The Eye of the Elephant

by Mark James Owens

  IN MAY 1991 the marula fruits lie on the ground bursting with a honey-sweet fragrance, and my mind turns once again to Survivor. Did Mpundu Katongo, Chanda Seven, and Chikilinti kill him or did he escape? Am I foolish to hope that he will wander into camp on his return from the plains? Mark continues to fly antipoaching patrols and count elephants; I spend most of the time at my river camp, encouraging scouts, or working in Mwamfushi. But I never drive through the hills near Marula-Puku without thinking of Survivor, without searching the ridges and valleys for an elephant with small tusks and a hole in his left ear.

  One afternoon a few weeks after our visit to Mwamfushi, I am sitting on the red, dusty ground with the children of Mano, drawing pictures of elephants. The surrounding forest trills with the songs of lovebirds and wild parrots, and the encampment hums with the steady sounds of the women cooking and washing outside their mud huts. The drone of an engine drifts through the trees: Mark is grading the Mano airstrip with one of the new tractors.

  A plume of dust rising behind it, Mano's truck roars into camp with ten scouts in the back, singing and holding their thumbs up. We have never heard the scouts sing before; the children and I jump up and run to meet them. A ragged, dusty man sits in the back of the truck, handcuffed, his head hanging.

  "We have captured Simu Chimba, Madam! Look how small he is! A big poacher like this, how can he be so small?"

  "Well done!" I congratulate them, thinking, "Two down, three to go."

  With Mark patrolling in the air, the scouts and our team busy on the ground, we haven't seen a poached elephant in eight months. Our work to win over the people of Mwamfushi continues, although in a painfully halting way. Everything needed to supply the budding cottage industries, from sewing needles to hacksaw blades, must be trucked all the way from Lusaka or imported from abroad. But already there is a change in the village; it seems to whistle. Musakanya and his road crew have built a broad, smooth track from Mpika to the Mwamfushi; the mill is grinding mealie-meal; the sewing shop is manufacturing new uniforms for the game guards; the carpenters have produced a desk. One person talks of making candles, another of making soap, a third of developing a fish farm. We have started a conservation education program in the school, and posters of elephants, lions, and leopards—courtesy of the Dallas Zoo—give splashes of pride and color to the clay-brick walls.

  With a new sense of authority and hope, the people of the village have been spying on Chikilinti, Mpundu Katongo, Simu Chimba, and the other commercial poachers, and reporting their plans to Musakanya. By harassing them with insults and threats, the Mwamfushi vigilantes have forced the poachers out of the village into the bush, where they hide out in grass hovels, afraid even to have a campfire at night. Their power over the villagers has been broken. Chanda Seven and Musakanya, the two ex-poachers now working for us in Mwamfushi, are shining examples for the unconverted. Both have supervisory positions—Musakanya with the road crew, Chanda Seven on a farm—and are pulling down good salaries without breaking the law.

  One lazy afternoon, while all of Africa is nodding in the heat, Mpundu Katongo wanders down from the hills toward Chanda Seven's hut. He is planning a major poaching' expedition into North Luangwa and hopes to persuade Chanda Seven to join him. Mpundu has heard all the nonsense about fish farms and grinding mills, but does not believe any of it will pay as well as poaching. Although he is short, he is very strong; and unlike some of the other poachers he is not frightened by the villagers.

  Chanda Seven sees his old friend across the field and invites him into his mud-wattle hut for beer. They shake hands in the neatly swept yard, and Chanda Seven steps aside, allowing his guest into the hut. As they duck through the tiny doorway, Chanda shoves Katongo against the far wall, jumps back outside, and locks the door. Katongo shouts and bangs on the puny door, threatening to break out. Grabbing an ax, Chanda Seven swears he will chop Mpundu into tiny bits and feed him to the hyenas if he tries to escape. Drawn to the commotion, vigilantes armed with hoes and rakes race through the maize patches to help Seven contain his captive, shouting insults at him through the door of the hut.

  When Musakanya sees what has happened, he runs five miles to Mpika to inform the game guards. It takes some doing to convince the Mpika scouts to come, but eventually, using one of our trucks, they drive to Mwamfushi and arrest Mpundu Katongo and take him to Mpika. Early the next day, even before we have heard of the arrest, Max Saili radios us to say that he has heard the warden is going to release Katongo.

  "Oh no he's not!" Mark shouts over the mike. "Don't let anything happen! I'll be in Mpika in thirty minutes." Mark jumps into the plane and flies to Mpika, where Saili meets him at the airstrip. No doubt a bribe has changed hands, but this time it won't work.

  At ten o'clock in the morning Mark roars up to Mpondo's Roadside Bar and jams on the brakes, a cloud of dust swirling behind him. He marches inside the ramshackle building and looks around the dimly lit room. Warden Mulenga is sitting alone at a table with eight empty beer bottles. He glances in Mark's direction and then stares blearily at the wall.

  "I heard you're going to release Mpundu Katongo?" Mark demands.

  "Insufficient evidence," the warden slurs.

  "You know this man is a poacher. If you don't have enough evidence, we do. If you release him, I'm going to make a big stink at the ministry."

  The drunken warden, mumbling something unintelligible, tears a scrap from a brown paper bag and scribbles his authorization for Katongo to be taken to Mano for questioning. He agrees not to drop the charges against Katongo as long as we hire him. Mpundu will be in custody of Kotela and the Mano scouts.

  "Thanks, warden, have another beer." Mark slaps some kwacha notes on the table and walks out.

  Handcuffed and guarded by two scouts, the poacher is lifted into the plane. Mark flies him to Mano airstrip, where the scouts and I meet him. They swarm around the plane, and when Mpundu is handed down to them, they march off toward camp, pushing and shoving the shackled captive. Once in the n'saka the scouts hold Mpundu down on the ground and paint blue and yellow lines on his face—a juju that removes all power from the poacher. Hands and feet bound, he sits in the center of the n'saka while the scouts, wives, and children take turns humiliating him. One scout demands that Mpundu act like a chicken. Hobbling around the camp, he scratches the dust with his bare feet and flaps his arms as best he can. Every few steps he topples over and falls hard to the ground, and everyone laughs.

  When the scouts at last tire of the ritual, Kotela tells us that we can interview the prisoner. We set up the video camera and I stare into the eyes of Mpundu Katongo. He is a short, stocky man with a bulldog's face. Stripped of his juju, he sits quietly staring into the dirt and confesses that he has shot more than seventy-five elephants, hundreds of buffalo, and too many puku to count. Speaking clearly to the camera, he admits shooting at the airplane with semiautomatic weapons on many occasions. In vivid detail he describes how he and the others planned to attack our camp but abandoned the scheme when they saw the game guards. He tells us that it was he, Chanda Seven, and Chikilinti who shot the elephants near Marula-Puku.

  We bring Katongo's family to Mano and give them a house. We hire him to lead the scouts on patrols, using his knowledge of routes and hunting areas to help them ambush and apprehend other poachers. Later we also hire Bernard Mutondo, the poacher who killed a game scout and wounded three others south of the park and nevertheless was released by the magistrate. Now three of the five men who tried to kill us are on our payroll.

  Stepping quietly through the undergrowth, I walk away from Nyama Zamara lagoon toward my river camp. A large male waterbuck, standing in the tall grass, swings his head in my direction. I don't move. He looks at me for a moment, then continues to graze. I walk on toward the beach, where sixty hippos are sprawled on the damp sand.

  Unexpectedly I hear the sound of our airplane to the south; Mark must be patrolling the Mwaleshi River. As always when I hear the plane, I take the walkie-talkie from m
y backpack and switch it on in case he calls me. Although he often patrols in this area, he has never visited my camp. The drone of the engine grows louder.

  "Brown Hyena, this is Sand Panther." Mark's voice crackles over the radio. "Do you read me?"

  I can see the plane swooping low above the trees at the river's bend. "Roger, Sand Panther. Go ahead."

  "Hi, Boo! Want some company for dinner tonight?"

  "Roger, Sand Panther. That'll be fine. As long as you understand that dinner at my camp is a jacket-and-tie affair," I joke. "And don't forget the chocolates."

  "Of course," Mark laughs over the air. "I'll fly back late this afternoon. Please pick me up at the airstrip on the plains where we darted Bouncer."

  "Roger. See you then. Brown Hyena clear." I zip the radio into my backpack and run through the trees toward camp, avoiding the beach so that I won't frighten the hippos. What in the world will I cook for dinner?

  In my little grass hut I fling open the blue storage trunks and rummage through the tins looking for something special. I decide on packaged onion soup, pasta with canned mushroom and cheese sauce, green beans, and cookies. I set the table with a chitenge patterned with swirls of greens, blues, and reds, candles set in snail shells, and yellow enamel cups and plates. At the edge of camp I pick tiny blue wildflowers and place them on the table in an empty peanut butter jar. Apparently sensing my excitement, the baboons scramble into the ebony tree over the hut and lean from the branches to watch me.

  Folding a sheet of paper in half and decorating it with sketches of hippos and crocodiles, I write out a menu for the evening:

  Appetizer

  Smoked oysters Zamara

  Soup

  Luangwa onion soup with garlic croutons

  Entrée

  Lagoon pasta with mushrooms and cheese

  Green beans Lubonga

  Dessert

  Moon cookies

  I have no decent clothes at my bush camp. Determined to look as spiffy as possible, I make a skirt of another chitenge and wear it with a white blouse, sandals, and my favorite Bushman earrings. In the late afternoon I drive to the grass airstrip on a flat open plain about four miles from the river. During the twenty-minute trip I pass herds of wildebeests, zebras, and buffalo grazing along the track. I am a mile from the strip when Mark swoops down in the plane right above the truck. Perfect timing. He will land just before I arrive.

  By the time I turn onto the dusty strip, the plane is parked at the far end. But driving toward it, I cannot see my pilot. Strange—he should be out of the plane by now, tying it down for the night. Driving closer, I am more and more puzzled; the plane stands deserted. I park next to it, step out, and look around.

  Suddenly Mark struts from behind the fuselage where he has been hiding. Below the belt he is dressed as usual—khaki shorts, bush socks, and desert boots. But above the waist he is wearing a smart blue blazer, a white dress shirt, and a tie. A wiry bunch of wildflowers hides his devilish grin, and a bottle of champagne is tucked under his arm.

  "Bonjour, madame. Sand Panther at your service," he says with a sweeping bow.

  On the bank overlooking the beach, we nibble smoked oysters and sip champagne, watching the sun and the hippos sink into the broad river. Later, with moonlight streaming on the white sand, the hippos stagger from the water and stroll just below our din-nertable perched on the edge of the bank. My little grass hut glows with soft candle and lantern light. Whispering and laughing softly, we search the sky for shooting stars—and count sue.

  Later, on our bedrolls in the tent, I snatch up my pillow and look for chocolates. A long time ago it was Mark's favorite hiding place for special surprises, including chocolates. But there is nothing. Hiding my disappointment, I slide between the sheets and he pulls me close—laughing. Then my feet touch something at the far end of the covers.

  "Mark, what have you done now?" Peeling back the blanket, I discover chocolate bars—twenty-five of them—lined up at the tips of my toes.

  It is the dry season again. The grasses are tired now, having made seeds in every imaginable shape and array. They lie on their sides, resting their heads near the ground. Eventually the wildfires will consume them, sending their last drops of life to the clouds, which in turn will rain down on the saplings of distant hills. Or, if the fires do not come, the grasses will return to the soil, giving their souls to new hopeful seeds. Either way, we will see them again. Even the colors are weary, having burned themselves out with brilliant golds and reds, then fading to the pale hue of straw. Life is taking a breather, and the year itself must rest.

  It is the dry season again. It comes every year. But I know now that the life-giving rains will return. Just as there is an end to winter, there is an end to drought. The secret is to live in every season. The Kalahari taught me this, and like the desert I want to sing in the dry season and dance in the rains.

  Since the poachers were stopped before they could set their wildfires, for once there is grass for the animals to eat, long into the dry season. Meandering lines of elephants drift across the valley floor, feeding on the savannas. In former years, by March or April they would have fled into the protective hills of the scarp, abandoning the superior forage of the valley grasses for the fibrous bark of trees in the miombo woodlands. But now Long Ear, Misty, Marula, and their young feed along the open floodplains of the Mwaleshi, where the tall elephant grass waves in the gentle breeze.

  At the airstrip one morning, Kasokola and Mwamba, who are guarding the plane, tell us they have seen two elephants in the small valley near Khaya Stream below the hill. One, they say, has tusks; one does not. For the next few days we look for them but see nothing. Several mornings later, we are passing Hippo Pool on our way back to camp when a bull elephant without tusks appears in the tall grass near the bank. It is Cheers. Every day after that we find him feeding on the long grasses across the Lubonga near camp, or on fruits near the airstrip; but he will not come closer. Always there is another elephant with him, standing deep in the trees, so that we can never get a good look at him. Like a gray shadow, he always slips silently away.

  Late one afternoon, sitting quietly by the river, Mark and I hear a rustling on the far bank. Slowly, an elephant plods from the tall reeds of a dambo on the other side and stands looking at the marula trees behind us. I put my hands to my face in disbelief. The elephant has tusks as long as Mark's arms and a tiny hole in his left ear. It is Survivor.

  For several minutes he watches us with eyes that have seen too much. He lifts his trunk high into the air in our direction. But we are not fooled; this is not a greeting. It is the marula fruits that he smells and the marula fruits that he wants, not contact with us. He is not thanking us for being here, or blaming us for not doing a better job of protecting him. He just wants to eat these fruits, wander these hills, and live with his own kind. It is not too much for his kind to ask, or for our kind to give.

  He gives us a wide berth as he passes on the far bank, not coming nearly as close to us as he did last year. He lumbers to the river, touching the water with his trunk, lifting it to his mouth. He stands for long moments, looking at us, then glides silently along the sandbar. It is said that elephants do not forget; perhaps they do forgive.

  "What are we going to do now?" Mark whispers to me.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've always said we'd go home when the elephants could come to the river and drink in peace."

  I look along the Lubonga, where it gently sweeps through the high banks and rocky shoals. Five puku lie in the cool sand near a pair of Egyptian geese.

  And I answer, "We are home."

  Epilogue

  Return to Deception Valley

  DELIA

  The land has been hurt. Misuse is not to be

  excused, and its ill effects will long be felt.

  But nature will not be eliminated, even here.

  Rain, moss, and time apply their healing bandage,

  and the injured land at last rec
overs.

  Nature is evergreen, after all.

  —ROBERT MICHAEL PYLE

  DURING ALL OUR. YEARS in Luangwa we never forgot the Kalahari. Whenever we saw the Serendipity Pride, we thought of the desert lions; whenever it rained at Marula-Puku, we wondered if East Dune was still dry; whenever there was a full moon, we longed for Deception Valley.

  In 1988, while we were in North Luangwa, we received a letter reporting that a special commission in Botswana had decided the fate of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Among the alternatives it had discussed was dissolving the lower two-thirds of the reserve so that it could be used for commercial cattle ranching. In the end, under scrutiny by international conservation agencies, the commission voted to keep the entire reserve intact. In addition, it adopted many of the environmental recommendations we had made before all the controversy. These included taking down certain fences to open a corridor for migratory species such as wildebeests and hartebeests. Of course, by then most of the wildebeest population—more than a quarter of a million animals, as well as tens of thousands of other desert antelope—had perished. But perhaps if good rains return to the Kalahari, this harsh but resilient land will once again provide the miles of golden grass necessary to bring back these populations. Man has dealt the Kalahari a staggering blow, but deserts know all about rebirth.

  Inasmuch as our Prohibited Immigrant status had been reversed, once the decision was made to save the reserve, nothing could keep us away from the moody dunes and ancient river valleys that had been our home for seven years. We planned an expedition to clean up our campsite, to remove every trace of our having lived there; to search for the lions we had radio collared before our deportation; and to say a proper good-bye to the Kalahari.

  As we had done in 1985, Mark flew our plane from Gaborone and I drove to Deception Valley through the thorn country. In 1988 the drought that had gripped the desert since 1979 still had its hold on the land. The heavy clay soils of the ancient riverbed had been reduced to a sickly dry powder from the years of angry sun and tireless winds. As I drove across Deception and around Acacia Point, billows of pale dust rose behind the truck. Not a single gnarled scrub or tortured blade of grass had survived. Even the grass stubbles were long since buried under a layer of time.