We were terrified that Squeaks would kill the cub the next time she managed to break into the compound but, astonishingly, when they met, they touched noses through the fence and Squeaks was extremely gentle. Leopards hate lions but from the moment Squeaks met Bugsy she was utterly fascinated. With no fence between them, they played together for hours and became the best of friends.
All the other leopards we released back into Kora set off on totally independent lives and made their homes in the ideal leopard country around us. Squeaks, however, defied all fashion. First she fell in love with me, then with a sickly lion cub that any other leopard would have killed. So extraordinary was this relationship that a Japanese TV crew soon wanted to come out and film it. The show was being presented by a famous actress called Tomoko who was absolutely tiny and had a squeaky little voice. She had had a big fright when she was out with George: one of the young lions had jumped onto her back and scratched her – but nothing could have prepared her for what happened at Kampi ya Chui. We had finished all the filming for the day and were inside the cage having supper when Squeaks broke through the electric wire and jumped down on to the wooden charcoal water cooler. I threw myself towards her but was nowhere near fast enough. She shot past me, turned 90 degrees in mid-air and buried her teeth in Tomoko’s neck. It was horrifying – fast, vicious and deadly.
I managed to force my hands into Squeaks’s mouth, open it and get her off Tomoko. I threw her into a cage, then treated Tomoko’s neck but it bled slowly all night until the Flying Doctors came in the morning. I felt absolutely terrible. But not as bad as Tomoko. I thought that with the electric wires in place we were secure. I was wrong and it was entirely my fault. Amazingly, Tomoko flew back a few days later with a fractured and punctured neck to finish filming – but the attack did my position no good at all.
Six weeks later, I received the expected letter from the director of Wildlife. The Leopard Rehabilitation Project must close down forthwith: it was of no conservation importance.
7. The End of the Game
I didn’t have long to feel sorry for myself. Shortly after I received the letter that closed the leopard camp, I had another bout of malaria and went to Jens and Tutti Hessel’s house up in the high, cold country to recuperate. Jens was a wonderful pilot who did all the bi-plane flying for Out of Africa and helped me when I was trying to increase my knowledge of flying and keep my hours up. The Hessels always had me to stay when I was recovering from my various illnesses. It was Jens therefore who came into my room on 5 April 1986 and gave me the bad news. Terence had died at Kampi ya Simba.
I was utterly devastated – and shocked that his death affected me so much. Terence and I had lived together for nigh on two decades, vying for George’s affections in our completely different ways. We got on each other’s nerves – but you don’t live with someone for that long without growing fond of them. Andrew Meyerhold flew in to pronounce Terence dead of a thrombosis so that he could be buried on Boy’s lugga next to Supercub, the only lion he had ever been fond of. When I got back to camp a few days later the new priest from Kyuso came in to do another little ceremony as we planted the tree given in Terence’s memory by the chief of Asako.
I’m so glad that Terence wasn’t alive to see Kora unravel, the roads he had hacked from the bush used as camel and cattle paths. He was eccentric, cantankerous and downright irritating but he was a grand old man and I missed him when he was gone. George missed him terribly. Terence’s death hit him very hard and he became ever more fragile. The cataract operation that had so transformed his life was not enough to face down the indignities of old age and the loss of his brother. Every few months now there would be some new health problem – asthma, malaria or another fall – and there was nothing anyone could do to fend off time. Maybe he would have been in better physical health if he had lived his life a little slower and a lot closer to a hospital but his spiritual wellbeing would have suffered. Indeed, I now think leaving Kora would have killed him. Just like Terence, he insisted on staying there and I believe he was right. That’s not to say it was a good place to be in the late 1980s. Indeed, at times it was hellish.
Not least of the hellishness was the sheer number of people in camp. We had always been so isolated and George was such a gentleman that when visitors did come he welcomed them at Kampi ya Simba as if he were David Niven in the bush. Towards the end, however, we got more visitors than anyone had ever bargained for and it was always the most useless ones who hung around for months. The good ones came bearing gifts, took one look at the hangers-on and left.
Some of the visitors also caused terrible problems with the staff. George and Terence had always run a very tight ship with clear lines between management and staff, a tight ship that had lost its bearings a little as they became more ill. The brothers had been born in colonial India and behaved all their lives pretty much as the colonial officers they had been. That’s not to say that they weren’t good to and close to their staff but in a totally different way from how we are today. However, the endless visitors, the death of Terence, and George’s increasing frailty blurred the line between the workers and the management. Another big problem was that some of the guests slept with the camp staff, then left, leaving all sorts of problems in their wake. Without Terence in charge, Erigumsa took over the road crews and did a brilliant job, but some of the other staff resented his new position. Erigumsa didn’t have Terence’s vision and inbuilt GPS, but he had all of his extraordinary energy. Other staff members leant on George for money and many of them took time off without permission or invented Muslim holidays that they hoodwinked George into accepting. He was getting forgetful and this was often used against him.
I didn’t know about much of this until later when George asked for my help to kick people out of camp and get things under control. I didn’t do this very well: I either didn’t go far enough or went over the top, shouting at the hangers-on and telling them to leave, before heading back to Kampi ya Chui. George had a habit of using me as the Bad Guy so he could play the lovely old man with beard and pipe. It didn’t come easy to him to be rough with people. He tired of many of the visitors as much as I did and was desperate to have the camp back to the way it had once been – peaceful, quiet and concentrating on the lions. The lions were unsettled by all the visitors and Doc Meyerhold felt, too, that they were putting a strain on the Old Man. He insisted that George get in a manager to run the camp and stop welcoming every waif and stray that came his way. The manager couldn’t be me as I had been told pretty clearly by the authorities that I was no longer welcome in Kora. Dougie Collins, an old colonial DC who was living in Lamu, volunteered to come and help. He did a good job of getting the camp back into shape but I still had to do all the maintenance, help George with the lions and keep track of the leopards while taking down my camp and proving to the WCMD that I was on my way out.
Alan Root, Richard Bonham and many other friends kept telling me I should move to Tanzania and offered to assist me. It was clear to everyone except me that I was no longer welcome in Kenya’s wildlife parks and reserves. The Tanzanians, they told me, were desperate for all the help they could get. At last I accepted their offers to help and set off for Tanzania, with a fresh scar on my stomach where a duodenal ulcer had just been removed and a letter in my pocket from Alan Root recommending me to Fred Lwezaula, Tanzania’s director of Wildlife, an old-fashioned gentleman who knew exactly what was going on in Kenya and acknowledged that Tanzania had similar problems. We had a long meeting during which he pulled out a map of all Tanzania’s parks and reserves and told me I could go anywhere I liked. Still blind to the fact that Kora for me was over, I hesitated and said I needed time to think about it.
‘You have all the time you want,’ said Fred.
I don’t know what Alan wrote in his actual letter to Fred, but the version he gave to me was a little too honest.
In your job I am sure you sometimes think ‘Where can I find a completely useless gin-sodden hooligan who,
for no pay, is prepared to ruin a decent bit of country by racing around yelling, breaking up cars and running over animals?’ Well, here he is. If you know of an opening for such a man you would be doing the world a favour by sticking Tony into it.
Back in Kora after another bout of malaria, I started walking Bugsy on his own. At the beginning Squeaks stayed out of the way, and I remembered what fun it had been walking with George and the lions – they’re so much easier than leopards. It was great to be out with George again too, just like the old days. The bizarre relationship between Squeaks the leopard and Bugsy the lion continued to grow. Lions and leopards are not meant to get on, yet they were the best of friends. Bugsy was now absolutely huge but Squeaks went off for walks with him all over the place and seemed to look after him whether I was there or not. I was a bemused observer, never bringing them together or pushing them apart. It was extraordinary to watch.
Squeaks and Bugsy were wandering around the immediate area together with a complete absence of fear. I was worried they would be poisoned by the Somalis as the Komunyu water-holes were so close, but there was nothing I could do about it except keep my ears and eyes open. I couldn’t lock them up. Squeaks lived completely without my assistance now and Bugsy came and went as he pleased, although he never went too far and still came home at night. After a while even he knew where and what to stay away from.
I set off for the UK and the States with my girlfriend Kim Ellis to let our trustees know what was going on at Kora and of our plans for Tanzania. They were disheartened by the news from Kora but excited about Tanzania, warning only that we would have to change the name of the Trust if we were to expand our operations. They recommended it be named after George rather than Kora.
When I returned, Koretta and her cubs had moved off to Asako where they were raiding stock from our last remaining allies in the area. Once more Kora was full of Somali herders and we were worried again that we would lose the lions to poisoning. Coopertox, a cattle dip, was used against them and has been a huge contributor to their current endangered status. There was also another issue. During the 1982 coup President Moi was saved by our old friend from Garissa, Mahmoud Mohammed, the Kenyan- Somali head of the army. The rumour brigade said that the Somalis taking over Kora and many other reserves were there with the nod of the president as payback for the Somali community. We never got to the bottom of this but it was apparent that the wildlife authorities, the police and the army were forced to sit by until the entire region had been reduced to barren bush. It takes decades if not longer for fragile land to recover from such intense burning and overgrazing. After the camels came the goats, which ripped out all the roots and reduced everything to desert. And every day there were more. From the rocks at Kampi ya Simba we could see the fires burning. We would bump into armed Somalis whenever we went to collect water and, even though there was so little game left, we would still hear the poachers at night.
I continued to be torn in several directions, but it wasn’t all doom and gloom. George had been given some money for appearing in a Japanese advertisement and I had received enormous help from Pete Brandon, an old friend in England. This allowed George and me to buy two desperately needed new Land Rovers. Even more amazing was the anonymous donation we received. I had recently set up international trusts to help fund Kora and Mkomazi when I had visited the UK, US and Canada. Now money from the Canadian Trust was earmarked for a plane and two years’ running costs. The plane was exactly what we needed for Kora; it was brilliant for tracking the animals and it turned our project into a much more formidable operation – we were able to react to emergencies in real time rather than Kora time. I had just passed my Kenya Air Law exams so I was suddenly airborne. However, I was completely broke. I had a good secondhand Land Rover in Kora but when I flew the plane to Nairobi I had to scrounge a bed and hitchhike from the airport! It was a mad situation, which continues to this day. The Trust pays us nothing but I have an aeroplane, cars, fuel and housing provided. It can be quite amusing when, despite all the trappings that facilitate our work, people realize this.
Our local MP, Mohammed Soba, continued to try to help us but he was up against an immovable object. It was apparent that the power brokers in the area wanted all Europeans to go but they drew the line at George, content to wait for him to die. They were scared of him talking to the press – but they were not going to give up until I had gone. On top of this I had a melancholy trip to Lamu to see PA, who was dying of cancer. Lamu was a glorious place, a peaceful little desert island with wonderful people, beautiful architecture and paradise beaches. It was completely divorced from the Kenya that was being destroyed on the mainland. Seeing PA again reminded me of all the fabulous times we had enjoyed together in the sixties and seventies, the Blue Marlin Hotel in Malindi, the Long Bar, and PA and Agneta’s restaurant in Nairobi. Everyone seemed to be dying and my life was a mess. I was drinking too much again, and the one thing I had invested myself in – Kora – was a disaster, bursting with domestic stock, buzzing with flies and stinking of death.
George could see the end coming too. We would go on walks together when he could get away from the visitors, down to Terence’s grave to water the tree that the chief had given us. It was not like him to be sentimental but there was something special about the walks we took then that reminded us of the early days. There were no new lions coming into Kora and, of course, no new leopards.
In 1986 Kora was extraordinarily beautiful. The rains came early so there was a carpet of wildflowers along the banks of the luggas, tiny resurrection flowers iced the tops of the inselbergs and the ‘sex smell’ of mswaki and henna pervaded the riverine forest. Everything suddenly seemed better. The rains were keeping the visitors at bay and had dispersed the Somali stock now that grazing was more easily available across the river. In the bubble of Kora, I had a newish plane, a newish car, and the Old Man was fitter and happier. For a short time it was like the old days.
Then came the Ngomeni bus attack. Just forty miles away, fifteen people were massacred on a bus by shifta. They went further than they had done before, cutting off three men’s testicles and stuffing them into their mouths. Retribution from the police was swift and terrible. They charged into Somali areas, beating up random Somalis and dragging them off to jail. Local people stoned one Somali to death. A few weeks later six cattle buyers were ambushed and killed at Kinna. The country was eating itself as fast as the cancer that was eating away my great hippie friend PA.
I had to go to London again to see the trustees about changing the Trust names and to report on our progress, but just before I left something happened that would change my life for ever. A girl from London called Lucy Mellotte arrived in Kora, razor sharp, drop-dead beautiful and scarily young. I was smitten from the first moment I saw her. However, Kim was still around; we hadn’t been getting on well for ages but we had been together for a while and she had contributed a great deal to our lives at Kora and on the trips to Tanzania. Her parents had helped with the American Trust and she had worked hard in Kora, taking photographs, writing newsletters and trying to keep me out of trouble. But gratitude can’t heal a broken relationship. I headed for London, worrying about what I should do, but I knew in my heart I wanted to be with Lucy.
I returned to more drip-feed disaster. George was in hospital again and our beloved Kenya was in a truly pitiful condition. It was the repetitiveness that was so draining: the same mistakes were made over and over again. It was hard to believe even then that Kenya’s death throes could be so prolonged. Government appointments and jobs in the police and civil service were being bought and sold like doormen’s positions at luxury hotels. Under Jomo Kenyatta corruption had been rife but under his successor Daniel arap Moi it had become institutionalized: citizenship cost $3,000; vehicle inspection cost $10; the police charged ‘customers’ for the privilege of recording a crime. The country was falling apart. Businesses, like security companies, rubbish removers and generator suppliers, made money from citizens who ha
d to pay for what was no longer provided by the state.
In the summer of 1987 the harassment campaign against us moved up another notch. I had been identified as George’s heir and ‘they’ wanted to abolish the monarchy. The campaign was managed by a senior cop in Hola, the district town two hundred miles down the Tana. To this day, I don’t know who was pulling his strings but it was apparent from the very beginning that he had backing from on high. President Moi himself had told the owners of the nearby farm Galana that they had to leave because it was politically impossible for Europeans to own that much land, however fairly they had acquired it. The European researchers had been turfed out of Wenji months ago and people proselytizing in Garissa too. I should have seen it coming but I was busy with the leopards, maintaining the camps and trying to protect George from visitors. My role had slowly evolved into one of keeping everything safe and working, and making the decisions that needed to be made – a role I still play today. Back then, I lost sight of the wider picture and didn’t realize we were the only ones left until it was too late.
I was regularly ordered to drive the eight hours through bandit country to Hola to show my documents and permits to the police. In August 1987, on one particularly unpleasant occasion, I was charged with the fantastic crime of dealing in wild animals and running a tourist camp without a permit. If it hadn’t been such a nightmare it would have been laughable: my entire life was devoted to the conservation of animals and I lived in a snakeinfested cage with a leopard that wouldn’t even let my girlfriend near me, let alone a tourist. I had no option but to plead guilty and pay the two-hundred-dollar fine. To do otherwise would have meant staying in prison for a month awaiting trial and then more months of deferred court cases. Even I wasn’t that bloodyminded.
Born Wild Page 17
