Epilogue: David
‘With the death of an Elder, an entire Encyclopedia goes with him.’
– Anon
The love songs of the fifties and sixties, for me, are exceedingly emotive. I close my eyes and am transported back thirty-five years, enveloped in David’s arms during a Saturday night dance at the Voi Hotel, and my memory allows me to feel and live the enchantment all over again.
Seldom a night passes that David does not appear in my dreams, and the sense of loss on waking still leaves a void in my heart. When David died on 13 June 1977, aged fifty-seven, I can honestly say that I was more deeply in love with him than ever. We were married for seventeen enchanting years, and for all that time I experienced a pervading sense of loving warmth and security coupled with deep admiration and respect. David was always there for me, always right; there to make decisive difficult decisions, to take control, to sort out problems, to create, inspire or fix anything. He was an exciting man to live with; knowledgeable, passionate, considerate, compassionate and kind. He loved and protected me in the truest sense.
Life with David was a continuous adventure of seeing and understanding. When we worked together it was as though a magic wand made everything intriguing and interesting. The brilliance of his enquiring mind and the imprint of his deep respect and love of Nature continue to inspire me and the work of the Trust established in his memory every single day. He would be especially proud of our success in raising the orphaned elephants and other wild animals so that they can return to the natural wild life that is their birthright.
I have turned many pages since David’s death, but he is never far from my thoughts. I loved him with all my heart and soul, and I miss him sometimes so much that it hurts. And yet, if David had lived to grow old with me, he would be in his nineties now, something I cannot envisage, for he remains forever timeless in my heart and mind, magnetic, strong and handsome. I know that he would be immeasurably proud of Angela and all his grandchildren, of their love of Nature and wildlife. He remains a role model for Angela’s two boys, who mirror him in many ways. He would be proud of the work of the Trust that seeks to perpetuate his ethics and his contribution to the natural world, for which he cared so passionately. I would like to think that this book is a fitting tribute to him, but also to other early Park Wardens like him who battled against all the odds to ensure that the current generation of Kenyans retain their irreplaceable indigenous wildlife to enjoy for themselves and share with the rest of the world. It is a priceless resource that enriches them and their country immeasurably.
Acknowledgements
I owe my love of animals to my wonderful parents, who right from the word go instilled in me empathy for all life. My late husband, David, reinforced that and further enriched my understanding of animals. As a naturalist he was a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge, way ahead of his time, recognizing the inter-relatedness of every form of life as vital to the health of the whole. His humility, professionalism, unwavering courage and impeccable integrity have been the guiding lights in my own conservation career. My gratitude to him for everything that he was, for the magical years that we shared, and for what the Trust, established in his memory, has been able to achieve is infinite.
I am deeply indebted to my family as a whole, but especially to my two sisters, Sheila and Betty, who have always been there for me during the dark days of life, and to David Read for injecting fun and laughter back into my life. My daughters have been a source of pride and strength, by my side throughout, and have given me the gift and endless joy of grandchildren. Jill has been my companion, shouldering the early hard graft with me when the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust was in its infancy. Together we pounded the streets and did the rounds with cap in hand to raise funding for the wildlife cause. She shared her bedroom with the first orphaned elephant before we even had a stable, and more recently has been my travelling companion, sympathetic to my phobia of being lost. Her father, and my first husband, Bill Woodley, was my friend throughout, a truly enlightened man.
Angela, my talented, beautiful and artistic daughter by David, is so like him, excelling at all she undertakes. She was only thirteen years old when David died and I will always be deeply indebted to Marti and Illie Anderson, Galana Ranch neighbours during our Tsavo time, who sponsored her Cape Town University course and enabled her to travel home for the holidays so that we could be together. In adulthood Angela has taken the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust to new heights in a way that I could never have achieved. Her sharp business acumen, perception and wisdom have steered the Trust proficiently, true to David’s conservation principles. I am similarly deeply indebted to the husbands of my two girls, whose help I have always been able to count upon, and who have unselfishly shared my daughters with me. It was Jean-François Chavrier, Jill’s French husband, who gave the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust its first vehicle, his own little Renault 4 shipped to us from France, and who with Jill helped establish the Trust’s first anti-poaching de-snaring patrols to rid Tsavo’s boundaries of the infamous wire snares that have caused so much animal suffering to this day. Angela’s husband, Robert Carr-Hartley, has been the steadfast and stable ‘rock’ on whom we can always rely to calm troubled waters, and is unstintingly there for us whenever needed. Robert’s passion for wilderness and all that it encompasses, his perceptive vision, his quiet determination and endurance to achieve his conservation dreams, are a rare gift that has richly rewarded the Trust and benefited the greater conservation cause as well.
My thanks are due to Simon Trevor, who, in the Trust’s infancy, allowed us access to the documentary films he made alongside David while working in Tsavo. I thank him also for introducing us to what is now the Trust land abutting Tsavo’s Athi River boundary that serves as the base for all the Trust’s field operations.
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust owes its inception to the vision of the late John Sutton, and my brother Peter (now also deceased), who obtained permission for me to reside in the Nairobi National Park. I am deeply indebted to the compassion and kindness of the Kenyan authorities for granting me this privilege and to those Wildlife Directors with whom I have been able to work closely since David’s passing. But it was the late Bob Poole, Head of the Kenya Office of the US-based African Wildlife Foundation, who nurtured the fledgling David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and gave it wings to fly independently in the fullness of time. I am likewise deeply grateful to the Trustees and Advisory Committee of the Trust, who have guided its conservation contribution, faithful always to the mission statement, of which David would have approved.
Never a day passes that I do not silently give a prayer of thanks to the skills of the South African surgeons who saved my leg after I had been felled by a wild elephant I mistook for Eleanor, leaving me on crutches for fifteen long months. Dr Ponky Firer expertly repaired seriously shattered bones, restoring to me a working limb that has given me little trouble since, and Dr Jeff Sochen saved it through bone irrigation, ridding it of the bacteria that had invaded the compound fracture. My younger sister, Betty, selflessly and diligently nursed me throughout this ordeal, and I will always be most deeply grateful for her patience and companionship and to my niece, Sally, for taking me in. I am deeply indebted to all who contributed financially towards the repair of my leg; to Jin Tatsumura, with whom I did the elephant slot for the prestigious Gaia Symphony and who treated me to specialized alternative medicine in Japan. That I now have a fully functional right leg is due in no small measure to him and the amazing hospitality afforded us in Japan.
This book would probably never have made the shelves had it not been for my agent, Patrick Walsh of Conville & Walsh, who travelled to Kenya and forced me to sit down and write the outline needed to attract publishers. I am also deeply indebted to Gillian Stern, my editor, who so willingly and proficiently undertook the daunting task of compressing over 1,000 pages of original material into the current manageable memoir. Thank you, Gillian, for doing an unenviable and remarkable job. I al
so thank Eleo Gordon, my Viking publisher, for her guidance and understanding throughout this process.
I sincerely thank the many people around the world who have generously and consistently supported the Trust’s efforts, and thank our US Friends’ Board and local Trustees who have given of their time free to empower the Trust further. I personally owe a huge debt of gratitude to the US Friends’ Founding President, Stephen Smith, for help over personal legal issues relating to filming contracts. Thank you so much, Stephen.
And last, but by no means least, my life has been enriched every day, beyond measure, by the many animal orphans that have passed through our hands over the years – even though rearing wild orphans is invariably a cocktail of joy tempered with a good dose of tears. It has been the elephants themselves, who by example have demonstrated how to cope with adversity – to mourn and grieve, as one must, but then to turn the page and focus on giving to the living. They, who have suffered so much at the hands of humans, never lose the ability to forgive, even though, being elephants, they will never be able to forget.
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Abdul (bulbul)
acacias
Adolf Woermann
African Explosives and Chemical Industries Company
African Wildlife Foundation
Aggett, Boyce (Uncle Boyce)
Aggett, Ellen see Chart, Ellen
Aggett, Emma Jane (Great-Granny
Aggett)
Aggett, Ethel (Great-Aunt Ethel)
Aggett, Thomas (Great-Grandpa Aggett)
Aggett, George
Ahamed (elephant)
Ajok (elephant)
Ali (keeper)
Amboseli (rhino)
Amboseli National Reserve
Anderson, Marti and Illie
antelopes
see also bushbuck; dikdiks; duikers; elands; impalas; kudus
Aruba (elephant)
Aruba Dam
Aruba Lodge
Athi River
Baby (eland)
Bales, Betty
Angela’s birth
childhood
Daphne’s bone graft
David’s death
and Graham
Jill’s wedding
in South Africa
Bales, Graham
Bales, Sally
Balthazar (warthog)
Bandit (impala)
baobabs
Baring, Sir Evelyn
Baron (rooster)
Barrett, Don
bats
Beston, Henry
Bibi (elephant)
biltong
Bimbo (impala)
Biscuit (impala)
Blixen, Karen
Bloody Ivory
Blue Lagoon
Blundell, Michael
Bob (impala)
Bonnie (impala)
Boozie (sheep)
Boran
Borana Lodge
Born to be Wild
Bouncer (impala)
Bravo (impala)
Briggs, Group Captain ‘Puck’
Brindlay, Arthur
Brown, David
Brown, Leslie
buffalo weavers
buffaloes
Bukanezi (elephant)
bulbuls
Bullfrog Safaris
Bullitt (impala)
Bunty (impala)
Burra (elephant)
bush meat
bush pigs
bushbuck
Bushey (bushbuck)
Bushy (bushbuck)
camels
Care for the Wild International
Carissa edulis
Carr-Hartley, Angela (Pip)
and Baby
birth and childhood
at boarding school
Borana Lodge
and Bunty
Daphne’s bone graft
David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
David’s death
domestic skills
and Father Ram
feather-flower pictures
Japan visit
make-up artistry
marriage
and David Read
and Rufus
Saa Nane
and Samson
and Shmetty
sons’ births
tree climbing
University of Cape Town
and Wiffle
Carr-Hartley, Roan
Carr-Hartley, Robert
Carr-Hartley, Roy
Carr-Hartley, Taru
Carr-Hartley, William
Catherine (elephant)
Cedar Park
Chart, Miss
Chart, Ellen (Granny Chart)
and Bryan
Daphne’s marriage to Bill
Daphne’s marriage to David
death
at Gilgil
Grand Hotel
and Grandpa Webb
at Malindi
and Mau Mau
moves to live with Fred
Chart, Ernest Nye
Chart, Fred
Chart, Harry
Chavrier, Emily
Chavrier, Jean-François (JF)
Chavrier, Jill see Woodley, Jill
Chavrier, Zoe
chickens
Childs, Alan ‘Chillicracker’
Chuma (elephant)
CITES
civet cats
Cleo (warthog)
Corfield, Tim
Cowie, Colonel Mervyn
Craven, Alan
crocodiles
Daisy (horse)
Daisy (waterbuck)
Dario
David Sheldrick Memorial Appeal
David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
Angela and Robert
elephant orphanage
Kaluku Farm
Red Peril
rhino orphanage
Saa Nane
Top Cub aircraft
Tsavo National Park
Davis, Pop
Dika (elephant)
dikdiks
Donald (elephant)
drought
Duff-Mackay, Alex
duikers
East African Standard
Eden, Ruth
Edie (elephant)
Edinburgh, Duke of
Edo (elephant)
elands
Eleanor (elephant)
and Gulliver
and keeper
and orphaned elephants
and poachers
and Pundu
and tourists
wild elephant attack
Elephant Diaries, The
elephants
culling
digital fostering programme
drought
hunting
Kanderi waterhole
Kathamulla blind
orphanage
poaching
research
see also specific named animals
Eliot, Sir Charles
Emily (elephant)
Erskine, Francis
Ever Hopefuls (warthogs)
Father Ram (impala)
Fatuma (elephant)
Ferrara
fever tree
Field Force
Rakoub Camel Section
recruiting safari
Firer, Paul ‘Ponky’
Fitzgerald, Vesey
Flame Trees of Thika, The
Flop Ears (elephant)
Ford Foundation
Frederick (cook)
frogs
Gabbra
Galana Game Management Scheme
Galana Ranch
Galana River
Gilgil
Giriama
Glover, Barbara
Glover, Phil
Goddard, John
Government Game Department
anti-poaching units
hunting
ivory
Kenyan independence
merger
Great Rift Valley
Gregory Peck (buffalo weaver)
Grunter (warthog)
guinea fowl
Gulliver (elephant)
gyrostigma fly
Hales, Ruth see Woodley, Ruth
Hansen, Mrs
Hardnut (buffalo)
Hayes, Henry
Hellier (buffalo)
Helmet (buffalo)
Higginson, Mr
Higginson, Mrs
Higginson, Michael
Higginson, Philip
Higglety (mongoose)
Hola force
Honk family (peacocks)
Horatio (buffalo)
hornbills
Hucks, Mavis
Hucks, Philip
Hunt, Don
hunting
Huppety (zebra)
Huxley, Elspeth
Huxley, Sir Julian
Hyperolius sheldricki
Imenti (elephant)
Imenti forest
impalas
Bimbo
Bob
Bonnie
Bouncer
Bunty
Love, Life, and Elephants Page 38
