The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild

by Lawrence Anthony

  The way around the trench was now clear and Nana wasted no more time, hurrying the herd down a game path directly to the river. We watched the thick summer bush swallow them up.

  ‘I hope we’ve done the right thing,’ I said.

  ‘We have. She was ready.’

  I could only hope that he was right.

  chapter ten

  As soon as the herd disappeared, we struck camp. All this entailed was throwing sleeping bags and a fire-blackened kettle into the back of the Land Rover, but it was symbolic in the sense that we were moving on.

  Max was still at the boma gate, watching the woodland that had seemingly gobbled up the elephants. I called him and he looked up askance, as if asking if I wanted him to pursue the animals. If I had said ‘Fetch!’ I have no doubt he would have bounded into the bush. Size meant nothing to him; he was absolutely without fear and had no concept that a single lift of Nana’s foot would have converted him into a pancake.

  After dropping David off at the lodge, I drove to the Ovambo guards’ cottage to give an update.

  I was about hundred yards away when Ndonga came sprinting up waving his arms. ‘Quick, Mr Anthony. Turn off the motor and keep quiet,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a leopard about forty yards ahead … just to the right of us.’

  I killed the engine and squinted into the bush, my eyes scouring every inch of the area where he was pointing … and saw nothing.

  ‘A leopard out in broad daylight? Can’t be.’

  Ndonga put a finger to his lips. ‘I saw it just two minutes ago as you were driving up. Just keep still … it’ll come out again. Just watch that big bush over there. That’s where it came down.’

  The thicket was certainly big enough to hide a leopard. But leopards are primarily nocturnal and it would be highly unusual to see one wandering around at midday.

  Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted one of the Ovambos come out from behind the house and nod at Ndonga. He was wiping his hands with a rag, which he quickly stuffed into his pocket when he saw me looking at him.

  Ndonga, who had been crouching near the car, stood up.

  ‘Well, I suppose you’re right, boss. Your Land Rover would have frightened it off anyway. Pity. It’s the first leopard I’ve seen on Thula.’

  I nodded. We knew there were several leopards on the reserve from their tracks and the markings I’d seen recently by the Land Rover had confirmed it, but they had been vigorously hunted before we took over and as a result were so secretive that few had seen them. Thus Ndonga’s account of one of these beautiful dappled cats bounding out of a tree in brassy sunlight so close to human habitation was absolutely amazing.

  ‘So what’s happening, Mr Anthony?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve let the herd out. I want all of your guards to go on patrol and track them. Also, check the fences. Make sure the power stays up permanently. And double-check that there are no trees anywhere even remotely close by. I don’t want the elephants shorting the wires again.’

  ‘I’ve already done that. All trees near the fence have been chopped.’

  The last time I had heard that was just before the herd had escaped from the boma. I didn’t want to risk it again.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well … OK. See you later.’

  I drove off. The recent rains had brushed the bush in colours of green and gold and the fecund earth throbbed with life. Unfortunately, as beautiful as it looked, this rampant foliage would make the elephants more difficult to track. We needed to know all the time exactly where they were in case they attempted another breakout.

  Biyela, our loyal gardener and everybody’s friend, ran up to welcome us back as Max and I got out the car, glad to be home. As I walked through the door Françoise told me that Ngwenya, my security induna or foreman, wanted to see me.

  He was sitting on a tree stump outside the verandah of the rangers’ quarters about thirty yards from our house. This was unusual. He obviously didn’t want to be seen approaching me. I walked over.

  ‘Sawubona, Ngwenya.’ I see you.

  ‘Yebo, Mkhulu.’

  We spoke for a bit about the unusually wet weather and the elephants. Then he got to the point.

  ‘Mkhulu, we all know strange things are happening.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Such as the shooting of nyamazane’ – game – ‘on Thula Thula.’

  I stiffened. I had been so absorbed in the elephants that the poaching problem had been put on a backburner.

  ‘But now I am also hearing strange stories,’ Ngwenya continued. ‘And the strangest of all is that people are saying that Ndonga is the man who is doing the shooting. The man killing our animals.’

  ‘What?’ The blood drained from my face. ‘What makes you say such a serious thing?’

  Ngwenya shook his head, as if he too couldn’t believe it. ‘Ndonga shoots the buck, but the skinning is done by the other Ovambos and by Phineas, the gate guard. Then sometimes a truck with ice comes late at night with no lights and fetches it. Or sometimes Ndonga takes the meat to town.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘It is what the people here are saying. Also, I am told the other Ovambos are unhappy. They complain in the village that they are doing all the hard work and Ndonga gives them no money. He only gives them meat. Not even good meat – they get maybe the head and shins. That’s all.’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  Ngwenya shrugged. ‘Since the day you came. But I have only found this out now. That is why I have come to you.’

  ‘Thanks, Ngwenya. Good work.’

  ‘These are dangerous times.’ He eased himself off the stump. ‘The Ovambos must not know I have spoken to you. Sale gahle, Mkhulu.’ Stay well.

  ‘Hamba gahle, Ngwenya.’ Go well.

  I sat there, stunned as if I had been smacked on the head. This was a horrific accusation, not just because the poachers had killed so many animals, which was bad enough. But to add insult to injury, if Ngwenya’s allegations were true, was that my own employees were guilty of poaching my animals with my own rifles. The Lee – Enfield .303s that the Ovambos had been issued with belonged to Thula Thula.

  ‘Boss.’

  I looked up. David was standing next to me.

  ‘The electrician has arrived. He’s at the gate. Should we take him down to the energizers?’

  I nodded, remembering that we had booked the man to check the fence’s electrics thoroughly now that the elephants had been freed. As we got into the Land Rover the radio crackled into life. It was Ndonga. I tensed with anger. My head guard may be innocent and I had to give him the benefit of the doubt, but Ngwenya’s story rankled deep.

  ‘We’ve found the elephants. They’re right on the northern boundary.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I replied, fighting to keep the fury out of my voice. ‘Keep an eye on them and wait for us. We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.’

  With the electrician squashed between us straddling the Land Rover’s gear stick and Max on David’s lap we drove off. It made sense that the herd had emerged at the far border, the direction of their previous home, but nevertheless it was chilling news. Were they still determined to break out, I wondered?

  As Ndonga had said, gangs of workers had indeed chopped down all trees within felling distance of the wires. Narrow vehicle tracks had been hacked out to make a rough road for anti-poaching patrols and maintenance checks along the boundary, so it was relatively simple to keep the animals in sight as we followed from a distance.

  Nana was moving down the line, the tip of her trunk just below the top electric strand, sensing the pulse of the surging current. With her clan following, she had walked almost the entire twenty miles of the reserve’s perimeter using her natural voltmeter to check if there was any weak link – any section without power in the fence.

  By now it was nearly four o’clock. It had taken the animals most of the day to circumnavigate the reser
ve and I was relieved to see that despite checking for breaks in the power, Nana was not attempting to make direct contact with the fence. She wasn’t going to take the pain and smash through like the previous matriarch had at the Mpumalanga reserve.

  But just as the herd was completing its tour, we saw a large acacia standing proud right next to the wires that Ndonga’s clearing gang had inexplicably missed. It was the only ‘danger’ tree along the entire border that had not been felled, and it stood out stark as a monument.

  ‘Dammit,’ groaned David. Both he and I knew what was going to happen next.

  Sure enough Nana and Frankie stopped, saw the tree and loped over for a closer inspection.

  ‘No, Nana no!’ I shouted as they positioned themselves on either side of the acacia and started shouldering it, testing its resistance. There was no doubt they were going to shove it down and if we were going to prevent the inevitable breakout we needed to get closer. Fortunately a gate was nearby and we sped out of the reserve and onto an adjacent track putting us on the opposite side of the fence.

  As we arrived, the tree was creaking wildly on its roots and Nana gave a mighty heave. With a rending ‘crack’ the trunk splintered down onto the barrier, collapsing the poles and snapping the current, causing an almighty short circuit. Forsaking caution I rushed up and snatched at the wires to see if they were still live. As I feared, the fence was dead. And with the herd almost on top of us, we had a real problem.

  ‘No, Nana, don’t do it!’ I yelled with only a tangle of dead wires and flattened poles between us. My voice was raspy with desperation. ‘Don’t do it!’

  Fortunately the frenetic clicking and snapping as the wires shorted had spooked her and she took a hasty step backwards. But for how long?

  Thank God the electrician was there and as I pleaded with the agitated animals he and David got to work. With Nana, Frankie and the youngsters barely ten yards away, they calmly untangled the bird’s nest of wires, chopped the tree free, reconnected the cable, straightened the poles and got the power going again.

  While all this was happening, I continued speaking directly to Nana as I had in the boma, using her name often and repeating again and again that this was her home.

  She looked at me and for at least ten minutes we held eye contact as I kept talking.

  Suddenly, as if baffled by what all the fuss was about, she turned and backtracked into the bush. The others followed and we exhaled with relief.

  It was only then that I realized I hadn’t even considered picking up a rifle in case everything went amiss. My relationship with the herd had certainly changed for the better.

  However, something else caught my attention during the commotion, something more sinister. It was the Ovambos. As the tree had come down, to a man they had bolted like startled rabbits. This was strange, I thought. These much vaunted rangers were actually petrified of elephants, not quite what you would expect from experienced men of the bush.

  Then it flashed. It was as if I was seeing clearly for the first time. A fog had miraculously lifted. Despite their braggadocio, these men were not game rangers at all. They never had been. They were soldiers who could shoot straight, but otherwise knew precious little about conservation. They were now out of their element. I had always wondered why the Ovambos, who were supposed to be top-drawer trackers, had led us the wrong way during the original breakout. Now I knew.

  Any remaining niggles of doubt in my mind dissipated. It was suddenly as obvious as the sun beating down on us. The guards were indeed the poachers, just as Ngwenya had said. They were the ones who had been plaguing the reserve for the past year, decimating the buck population. The last thing they wanted was a herd of wild elephants on Thula Thula.

  Having no experience with elephants, let alone this unpredictable herd, they realized that with angry jumbos around their poaching racket would be ruined. The reason was simple. Most poaching is done in the dark and one would have to be a brave – or monumentally foolish – man to trample around in the bush at night with this temperamental herd on the loose. It would be suicide. They desperately needed to engineer another escape so their lucrative sideline could continue.

  Even though the evidence was completely circumstantial, the jigsaw pieces started fitting together. I suddenly remembered Bheki telling me a ‘gun had spoken’ at the boma on the night the elephants first escaped. Could someone have deliberately fired those shots to panic the herd and prompt a frenzied stampede?

  This also explained why the fence wires had initially been strung on the wrong side of the boma poles. And of course there was no leopard at the cottage earlier this morning. I would bet the farm that they had been butchering illegally slaughtered animals and my unexpected arrival had almost caught them red-handed – literally. Ndonga had to distract me while they hurriedly hid the evidence. That’s why the game guard had come out from the back of the house wiping off his hands: they had been covered with blood.

  And what about the tree that had been left standing right at the fence? That was probably the most obvious clue of all. It was far too coincidental not to have been deliberate.

  I had been set up. Totally fooled.

  However, not only had we been grotesquely betrayed, but – more importantly – the elephants were now in danger.

  ‘David,’ I said, pulling him aside. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  chapter eleven

  We climbed into the Land Rover and I fired the engine. I was fuming, not just at the Ovambos, but at myself for being so gullible. I had been taken in like a naive child.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ asked David.

  ‘The problem? The damn Ovambo game rangers. That’s the problem.’

  ‘Bloody idiots. They shouldn’t have missed that tree. I mean, how dumb is that?’

  ‘No,’ I shook my head vigorously as I drove off. ‘No, it’s not that. It’s the poaching. The Ovambos – they’re our poachers. They’re not rangers at all. They’re the bloody poachers.’

  There was a stunned silence.

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ said David. ‘Nah … ?’

  ‘It’s them all right.’ Red with anger, I listed all the evidence, from the wires on the wrong side of the boma poles to what Ngwenya had just told me.

  David’s face hardened as he took it all in. He, more than anyone else, had been at the frontline of the clashes with poachers.

  He sat still, fists clenched. Then he said quietly, ‘Turn around, boss. I need to have a chat with them about a few things.’

  David’s nickname in Zulu was Escoro, which means boxer, or fighter. Well-built, fit and unafraid, he had a reputation as someone you didn’t mess with. He now had his sights set firmly on the Ovambos.

  ‘Uh-uh.’ I refused. ‘I understand you’re pissed off. I feel the same, but we have to do this cleverly. This is our biggest opportunity to smash this damn poaching ring once and for all. They can’t know we’re on to them.’

  David looked at me, unconvinced.

  ‘We’ve got to pretend everything’s OK until we get all the evidence,’ I continued. ‘Otherwise we’ll blow it. At the moment all we’ve got is hearsay and they will just deny everything.’

  ‘OK,’ he said with some effort. ‘But when it’s over we are going to have a little chat.’

  ‘That’s up to you. But until then we can’t let the guards out of sight, even for a minute. We’ve got to get two of our best rangers up to their house permanently. Get Ngwenya to brief them so they know what’s going on. I want them living and working with the Ovambos twenty-four hours a day and reporting their every move. That’ll stop them doing any further shooting and buy us time.’

  ‘Done, boss,’ said David and a slow, wicked grin started to spread. ‘Ndonga is also going to be seeing a lot more of me. I will be his new best friend, starting tonight.’

  The next morning we were out early to see what the elephants were doing. After a couple of hours bouncing around in dense bush we found them grazing in the middle of the r
eserve, about as far from the fence as you could get. Mnumzane was a hundred yards or so from the main group, stripping leaves from a small acacia. We eased forward until we were close enough to see them clearly and I did a head count. Seven – all there, engulfed by long grass and succulent trees and stuffing their mouths like kids at a birthday party. With nearly double the rainfall, which meant double the food yield of their previous home, Thula Thula truly was a pachyderm paradise. I knew Nana, the most astute of matriarchs, would not fail to notice this rich bounty, especially after a dry Mpumalanga winter and the confines of the boma.

  The tranquillity of the scene made it all worthwhile. After all the stress, drama, danger and frustration this hugely aggressive herd seemed at last serene in their new home. At least for the moment.

  ‘They’re exploring, and they like what they see,’ said David. ‘This must be better than anything they’ve known before.’

  I nodded. Maybe, just maybe, our gamble in letting them out of the boma early had paid off.

  We drove back up to the house where Françoise greeted us with a trencherman’s breakfast of boerewors – spicy Afrikaner sausage – bacon, eggs, tomatoes and toast, and mug after mug of home-made coffee. Bijou, Françoise’s little Maltese poodle, and Penny, the bull terrier, were with her and I always chortled at the contrast between her two dogs – both snow-white but one fluffy and soft, the other muscular and hard. Penny’s loyalty was infinite. Thula Thula was her home and as self-appointed protector of the realm she guarded it with her life.

  ‘Please tell Phineas I want to see him.’

  Ngwenya shifted uncomfortably He knew what was coming.

  ‘Manje?’ Now, he asked.

  ‘Yes, now.’

  Ngwenya moved reluctantly to the door and then turned back to face me. ‘We must be very careful Mkhulu. If the Ovambos hear we are talking to him they could kill him. These men have killed before. They are tsotsis, thugs of the worst kind and people in the village are very frightened of them.’