by Linda Tucker
Everyone’s drenched in sweat. It’s approaching late afternoon, but the sun is still high in the sky, and the heat shimmers off the scorching bushveld around us. It may be the rainy season, but there isn’t a rain cloud in the sky. Mireille sensibly packed several large cooler bags with provisions as part of her list of priorities, anticipating rightly that we’d have no opportunity for food after arrival—and possibly for some time to come. These bags of provisions are being loaded into the third vehicle.
No obvious danger in sight, for the moment. I’m with Jason in one panel van, together with the director, cameraman, presenter, and Marah, while the cubs are with Tindall in the other panel van. Mireille is with Hennie and the rest of the crew in the passenger transport vehicle, along with the provisions.
Jason leads the way, with the other two rented vehicles following us. He doesn’t need a GPS to navigate the Timbavati region; after more than four years of traversing it, he knows it like the back of his hand. Unlike the previous cavalcade with a police escort through peak Johannesburg traffic, there are no other humans in sight—and no need to keep the sliding doors of the vans closed. So the doors of our vehicle and the one directly following us are standing wide open to aerate the interior for the sleeping lions. The cameras are still rolling. In the cloying afternoon heat, our convoy meanders through the dense bushveld, past a grazing herd of zebra and wildebeest, who raise their heads and stare before getting spooked and suddenly galloping off. Gusts of heated atmosphere funnel through our moving vehicle, clammy and fragrant. We pass a herd of giraffe, who stare down at our vehicle over the leafy treetops. From that angle they can see into the back of the vans and are tilting their heads curiously—having spotted snow-white lions!
Behind the wheel, Jason shifts his leather bush hat, to peer up at them. “In the ’70s, Chris McBride reported he’d sometimes use giraffe to locate the White Lions in the bushveld,” he informs me. “They’d be curiously staring down at something, and he’d follow their eye-direction—then find the Machatan pride nearby, with their white cub.”
Maria illustrating for Linda the ancient ancestral knowledge through the bones of divination
Carrying the Lion Queen’s mantle
Linda beside African high priest Credo Mutwa, who holds his eagle staff in contemplation
Linda with newborn Marah, pledging to secure her freedom and return her to the land of her birthright
Linda with Tsonga tracker Jack Mathebula, who holds the tail of the last White Lioness seen roaming the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve, in the 1980s
Linda with serious-faced Aslan, promising she will not forget him
Long walk to freedom: Linda in the dungeons of a South African zoo, offering the Timbavati soil to be placed under Marah’s paw
Winged lion landed: Linda with Mireille and Jason, transporting Marah in a stretcher just after the DC3 has landed
Joyous return: Linda with tranquilized Marah, finally being transported to her ancestral lands
Jason and Linda carrying a tranquilized cub to safety
Marah’s daughter Zihra, now almost fully grown, tranquilized in order to secure a radio collar for her safety
Sleeping beauty: Marah slowly awakening to her kingdom
Linda with Jason in their reeded bushveld camp
Outdoor classroom: schoolchildren gathering for a cultural celebration of Marah’s return
Sepedi dancers in the heat and dust
Tsonga children holding up their White Lion puppet in a gesture that indicates “Order is restored”
I find this amazing. “You mean the giraffe distinguished between White Lions and the golden lions in the region?”
“Appears so. Those were the days when White Lions still roamed freely in these lands … before their technical extinction in the wild.”
I had read that Chris McBride was responsible for removing three lions from Timbavati in an event surrounded by much secrecy and later described in his book as “Operation White Lion.” I imagined he did so with the best intentions, as White Lions were at risk from hunters and poachers—and he mentioned this fact in his book in the 1980s. But the tragedy is that these White Lions were relocated from the wild to a zoo, where they later died. And shortly afterward, the private reserve itself voted to introduce lion trophy-hunting as a means of bringing in income, so the numbers of White Lions remained precariously low, then disappeared altogether after that last birth on November 10, 1991.
“Well, you’re about to change that now!” Simon, the scientist beside Jason, comments encouragingly.
“Okay, repeat that!” says the film director, and the cameraman swings his camera back onto Simon—a short, academic-looking scientist in his seat beside Jason.
“The White Lions were technically extinct in this region. Linda, Jason, and we—their team—are about to change that,” Simon says on camera.
I cringe slightly at the exposure—but there it is, on film, forever.
“It’s a big day for me,” I explain, trying to put my inexpressible feelings into words for the camera. “I just wish it hadn’t been such a struggle. These lions have a right to be here.”
Heading for the epicenter of White Lion territory, our convoy is well on its way to successfully deliver Africa’s most sacred lioness and her cubs home! We are through the gates of our newly acquired property. The director stops us, and we have to do that scene of entering the gates again, then a third time. The heat is indescribably oppressive. I dab my forehead again on my T-shirt. We are winding slowly down the dust road, imprinted with a multitude of different animal tracks. What a blessed relief—we are almost there! Our destination is that secure shady boma in the very pulsating heart of the lions’ indigenous heartland.
The cameraman clambers out first, heaving the high-definition camera onto his shoulder in order to film us carrying the lions: first Marah—I carry one side of her stretcher together with Jason, Tindall, and his three-strong scientific team. The cameraman focuses in on me as I lay her royal head down gently in the long, green grass. Tranquil and asleep, she’s never looked so at home. I wipe the perspiration from my brow again. It’s burning my eyes. Then we return for the cubs, one by one. The cameraman walks with us, filming, as we settle the first cub down in the long soft grass beneath a leafy thicket, beside her mother. Zihra—she looks gentle and content, so angelic one could forget for a moment how fierce this little lioness can be. After she’s settled, the cameraman returns with us to film the other two siblings being carried. We made sure we placed all of them close together to avoid disorientation when they awake.
“How’re you feeling?” the presenter asks me, on camera.
“I’m just relieved they’re home,” I reply. “That’s the important thing.”
“Just do that scene again,” the director instructs the presenter. “Bring the mother in again on the stretcher. We didn’t get the right angle. And Linda—give us your answer again. Ready. Roll. How’re you feeling? Got it?”
“Got it,” the presenter replies.
I take another deep breath, the sweat dripping down my brow.
Jason and Tindall were busy checking the cubs’ temperatures and pulses. With the assistance of Hennie, Simon, and the other two scientists, we carry Marah into camera again, lowering her down, and I gently laying her head once more on the Timbavati grass.
I glance over to Tindall and Jason. The vet is putting eyedrops in the cubs’ eyes, while Jason is gently shutting their lids with his fingers to ensure no dehydration, placing hand towels over their faces. The camera is still rolling. Jason finishes taking blood samples from all four lions, which we’ll send for testing in a lab to make absolutely sure of their optimal health. He carefully sizes Marah’s neck for a radio collar, to ensure her safety out in the wild. We also agreed he should take this opportunity to insert a tiny hidden microchip beneath the skin of each lion, as secret identification, should there be any need to prove their identities in the unknown times ahead. He and Tindall have co
mpleted that simple operation. Run over the lions’ bodies, the scanner beeps, detecting the hidden device, complete with a secret code for each family member.
They are home! This is the critical turning point in my project’s history.
Still, I dare not let my guard down yet. The sun has sunk low in the sky, assuaging the blazing heat. The end of the first day on White Lion territory is gradually drawing to a close. Caught up in my own inner world, I feel dazed but deeply, profoundly relieved.
I refocus as I hear the film director demanding we reverse the tranquilizing drug, so that they can film the scene of the lions waking up at sunset. I can’t get a grip on what I’m actually hearing! After all the careful implementation of our emergency plan, this has to be the lowest point in the whole journey. Tindall and Jason are denying his request, pointing out that they won’t consider putting the lions’ lives at unnecessary risk—for any reason. Jason explains it’s vital to ensure safe recovery from the tranquilizer, which must wear off slowly overnight. The risks of casualties are high after such a long trip under sedation and searing heat, and the lions have endured enough trauma already.
I would have thought that explanation was enough, but I watch the film director’s petulant response. He loudly gripes about his lost opportunity to film. Then he begins complaining to his colleagues that he can’t see why, given that the lions have already been tranquilized, that they can’t simply be woken, then tranquilized again—“to sleep it off,” as per the vet’s requirements. I have no trouble understanding the director’s filmic needs, but his demands are so out of tune with the real purpose of this day, and any concept of respect for Nature—or life itself—that it saddens me. Fortunately, both Jason and Tindall silence his complaints. They proceed with the step-by-step program, asking that everyone move out of the boma now and keep voices down. I watch the director and his team exit, still grumbling.
Fortunately, Mireille is preoccupied with sorting out refreshments for the group outside of the boma and entirely missed this episode; otherwise she’d have marched over like a sergeant major, wagging her finger and ordering the director off the property.
I look up to the sky. Vultures are circling high above us in a haze of copper and golden light. Realistically, there is little likelihood of any movement from the sedated cats for several hours, and the sun is dropping fast. Given that there is no further lion action to record, the film crew opts to conclude their first day’s filming with a sequence of me instead—at the ancient baobab site nearby, of which they’d heard me speak. Nelias, the elderly farm worker who’d been on this land for fifty-three years, showed me this huge, wise, upside-down-looking tree on my first visit to the land. Estimated to be around fifteen hundred years old, this tree holds a wonderful presence, an ideal setting for an interview. Spectacularly, it straddles the entire rock frontage of the dry ravine and can only be approached by walking down a long, dry riverbed.
With great difficulty, I leave my lion family, knowing they are safe in Jason and Tindall’s trusted hands, and I head off to this baobab site, together with the film crew. It is about a twenty-minute walk. I’m still shaken and slightly quaky at the knees from the flight, and their insensitive demands aren’t helping. At the end of this long, momentous day, watching the film crew trudging up the hot riverbed toward the incredible baobab tree, I find myself increasingly desperate to secure a moment to myself, to connect with the Earth, the lions, and the ancestors.
Marah’s home! Do I dare savor this unbelievable moment?
We are nearing the ancient tree site. I watch the director and crew walking ahead of me, in a better humor now, yelling to each other, cracking jokes, and guffawing so loudly that the sounds create echoes in the ravine. I let them get ahead. They reach a point where the ravine takes a sinuous curve, and they are just about to disappear from view. I take this moment to briefly sit down, alone, in the soft, warm river sand. I so badly need a still space—just a brief moment—to center myself. I am calling upon the spirit of Maria Khosa to show me that all is well, despite the immediate threats and uncertainties that surround our arrival. And I ask my beloved teacher—with all my heart—to give me a sign that she, after all, presides over these lands.
As often occurs on such occasions of communication with the ancestors, a gentle, warm breeze suddenly starts to blow. And I can feel her presence. But I can also hear the film crew calling my name in the distance, so, reluctantly, I stand up again.
A moment later, I hear screams and shouts. Alarmed, I break into a sprint to join them.
When I round the corner I find the film crew standing, looking shocked, all shouting at me simultaneously. Apparently, just ahead of them in the riverbed, a leopard darted straight past and made a kill in the impenetrable riverine bush, meters away. From the squealing in the bushes, the cameraman indicates it must have been a warthog. I can’t believe what I’m hearing! Apart from being extremely reticent and actively keeping away from humans, leopards are nocturnal predators, by nature hunting at night. The likelihood of such an event occurring in daylight, and with all the disturbances of loud human noises, is probably a million to one. I can’t help laughing out loud, although I don’t attempt to explain my exuberance to the others. Maria always had a particular penchant for spectacular drama, with a humorous twist. Without a shadow of doubt, I know she is here with me!
I called for her presence and received the affirmation I was looking for. It happened as if by pure, natural magic, and it signals that all is well, despite the challenges. That’s enough for me.
I am not alone in my mystical belief that Maria, the most powerful priestess, who was imbued with great catlike qualities, can take on lion or leopard form at will. Not long after Maria’s death, a friendly leopard came visiting the staff quarters in Timbavati, padding right up to the inhabitants’ rooms and even lying on the threshold of their barracks. The Tsonga staff members who knew Maria Khosa in her lifetime maintained that this great medicine woman had returned to visit her beloved people in the form of a friendly leopard. And they actually left a dish of milk, or their favorite staple meal—mieliepap—outside their doors in acknowledgment of Maria’s presence. I am still looking forward to one day sharing with Jason that the leopard who sat with him and me under the stars on the night we first met was, I believe, Maria Khosa herself. She was presiding over my welfare and, in so doing, was giving Jason, my special friend, and me, her spiritual daughter, her blessing. I knew this without any doubt at the time, but I imagined my intimacy with Jason still required a certain level of understanding before I’d risk sharing it with him.
One day I’ll tell Jason. As for now, newly arrived on sacred lands, in the riverbed, with the distant film crew screaming from shock at the sudden appearance of a leopard apparently out of nowhere, I silently thank my shaman teacher, again and again, for providing the confirmation I yearned for on this day, the most day important of my life.
CHAPTER 19
Return of the Lion Queen
PEACE, AT LAST! NOTHING BUT THE STARS. It is the night of Marah’s arrival on her sacred lands. Filled with relief and gratitude for the sign from ancestral sources, I glance at Jason in the darkened Land Rover’s seat beside me. He’s viewing the lions through a set of infrared binoculars so as not to disturb them by shining a spotlight. Hennie and the scientists headed back to camp, together with the film crew. Jason and I kept insisting that each of us would prefer to do the night’s monitoring shift; then we finally agreed to do the shift together. Having put aside a cooler of food for us at the back of our monitoring vehicle, Mireille headed off with Tindall to get some sleep. Tindall has a radio at the ready, should we need backup.
At last, I’m starting to feel myself again. Jason’s presence in the driver’s seat beside me is warm and supportive. Only a man of courage and integrity could endure the journey we’ve just been through. So much is in jeopardy, and I fully recognize that among the risks is Jason’s scientific reputation. But he didn’t hesitate to weigh up t
he criticism his peers might have for this unusual project, which doesn’t conveniently fit into any scientific category and hasn’t been rubber-stamped by the authorities. Instead, he willingly took the necessary action steps together with me, whatever the consequences.
Jason and I intend to take turns monitoring Marah and her family all through the night. I offered to take the first shift.… But I open my eyes again … and I realize I must have fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. Still in the passenger seat, I wonder whether, when I keeled over, I had my head on Jason’s shoulder all the while or if I’d been drooling into his lap, but he gallantly gives no indication of it. Straightening myself out, I sit upright. It’s after midnight.
“Any movement from the lions?” I ask him, back in efficiency mode. “I’m awake now. I’ll take over.”
“All calm,” he responds. “I’ve set my alarm so I can take over the shift in a couple of hours. Wanna sandwich?”
I gratefully take one of Mireille’s chunky cheddar cheese sandwiches from Jason’s hand, and am about to ask him a question about how to work the telemetry equipment, only to find that he himself has completely passed out now—upright, in the seat beside me, out for the count.
The hours tick by, tranquil, warm, and sublimely peaceful. It’s pitch dark. It begins to rain. A gentle hazy rain, falling, falling, falling, all around me. Suddenly, I shake Jason awake.
“What? Tell me!” he says, sitting up and focusing immediately.
It is still dark. Predawn. But the cats are beginning to stir for the first time! The cubs seem to be waking first. I watch them through the infrared. They are pretty bewildered, looking around with wide eyes and heads lolling slightly from the tranquilizer. A low growl—that’s Marah’s waking.
