Tusker

by Dougie Arnold

  “Thanks Aziz. I was wondering whether we had any spare solar lights. There seems to be something the matter with the panels of one in a guest tent, it’s not recharging and they will be here early tomorrow.” With pretty much guaranteed sunshine the solar lamps had been a great addition to camp. They just had to be left upside down in a sunny spot during part of the day and they gave up to four hours light each evening. The only other source of electricity was a rather old and noisy camp generator which they liked to switch off not long after dinner each night so that everyone could enjoy the sounds of the African night, rather than the distant throb of a diesel engine.

  “I think there are a couple of spares. I will get someone to check in the store. Anything else?”

  Harry felt he was keen to get him out of the office. “Well,” he said, “I know your feelings about the finances for improving our communications in the reserve. Of course, mobile phones work in some places where there is a good signal but it’s very hit and miss. I have been doing some research and have a promising idea for my uncle when we next meet.”

  Aziz’s eyes seemed to narrow. “Well that sounds interesting,” he commented with little enthusiasm. “Now I must get on.”

  As Harry wandered off, he played back the end of Aziz’s phone conversation in his head. Who had he been speaking to and why was he suddenly interested in the wildlife of the reserve, the elephants, in particular?

  Aziz was not what he appeared to be, his gut instinct told him that, and yet he had no proof, just his sixth sense. He could hardly go to his uncle and express his thoughts. Much though he liked so many of the others who worked in the reserve he did not know them well enough to confide in, and what would they do once he had told them anyway? He decided the best thing was to be quiet for the moment but keep a close eye on Aziz whenever possible.

  That evening Jim briefed them on the guests who were due the following day. There was a family of six. Luckily the youngest of the children was ten; much younger than that and they got bored very easily. They just wanted to tick animals off on a list to say they had seen them and move on to the next one.

  To be fair he thought many adults were the same. It was all too easy to be like that when you were only on safari for a few days. You wanted to cram in as much as possible, take endless photos and then relive the experiences when you were back in your own home, dull but safe!

  “Before you head off to bed Harry there is something important I want to talk to you about. You know there is an extra guest arriving in the morning. Well, she isn’t just any guest; she is the daughter of one of my oldest friends Patrick Gogan. When your grandparents sent your dad and me to boarding school it was pretty tough. On the outside that is what we all had to be too, you couldn’t show any weakness and if you did there were always those who would pounce on it and use it to get at you. There was no cosy home to escape to at the end of the day, just cold, bleak dormitories. In a way your close friends became like your family and Patrick was the one who saw me through some dark days. He was bigger than the rest of us and always seemed to know exactly what to say and when. The bullies never took him on and because we were close mates I generally got left alone too. Well, it’s Ana, his daughter who is coming tomorrow.”

  Harry looked at Jim in a new light. His rather distant behaviour and reluctance to show his feelings too much or let others get close to him suddenly made so much more sense. Although he was in his fifties, in many ways he had been moulded into the person he was all those years ago in some grim country boarding school.

  “I don’t know how long she will be here. I have told Patrick she is welcome for as long as she likes, it’s the least I can do. You see she is suffering from something they call PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I don’t know much about it except that it affects some people when they have experienced or witnessed dreadful things that somehow they cannot get it out of their minds.”

  Harry had heard it mentioned sometimes in the news but never really given it a second thought.

  “You see Harry she is a really talented young journalist, won several awards. I know Patrick is so proud of her. Anyway she pushed and pushed her editor to be sent to Syria. She is only in her early twenties and she wanted to tell the story of what was happening to other young people out there and how they were coping with an endless war. She wrote some amazing articles, I will show you later. She felt the world wasn’t listening and that these stories might make a difference. Anyway something dreadful happened, I don’t even know what it was and it isn’t something she is prepared to talk about. She returned to the UK a different person. He has tried everything to help and eventually she saw an especially understanding specialist who confirmed that she was suffering from PTSD and recommended she went somewhere peaceful and remote in the hope that it will help her to get better.”

  “So you suggested Uwingoni,” said Harry. “What a great idea.”

  “Well we’ll see about that, only time will tell, I suppose. I haven’t seen her since she was a girl but I certainly remember her being very strong willed, even then, and more adventurous than any boys I knew of the same age!”

  “How do we go about helping her?” asked Harry. “None of us knows anything about PTSD.”

  “We just have to be ourselves Patrick says. I have told Mike the same as I have just told you but I am not going to inform anyone else unless the need arises. As you are only a few years younger than her I thought you would be the ideal person to take her under your wing. Just let her enjoy the beauty of Uwingoni. If she wants to tell you things then she will, but the advice I have is not to ask questions about her time in Syria.

  “That is a big responsibility uncle. Thank you for the trust you place in me, I feel very humbled.”

  “Just be yourself Harry and if you need to chat you know where to find me. Oh, and one more thing, I really don’t think you need to call me uncle any more, Jim will do just fine.”

  Before Harry had a chance to reply he had turned on his heels and was marching off towards the kitchen. New instructions for the day ahead no doubt. His restless energy would shame people half his age.

  Harry was in a thoughtful mood as he headed for his tent. What would Ana be like he wondered, what sort of things must she have seen in Syria and would he be able to help her?

  Outwardly he knew he had grown so much in confidence since arriving in Kenya. He wasn’t sure that people had valued the sort of person he was back in London. He had a close-knit group of friends, most of whom he had known since he was nine or ten when they had started to play sport together in the school teams. Much to his own surprise he had been a natural goal and try scorer. He just put it down to being fast rather than skilful and that too he now realised was typical of him. To others he was always confident and easy going but inside there were endless doubts and uncertainty, but of course that was the sort of thing you never discussed.

  His mates were either at university now, a couple had even started working and yet he had been unsure of what to do and that was certainly a part of why he was out here in this remote corner of Africa. Even in the few months since his arrival he realised how much he had changed. This was a life he could never even have imagined. How was it possible to fall in love with a place like this, but he knew he had. It was wild but striking and apart from their camp and the rough tracks, pretty much the same as it must have been hundreds of years ago. In a world that never seemed to stand still that was special and of course they shared it with the most wonderful creatures. From the graceful speed of the cheetah to the industry of the dung beetle, they all had a part to play, everyone belonged. And strangely he felt that he did too, in a way that he had never experienced in his life before. He was part of this and he knew in his heart that he would do all he could to protect it.

  Chapter Four

  Harry gasped as a powerful spray of cold water instantly burnt the sleep out of his system. He still hadn’t got used to the fact that his shower only had a cold tap. The water came directl
y from the stream, fresh and pure and until very recently lying hundreds of feet under the volcanic rock that Uwingoni was perched on.

  It wasn’t yet dawn and he had planned to drive out with Kilifi to one of the waterholes to see what game was up and about and near the camp. When visitors first arrived it was important to have a good idea of what animals were in the immediate area so that they could take their guests out to places where they had a good chance of sighting something interesting.

  He wrapped himself in a warm coat. Tourists always found it strange just how chilly the African bush could be before the sun came up. Despite that he was still wearing shorts, a habit he had copied from many of the others when he had first arrived.

  He stopped by the kitchen to grab a thermos of tea and some of Raymond’s delicious homemade biscuits, something to keep the two of them going for a couple of hours.

  Kilifi was already waiting for him by Bluebird. Harry turned the key in the ignition and the old engine spluttered into life.

  “Hope you slept well Kilifi. What do you think the chances are of seeing Mara and Meru this morning?”

  “If I have learnt one thing over the years, it’s the difficulty of guessing just what animals might or might not do,” replied the old tracker. His face split into that customary grin that Harry had come to associate with him. He could almost predict the words that would come next. “We will see what we will see.”

  Harry smiled to himself at the familiar phrase which was so often the answer to the host of questions that he always seemed to have.

  They bumped over the uneven track throwing up barely any dust as the dampness from the night air was yet to burn off.

  They spotted a few zebra in the undergrowth and on one bend a tiny dik-dik startled by the lights of the Land Rover sped across the track in the rather frantic zigzag pattern they used when they were frightened.

  “Just turn off the engine and listen,” said Kilifi. Harry was used to these sudden stops. They always formed part of his daily lessons.

  In the silence they could hear the tiny antelope’s call.

  “When you whistle it’s through your mouth but the dik-dik makes that noise through his nose. Look he is still watching us.”

  Harry studied the little face, its eyes looking unnaturally large. It licked its lips in the way that animals often do when they are frightened and then its nose seemed to extend and out through the two black nostrils came the warning call which sounded something similar to dik-dik.

  “He’s a quick little guy,” said Kilifi. “Almost as fast as Usain Bolt, which isn’t bad when you are not much taller than a ruler on end and weigh about the same as a large cat. The other animals like their calls too because it warns them that danger might be near. Clever creatures.”

  He was joined by his mate. Harry had noticed that they were nearly always in pairs. With a single bounce they moved behind the trunk of a tree and were gone.

  They didn’t see anything else as they made their way down to the clearing where the largest of the waterholes was, and then stopped where there was still cover for Bluebird.

  Harry was always amazed at the different animals he came across. You would expect the same ones to be there at a similar time each day but this was rarely the case.

  His first sight was of a small family of giraffe drinking. Kilifi had taught him the difference between the various types they might come across and he saw straight away that these were reticulated. They had much whiter lines between the brown patches on their coats which were quite smooth whereas their cousins the Masai giraffes had more jagged edges. He knew there was a third kind in Kenya called Rothschild which had cream coloured legs, almost as though he was wearing long socks, but the chances of seeing one of them was very slight. In fact he had read somewhere that they were rarer than mountain gorillas and pandas put together.

  Whenever Harry’s mind started wandering into thoughts like this he could feel that strange blend of sadness and anger inside. He knew that he had developed a special love for elephants but there were so many other animals out there that were in serious danger too. Yes, there were amazing people who did all they could to protect them and inform the world through wonderful and often moving films, but sometimes he felt that when those powerful enough to do anything about it actually woke up, it would be too late.

  He brought his thoughts back to what was in front of him. The four giraffe were positioned close together their front legs splayed out so that they could get their tongues to the water’s surface. A long neck was just what was needed for feeding off the leaves at the top of acacia trees but he marvelled at how they managed to suck water up through a neck that was about eight feet in length. He wasn’t even sure whether Kilifi knew either; it couldn’t really work like an eight-foot straw. He made a mental note to do some research.

  Apart from a small family of Thomson’s gazelle, that was it, no sign of elephants or any of the big cats that often stalked areas like waterholes. It was a positively gentle scene with the animals drinking peacefully with each other.

  They sat silently watching them just getting on with life. After a while Kilifi suggested moving on to check another couple of spots where the elephant might be.

  They spent another half hour going down some of the narrower tracks looking for signs of the small elephant herd. As they rounded a bend Harry thought their luck was in as there was some elephant dung on the road.

  Kilifi opened the door and wandered up to the dung, signalling for Harry to join him. As he looked at the large pile he reached down and pulled the surface apart, pushing his hand deep inside.

  Harry wrinkled his nose and Kilifi grinned. “Although this looks very recent it is over a day old.”

  “How on earth do you know that?” asked Harry.

  “Well, elephant dung keeps its heat quite well after it has come out of the elephant. By pushing my hand into the middle of the pile I can get an idea of how long ago it was that the elephant decided to relieve itself here. The warmer it is the more recent, quite simple really. It is not something I can really teach but over the years it has proved quite an accurate indicator of when it last walked this way.”

  “That’s amazing,” replied Harry, “but I’m not so keen on learning all the details of that!”

  There was a sudden crashing noise in the thick undergrowth behind them. As Harry turned to face the sound his worst fears were realised. Bursting through the dense bush was a very large, dark shape.

  “Run for Bluebird,” ordered Kilifi. “Don’t look back, just get in that cab.”

  Harry didn’t need any further encouragement. The Land Rover was only a short distance away but somehow his normally quick legs seemed to lack power.

  He heard the tearing of the vegetation and then the distinctive hoof beat behind him. It was as though everything was in slow motion.

  His right hand reached the handle of the passenger door and he could sense how close the buffalo was. It was as though he could feel the snorting breath on the back of his neck.

  The door flew open and he flung himself through the opening, his left knee crashing onto the bare metal of the foot well as he grabbed for the gear slick to haul himself in.

  There was a thunderous crash just behind him and the whole vehicle shuddered. Harry scrabbled to shut the door properly and there was a second grinding thud. He pulled the door violently shut as the buffalo hit Bluebird for the third time.

  Harry was conscious of the pounding of his heart which seemed magnified in his eardrums. His mouth was dry and he just lay there, half on the seat half on the floor, replaying the last brief moments in his head.

  His first thought was that he had made it and apart from a few scrapes and bruises he was alright. He realised that the buffalo had charged the rear of Bluebird rather than the flimsier doors which was a bit of luck. It must simply have gone for the nearest thing. Even though it was a Land Rover it would certainly have done some damage. Kilifi had told him that the biggest of them could weigh as
much as nine hundred kilos and charge at around fifty kph.

  With a sickening jolt Harry realised that he hadn’t got a clue what had happened to Kilifi. He had done exactly what he had been told, running and not looking back.

  He pulled himself up into a sitting position in the passenger seat and looked round.

  The buffalo had found a new target, a nearby tree and then Harry saw why, for clinging on desperately to the trunk around ten feet off the ground was Kilifi. He shouted and banged the door to try and distract the animal but to no effect.

  The buffalo took another charge at the trunk, smashing the area between its horns against the base of the tree.

  Instinct told Harry that Kilifi wouldn’t be able to hang on much longer.

  He leapt over to the driver’s seat and was relieved when the engine fired straight away. Thank goodness the attack had been at the rear of the Land Rover, not the front.

  He swung off the track heading directly for the large tree. The buffalo seemed totally unaffected by the approaching vehicle and was stepping back to have another crack.

  “Get as close as you can” shouted Kilifi. “I should be able to jump onto the roof but make it quick my grip is already weakening.”

  Harry nudged Bluebird forward trying to get the opposite side of the trunk to the buffalo without causing any more damage.

  “I could open the game hatch,” he suggested, thinking that would be easier and Kilifi could land on the seat.

  “No, there isn’t enough time and I would rather have a whole roof to jump on.”

  Harry moved the last few yards towards the tree. The buffalo was now eying the Land Rover up again. Harry had never sensed such rage in a creature before.

  “That’s as close as I can get.”

  There was suddenly a loud crash on the roof. “I’m all right but let’s get out of here, not too fast though, there isn’t much to grip onto up here.”

  The buffalo gave them another glance and stepped back suddenly looking disinterested. As Harry drove slowly back onto the track it simply turned away and headed into the undergrowth, almost as though nothing had happened.