by Linda Tucker
“Can’t say the whole exercise was easy.”
“Sure,” he concedes, standing up, backlit in the morning light.
The rising sun in the far distance transmits its early morning rays into the back of the vehicle, filling it with soft light. I feel warm and content for the first time in many months.
“Anything else you want to tell me?” he asks.
“Well, no, that’s the main issue,” I respond, assuming he’s referring to my list of concerns for Marah and her cubs.
“Let me know if there’s any other way I can assist,” Jason adds, as he starts to stack the coffee flask and mugs in a canvas cooler box.
He’s been fantastic. In respect of the long-term scientific process that needs to be implemented in order for Marah and cubs to successfully return to the wilds of their natural habitat, I understand the challenges more clearly than ever. Jason also assisted with the presentations to the Department of Nature Conservation on the importance of the White Lions, and he’s initiated all the necessary procedures to get permits for this first-ever White Lion reintroduction back to the wild.
“Time to head back to camp for a snooze if we’re gonna be in any condition to monitor through the night again tonight,” he concludes, closing the lid on the storage crates and clamping the metal clasps.
We are back on lion time, snoozing the day away and prowling the night.
SEPTEMBER 30, 2004. After another night full of stars, dawn’s breaking—radiating pristine dewy light over the darkened lace horizon. For the past two days, I’ve been living like a lioness, catching catnaps in the heat of the day, then tracking the golden lions of Timbavati all through the night, from dusk to dawn. Without real sleep, I should feel absolutely wasted with exhaustion, but I’m exhilarated! I’d gladly spend the rest of my life doing this kind of conservation work. Instead, regrettably, I’m due to return to the city to renew my fundraising drive—against odds that have seemed insurmountable. But for the first time in three months, it feels as if my fundraising objectives are actually achievable.
I have loved being with Jason these couple of days, and I cherish the way he lives, so simply yet so fully. Here, in Nature, everything feels abundant. So many gifts. I realize now that achieving my goal is a matter of aligning my inner nature with Mother Nature, attuning to the real issues, and trusting all will be well in the great scheme of things. That is the key to bringing in the resources I need.
After another night of tracking, Jason and I sit in the back of the Land Rover, savoring our last sip of our morning coffee ritual.
He stands up to double-check his telemetry. The lions we’ve been tracking have settled down for the day.
“All clear,” he reports.
I stand up too and shake the dust off my khaki trousers.
“Just wanna get Marah and babes outta there as fast as possible, and into their natural habitat,” I conclude determinedly.
“You’ll do it,” he encourages. “Just remember your track record so far—and keep your eyes on the path ahead.”
“Will do—thanks, Jase.”
“Yeah. Don’t lose focus for a moment—like a lioness on a hunt!”
I smile.
“Come join me,” he says, jumping down off the back of his truck and giving me a hand down. “We can chat while I check this out.”
On the ground with Jason, I watch him opening the hood of his Land Rover, because a knocking sound has been worrying him overnight.
“Sorry ’bout this. Shouldn’t take a moment.”
I lean against the vehicle’s paneled side, savoring the warmth of the bushveld early morning sunshine.
“No huge rush,” I say, smiling.
I am no longer in any hurry. All urgencies can wait. I can’t imagine leaving this life behind. A few minutes pass—and Jason emerges from the engine with grease all over his hands, which he attempts to wipe off on a mutton cloth.
“Fortunately, not serious,” he says, closing the hood and pressing it down securely. “Sort it out at camp. Important thing is to get you back and on the road ASAP! A shame you’ve gotta leave today.”
Pity. I don’t want to think about it.
Jason opens the cabin door for me, gesturing with a warm invitation, “You can drive, if you like. But 4×4s are very different from city cars—I’ll show you low range and when to use the diff lock.”
“Great!” I respond, climbing up into the driver’s seat.
Jason loves his vehicle, so I know this is a rare privilege. And this battered old 1980s Land Rover does seem something special. He told me earlier that instead of a Land Rover engine, it has a tractor engine—which makes it doubly hardy in this rugged terrain. In the final die-hard days of Apartheid, when the world was boycotting South Africa and South African products, the national defense force produced five hundred army vehicles using Land Rover chassis with Perkins tractor engines, and this is one of the survivors! Because of her bronzed color, Jason calls her Tawny—the color of the golden lions he studies day and night.
“Just give me a moment to fill in the datasheet,” he adds, taking a GPS out of one of his trouser pockets and getting a reading, then recording details of last night’s tracking session in the clipboard he’s removed from behind the driver’s seat.
It strikes me that Jason’s the sort of easygoing, earthy man who’s not frightened of any of the natural functioning parts of life. And if I had a spitting cobra in my bedroom, I know I could rely on him to come to the rescue, without harming the snake or me. The one thing he tackles with deadly seriousness is his scientific work—not only the hands-on field research and data capture, but equally the processing methodology and analysis that follows. I think back to the many challenging run-ins I’ve had with scientists during my academic career, from my best friend at university to my fastidious neurologist brother and astronomer-in-chief uncle. But Jason’s different. His painstaking information collection isn’t the ivory tower academia and laboratory test-tube analysis of the kind I encountered as a student at Cambridge University. He doesn’t seem to have that scientific detachment that cuts scientists off from their own intuition and instinct. I think of my first morning, when we encountered the dramatic scene of an emaciated old, nomadic lion who succeeded in making an impala kill—a kill that saved him from starvation. Looking greatly relieved himself, Jason informed me that this aged lion (another of his study animals) had attempted many desperate botched hunts over the past few weeks and probably didn’t have long to live. I could feel Jason’s compassion, almost as if he himself had endured the same agonies as this starving lion.
He climbs down into the cabin with me, and I start the engine with a vroooom-vroommah!—and we’re heading back to the Timbavati headquarters, where Jason has his base, and where I left my old Mercedes. It’s rugged terrain. The Land Rover is plowing through a particularly tricky sandy area, so Jason uses the opportunity to guide me in engaging the differential lock in the gear stick to ensure the weight is equally spread across the vehicle’s load.
Once we are safely out the riverbed, I disengage the diff again and drive freely. The landscape opens up ahead of us, with a nearby herd of impala springing one after the other across our path, in choreographed balletic sequence.
“Can’t wait for the lions to be back where they belong,” I murmur. “But it seems Timbavati’s also gonna be full of its own challenges.”
“You bet.” His tone suggests he knows the challenges only too well.
There’s a protracted silence. When he finally comments again, there’s tension in his voice, “Wasn’t going to mention it, but I’m afraid they’re preparing to hunt another lion.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
“Oh no, not again!” I grimace, feeling that old, familiar chill run through my veins again. “Who is it this time?”
“They’re not saying.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do, Jase!”
Taking my eyes off the uneven terrain for a
moment, I glance at Jason again. He indicates frustration with a slow shake of his head.
“As you know,” he explains, “I’m virtually persona non grata around here—after I corrected the bogus lion count figures that Timbavati lodged with Nature Conservation, remember?”
“Sure, I remember. They overestimated the figures by more than 70 percent.”
“Uh huh. Which would’ve had serious consequences for the lion-hunting quotas in this region.” He pauses, considering. “The facts were wrong, simple. As a scientist and a researcher, well, I had to correct them.”
“You never told me what their response was.”
“They stripped me of my rights and demanded a public apology.”
“And?”
“Of course, I was happy to send out a general email apologizing sincerely if I’d offended anyone. But I also took it as an opportunity to reiterate the facts. Fact is the lion numbers were out by two-thirds.”
A tortoise is crossing the path, so I stop Tawny and wait. Jason cautions me that if I lift the little creature—as I was tempted to do—and carry him to the other side, he’d probably pee with fright and lose all his body water, which he can’t afford in these dry, late winter months before the spring rains. So instead, I switch off the vehicle, and we wait patiently for him to make his own way across.
“Leopard tortoise male,” Jason identifies him by the distinctive spot pattern on his back.
“Adorable!”
Jason takes out his GPS to calculate the time. “You’ll have to set out immediately if you wanna reach Johannesburg today. Seven hours’ drive from here—wouldn’t want you hitting rush-hour traffic on the other side.”
After watching the precious little creature finally complete his laborious route across our path, we continue on our way back to camp.
“How’re you doing? Ready?” he asks.
“Phew!” I respond, trying to get my mind into city gear. “Don’t feel prepared for the concrete jungle right now.”
I’d gladly stay here forever in the Timbavati wilderness, tracking tawny lions and watching over leopard tortoises. It’s hard to face the city, but being stationed close to South Africa’s money mecca is vital if I am to achieve my primary goal of funding Marah’s land acquisition.
“Remember: the lions are relying on you!” Jason says.
“Thanks for their vote of confidence, Jase,” I reply, smiling and feeling the pull of the powerful engine plow steadily through the rutted gravel surface.
Passing through the dense bushveld scene with dazzling zebra and a small herd of languid giraffe in an open plains area, we are finally approaching Timbavati HQ. A gate guard unlocks the huge grill gates and salutes as he slides them open for our vehicle. We’ve arrived at the military-style settlement in the bushveld, a cluster of thatched rondavels painted army green, behind predator-proof electrified fencing.
“Better warn you,” Jason prepares me as I bring the vehicle to a rather abrupt halt. “There’ve been a couple of odd types looking for you recently.”
“Like whom?” I ask, bracing myself.
“Remember that weirdo we called the stalker a while back, declaring you were his wife from a previous lifetime and he was back to claim you?”
“Yup, I remember,” I reply with a flush of embarrassment.
“Well, about a week ago, the warden reported there was another individual looking for you. I made sure it would take the man a while to find you—gave him the aerial map of another region.”
I smile. “Thanks.”
Jason opens the door and jumps out, and I do the same on my side.
“Thought you should know. He was wafting around in what the warden could only describe as a caftan and a g-string! Didn’t go down too well here, as you can imagine.”
I cringe and take a good look at Jason’s face to gauge the seriousness of this latest intrusion. I suspect he’s taken the flack for me again. Ever since my book was published, I’ve had numerous people try to track me down for their reasons rather than mine. Some were authentic shamans who understood the fundamental importance of the White Lion material I’d handed over and wished to share their own knowledge with me of a related kind, but others were simply looking for cheap thrills. Because I identify the Timbavati area as the White Lions’ ancestral homelands in my book, readers captivated by the story sometimes ended up here in search of me: Timbavati HQ! What a conflict of paradigms: New Age faddism and old-school militaristic regime.
With one tanned arm outstretched and holding onto the roll bars, Jason hauls himself onto the back of the vehicle to retrieve my leather rucksack.
“My book’s out there, Jase,” I observe, meaning it’s in the public domain.” I need to find a way of controlling people who track me down after reading the White Lion material.”
“Understood,” he says, jumping down with my luggage over his shoulder. “And people have to take responsibility for their own actions. Just thought you might wanna know.”
Under the shade of a tree, next to Jason’s tented camp, I spot my old Mercedes. As we stroll over, my mind starts shifting for the first time into another mode, refocusing on my immediate fundraising goals. With a sigh, I consciously start mustering all my inner reserves. Fortunately, I am not short on motivation. Every step I take is determined by one singleminded goal: to get Marah and cubs to freedom and safety. How to purchase her ancestral land still remains a mystery. But my teachings with Maria Khosa have opened me to the possibility of miracles. I’m ready to tackle the challenges again. These last couple of nights tracking the wild lion prides in Timbavati together with lion-man Jason all night until the sun rose, resplendent and new, were a dream come true. Now I’m fully prepared for brutal reality.
CHAPTER 14
Trust and Trustees
IT’S A CHILLY SPRING MORNING, THREE WEEKS since my visit to Timbavati and Jason—and the pressure is on. October 20, 2004. The first, second, and third month of the option passed without success, and I am disconcertingly well into the fourth month. My appeals for funding seemed a solid strategy, but the usual routes simply haven’t materialized. All the banks I’ve approached refused loans, because my nonprofit organization had no guarantee of regular income. As the CEO, I’ve been working without a salary for the White Lions for over a decade now. No problem with that—it’s part of my commitment to the cause, and fortunately I had a nest egg to keep me going—but the difficulty is that my personal record of no income doesn’t give these institutions any comfort. They view me, and my cause, as high risk, however worthy my motives.
Over the past two weeks, my persistence generated significant interest from a number of corporate prospects, but not one was workable. In several cases, I got as far as sitting down at the negotiating table with the organization’s marketing team to draft terms of association, only to find that, when the chips were down, everything stacked up against the White Lions’ interests and in favor of the corporation supposedly offering a helping hand. Mostly, corporations expected to use the White Lions’ images for whatever marketing gimmick they chose, however inappropriate: baseball caps, trashy sweatshirts, billboards with slogans and logos. In other cases, the corporation expected to send busloads of staff members on a regular basis into the heart of the White Lions’ territory, on the assumption that these rare animals must be at the company’s beck and call. My contract with the sacred White Lions won’t allow them to be treated as yet another commodity, and acting on their behalf, I simply couldn’t agree to these deals. So the bottom line is that in each and every case, the corporations expected more for their sponsorship than they were actually giving. At this late stage in the proceedings, I am becoming really uneasy. This certainly wasn’t the unconditional support I envisaged.
Were my expectations too high? Our corporate world seems to have lost all sense of value, so why was I seeking help from those quarters? The truth: deep down I believe everyone in all walks of life—even faceless corporate structures—wants to make a difference
, and can.
My main challenge has been my reticence in asking for money. After my trip to Jason and the Timbavati bushveld, the penny has finally dropped. I have to stop asking, because the truth is, I am not asking. Rather, I am offering humanity a chance to help save the most sacred animals on Earth. What a privilege!
After adopting this new approach, the situation has drastically improved. Notification finally came through from our bank that a significant donation has mysteriously been deposited! Out of the blue. Hallelujah! What’s so intriguing is that an anonymous benefactor donated the funds—with no strings attached. This amazing validation is just what I’ve been asking for, daily, in my prayers. The sudden materialization of funds is spine-tingling! True, it is not sufficient to solve the problem, but certainly sizeable enough to give me renewed hope—accounting for approximately a quarter of the missing grand amount.
Naturally, my first feeling is utter and complete delight. Then two days after the funds came in, I had a dream in which Maria Khosa entirely changed my perspective. She showed me two scenarios: The first scenario was a piece of land protected by a fortress wall, with Marah safely in the interior. The second scenario was a piece of land, unprotected, with Marah held in a dungeon far away. I woke up in shock, with a clear instruction: “Erect an electrified boundary fence on the land now, without delay, to ensure Marah’s freedom.”
That seems simple enough. But the dilemma is that I have only just received this funding. How do I justify spending it on fencing (of all unglamorous things) before the property itself is even purchased?
Since Maria Khosa passed into spirit, I’ve had lots of communication from her. If I am too preoccupied to take note of my dreams—which is pretty often—she tends to find alternative means of communicating with me from the other side. A number of mediums, or so-called channelers, with whom I’ve consulted, have inevitably picked up her formidable presence. Often they see a great and imposing queen, sometimes with a sundial or bedecked with a pharaonic lion headdress, seated at a table of elders in the ancestral realm, holding council. I’ve since come to recognize Queen Maria, and the other members on the council of ascended masters, as a representation of the powerful ancestral entities who continue to work with the affairs of humankind from the spiritual planes. Whenever possible, I actively work in accordance with them too. I regard their guidance as higher council, and information from these rarified sources has guided my actions ever since Maria’s departure from this world (and even for some time before, no doubt). In fact, since I committed to serving the White Lion cause, there have been countless occasions when I drew wisdom from these realms. Sometimes, I simply visualized the higher council and their directives came to me so clearly that I had no difficulty in understanding what needed to be done. But the challenge remains how to translate such guidance into everyday reality and convince others in my organization of its merits.
