transformed by colourful garden flowers that thankfully the wild community do not favour as part of their diet. The elephant nursery remains an extension of my home, but has grown in both capacity and levels of expertise and has now been responsible for rescuing close on 200 elephant orphans, over 100 of whom are now living wild, none of whom would otherwise be alive today.

  The general regime is that after spending their first two years of life in our Nairobi nursery our orphans move on to one of the two rehabilitation centres run by the Trust, one just behind what used to be our Tsavo home in Voi, in the same stockades that David constructed all those years ago to house Samson, Fatuma and Eleanor and which have since been extended and upgraded. The other rehabilitation centre is in the northern area of Tsavo at Ithumba, just below the impressive Ithumba massif. For David, the northern area was the jewel in Tsavo’s crown, an area he loved deeply, and whenever I return I recall the many happy hours we spent watching herds of elephants tunnelling into the dry Tiva riverbed for water, and those determined rhinos who braved the elephants to drink from their waterholes. The tragedy was that after we left Tsavo, rampant and uncontrolled poaching in the north drove all elephants out for three decades, with none then to be found in its vast 3,000 square miles of wilderness. The catalyst that brought the wild elephants back to the north was our northern orphan rehabilitation facility at Ithumba. For several years, only the bulls – the scouts of elephant society – visited the orphans in their night stockades, under cover of darkness, communicating with them in low rumbles, until they were convinced that it was safe for the cow herds to return. Wild elephants now come to drink at the stockade trough there in growing numbers and fraternize with our orphans on a daily basis, even tolerating the presence of the keepers.

  Today we have over fifty dedicated elephant-keepers proficient at raising a newborn elephant without my supervision, even though, in my twilight years now, I am still very much involved. Angela now runs the Trust and has become my right hand, ably abetted by her husband, Robert. I know that David would take great pride in his Pip and her two sons – our grandsons – who will take up the mantle when the time comes. Jill is still also very much part of the team whenever she returns from France, and my granddaughters have inherited their mother’s passion for her homeland, its wildlife and wilderness.

  Thirty-five long years have passed since David died, but I still feel him close to me on a daily basis and in my thoughts share with him all I have since learned about animals. My fifty-plus years of hands-on experience with animals, coupled with the privilege of rearing their orphaned young, have allowed me unique access through which to observe and understand their inside story. The orphanage’s methods of care and rehabilitation have drawn on this cumulative knowledge, yet it is just the foundation upon which we will continue to build. But, like me, David would be very conscious that nothing is achieved alone in this field of work and that any progress is a hugely collaborative effort, with countless people working tirelessly and passionately to provide the best environment possible for the animals that come into our care. Perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects for me has been watching empathy for the elephants dawn and flourish within our keepers and, by extension, in local people.

  For the success of our orphans’ project is largely due to our internationally recognized keepers – whose green jackets and brown dustcoats have become synonymous with our work. David would delight in talking to all our keepers, and particularly to Mischak Nzimbi, the original keeper who came with Taru all those years ago and who has since been the favourite of all the elephants that have passed through our hands, irrespective of their origins or age. Many of our other keepers now possess the magic that was once unique to him, and have been responsible for miraculous recoveries in orphans whom we at first considered hopeless cases. Our keepers pass on their knowledge through radio broadcasts in their own tribal languages to their tribesmen in distant corners of Kenya, who at one time would either not have bothered to rescue a baby elephant, or might even have killed it, but now go to great lengths to save an orphan. There is no one better qualified to educate communities about the elephants than the elephants’ human family, who speak from the heart.

  Our keepers are recruited from Kenya’s many different tribes – men who need employment and can work away from home. I am often asked why our keepers are all men. Some years ago we did have a mix of men and women, but elephants are keeper-dependent for up to ten years before making a full transition into the wild, and we found that women were unable to commit for this period of time, because they saw their main duty as being to their own children.

  Once recruited, the keepers
are taught how to measure and mix the elephants’ milk, how to cover elephant stools instantly with soil and remove them hurriedly before there is a build-up of flies, burying those that are loose in pits dug in strategic places or, if firm, simply shovelling them into the bush for the dung-beetles to roll into balls and bury. The orphans have an uncanny knack of being able to read your heart, so it is in a new recruit’s interest to work towards earning the love and respect of his charges, interacting and talking gently to them, touching and caressing them, playing with them, picking suitable leaves and, most importantly, exuding a genuine affection. And because elephants never forget, it is essential that they be treated only with love and kindness. None of our keepers carries even a twig, but instead they control their charges by tone of voice, the waggling of a finger and, only if absolutely necessary, a sharp disapproving shove to demonstrate displeasure over bad behaviour. The orphans grow to love their human family and derive pleasure from pleasing them, but just like human children, they can be deliberately mischievous and have disagreements with each other, grudges they want to settle. While the keepers will move in to separate antagonists, keeping order within the unit is the role of the older females, who rapidly come to the rescue of any elephant who bellows for help, driving the trouble-makers off to spend time out – the elephant way of punishing wrong-doers, for it deprives them of the feeling of security within the main group.

  During the orphans’ nursery period, the keepers are in physical contact with the babies twenty-four hours a day, sufficient in number to represent the orphans’ lost family herd. Each night, when the orphans return to their stable, a different keeper will sleep in with a different elephant, rotating from one charge to another to avoid any deep attachments, as these can prove counter-productive, as it did for me all those years ago with Shmetty. The keeper sleeps on a raised platform within reach of the elephant’s trunk, and milk is freshly mixed every three hours throughout the night, as well as by day. Cut greens are hung in each stable as a browsing incentive during the nursery stage, but even though browse is eaten by an elephant from the age of about four months onwards, elephant calves are milk-dependent for the first three years of life and cannot survive without it.