Born Wild Read online

  Another worry was more personal. We now had four children running wild in Mkomazi. There are risks to living in the bush, like snakes, disease and skin cancer, but they were living a wonderful life of adventure and fun. Like the rhinos, they were free to roam within certain boundaries and were always watched over by our extended family. Dickson, Isaya and Happy Ndaskoi all took time to watch out for them and taught them how to do whatever they were up to. We decided, however, that they were going to need more if they were ever to survive in the world outside Mkomazi. By the age of four Mukka could make and shoot an excellent bow and arrow and he spoke two languages but he needed some more formal education. Gill Marshall-Andrews, ever the educator, put an advertisement for a tutor in the Times Educational Supplement. It started, ‘Looking for Something Different?’ And it produced excellent results. Over the next seven years we had six sets of teachers who managed to get the children up to a standard at which they could start boarding school at nearly nine in Kenya.

  We were thinking ahead on that front too. My education had been incredibly important to me – an opportunity to do something different and surprising with my life. We decided early on that, although we would love to have them with us throughout their childhood, it would be cruel not to give our children the best chance we could. Palle and Caroline Rune had given us a wonderful wedding present of a plot in Naivasha near where I had first met Joy. It was the only thing in the whole world that we owned and we love them for it. Even more brilliant, the plot was just a few miles from an excellent school where the kids could go from seven to thirteen. We were already used to having to drive thousand-kilometre round trips to buy spare parts and Parmesan so an i,ioo-kilometre school run would be child’s play. Bob and Gill Marshall-Andrews offered to build two houses on our plot, one for them and one for us. It would be a joint company in trust for all of our children. Over the next couple of years our plot above Lake Naivasha was furnished with houses for both families, and a tasty garden has come up where buffalo still roam. And we can take the kids out from school whenever we want.

  Bob and Gill came out to make plans for the houses in the middle of 2002 and came down to Mkomazi with some friends. Princess Michael of Kent came out shortly afterwards and she didn’t bat an eyelid, flying around in my rather battered old aircraft. The princess was wonderful at enthusing people about our projects. They were all happy to see how well everything was going. The rhinos, except poor Badger, were thriving. Nina was in and out of camp whenever she felt like it, and Jipe had become a brilliant hunter, capable of taking down oryx and eland as well as easier game, like impala. We were all worried, though, by the mixed signals emanating from parts of the Wildlife Division. The permanent secretary had written to us to say what a great job we were doing but at the same time we were being given no help with our work permits and, of course, the Wildlife Division employees in the reserve were appalling. It was ever more important that Mkomazi was raised to national park status. This would offer a much higher degree of protection and we hoped that TANAPA – the national parks authority – would be much easier to deal with.

  Bob and I put together an advocacy campaign. We would work and push for national park status for Mkomazi while diverting some of our efforts towards Kora and its reconstruction. After all, we were the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust. It seemed like the perfect time to do it. At the end of 2002 there was a new government in Kenya and a new ambition to reclaim the country from the bandits and thieves. We would take advantage of it to help Asako and Kora, the places George had loved most. And some significant advantages had just come into play. My great friend and trustee Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka was a key member of the new government and, even better, my old friend Mike Wamalwa was vice president. But would the two of them be able to help us with our ambitions for Kora?

  11. No Free Parking

  My old partner in the Mateus Rosé venture Mike Wamalwa never managed to serve Kenya as he would have wished. Aged only fifty-eight, he died in a London hospital just eight months into his vice-presidency. Heartbreaking as it was, it was important to celebrate his life and achievements rather than bemoan his early departure. It was magnificent that Mike had managed to achieve the ambition he had professed to then Vice President Daniel arap Moi when we had met him in Parliament all those years ago. ‘I’m after your job,’ Mike had said to the professor of politics. And he got it. I was very proud of my old drinking partner and I resolved to make him proud of me by concentrating more of our efforts on the Kenya we both loved. At the same time as pushing for Mkomazi to become a national park, we would work on restoring Kora to its former glory. Keen to help me in that goal was my other great friend in Kenyan politics, Foreign Minister Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka.

  Now a trustee of the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust, Steve was as anxious as I to get Kora up and running again. I took full advantage of the goodwill that his interest stimulated. And this was a time of great goodwill, with the whole Kenyan population believing that the dark days were over. Policemen soliciting bribes at roadblocks were beaten up and stripped by angry drivers chanting, ‘Corruption is over.’ If only it had lasted.

  In those early months of Kenya’s new regime, we put in a lot of hours on the plane, flying up and down to Kora. Thank God, Fred Ayo was always meticulous when looking after it. Early in the year I had good reason to thank him for his professionalism. It is obligatory in East African countries to have your aircraft checked by the authorities every seventy-five flying hours or ninety days, and because we were so remote Fred always went over the plane both before and after we sent it off to be checked. When I was flying the plane back from its January Check III tests I noticed a vibration while I was in the air. Fred stripped back the cowling as soon as I landed and started poking around in the engine to see what was wrong; I thought maybe there was a loose engine bearer somewhere. He soon discovered that the maintenance facility had failed to tighten all the nuts when putting the propeller back on. Once again Fred had saved the day.

  When you are living in the bush, such obsessive checking and rechecking is not always life-saving but it is still very important. Fred is inherently meticulous and he caught the rest off me. It’s one of the great lessons I’d learnt from Terence and George in the early days at Kora. When you live in a tiny camp built on sand where there are snakes and scorpions under everything, silverfish to eat all your documents, rats to steal the food, leaking roofs, lizards and thieving fan-tailed ravens, it makes sense to keep everything neatly in tin trunks or metal boxes. Terence only had one suit, which he would seal up by soldering it into a four- gallon paraffin container. On the rare occasions that he needed it, he would break it out with a hacksaw then weld it back in again the next day, clean and ready for the next funeral.

  If you weren’t careful, everything in the workshop at Kora used to fall into the sand and get lost. Springs would fly out of automatic pistols during maintenance so I always spread sheets out when I was cleaning them. It was at Kora that I started nailing the lids of screw and nail jars to the underside of shelves so they could be undone by turning the glass bottom and were always where I could find them. The diaries I used to write this book only survived because I sealed them in a tin trunk where they languished for decades. As we were given ever more sophisticated equipment it was important both to look after it and to make sure it didn’t stray. In Mkomazi we have six airtight shipping containers with racks and shelves where everything has its place. There are stencilled crime-scene outlines round every tool so you can see where something belongs or if anything is missing. Even with the most cursory of glances I notice if something is not where it should be, and if one of the mechanics needs a tool I can tell him exactly where it is.

  A few years ago, Lucy was in England and I was at home listening to a World Service programme on which Tony Benn was being interviewed. I have no idea what he was going on about but I did hear the interviewer drawing amused attention to the fact that everything in his office was labelle
d. We were meant to join with the presenter to laugh at the veteran politician but when he said he couldn’t live without his Brother labeller, I got on the phone immediately and asked Lucy to buy me one. Now everything I own has been Benned so I always know which phone I’m using, when the car needs servicing or what a dusty drawer contains. I have the same problem with rubbish. Stanley Murithii, my predecessor with the lions at Kora, was killed beyond the rubbish dump, Shade the lion got Terence in the dump and almost my last sight of the world was the very same rubbish dump when Shyman tried to kill me. I now recycle or burn everything in a huge pit, then bury the remains really deep.

  Kampi ya Simba was filthy when I started going back there regularly. There were tins and bottles lying all over the place, a vivid example of how rubbish doesn’t just go away but hangs around for generations. The first thing we had to do when we started rebuilding was clean up all the garbage and dispose of it outside the reserve. I now had two full-time jobs – one in Kora, the other in Mkomazi. Life at Mkomazi continues, and although Lucy takes a lot of work off my hands, it is still the major project demanding most of my time and funding. Lucy handles all Mkomazi’s administration, the newsletters and the dog programmes, and we now have a staff of forty-five to help us out. Nevertheless, there is always as much work as you have time for. There were at least some new members of the Mkomazi family to remind us of what we were doing there. Zacharia had seen Jipe mating a few times and we knew that she was pregnant but we were not sure that she would reach full term as she had aborted a litter the year before. In January 2003, however, she gave us all a great treat. She had three tiny, still spotted cubs each about the size of a domestic cat. Two were playful and brave but, sadly, the smallest female died almost immediately.

  Jipe had become very well known in the area around Mkomazi and after she gave birth the most unlikely people would offer us their congratulations just as they had when our kids had arrived. Shopkeepers in Same and Arusha would say, ‘Well done,’ as though we had done something clever. It was charming but also a sea change in people’s attitudes. Very soon after she had given birth, Ombeni led me to Jipe, who collected her cubs and dumped them at my feet. Still with their blue eyes closed, they were in pretty poor condition but they were feisty and lively. We were inordinately proud of her. We cured the cubs of mange and immediately treated them for worms, which would give them a much better chance of survival. They were feeding well and in much better health than Freddie the lion had been when I’d first seen him all those years ago in the army mess at Garissa so I had plenty of confidence. Jipe, though, was going to have to do a lot of work on her own. Solitary lionesses struggle to bring up their cubs as it is both dangerous to leave them when hunting and hard to hunt alone. Jipe, however, was a great hunter and, with a lot of help from Zacharia and a bit from me, she took it all in her sinuous stride. The cubs soon began to grow and thrive.

  The new life in Mkomazi seemed to symbolize our greater ambitions for the reserve. Jipe was not the only lioness breeding there. The lion population was recovering from the terrible effects of the ‘sport’ hunting and elephant numbers were going up too. We kept on pushing for Mkomazi to be elevated to a national park and were gratified to be receiving plenty of support. The Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA) – like the Kenya Wildlife Service – is a vibrant organization with proper management and clear lines of command. In Tanzania, national park status offers the highest level of resource protection available so it was logical that this should be our goal. In addition, we did everything else we could to keep Mkomazi at the top of the conservation agenda. I was particularly pleased to hear that Mweka College of Wildlife Management was now teaching a course about our work at Mkomazi. We had been hosting each class of students for years. Every term they would come out to Mkomazi so I could give them my ‘Make mistakes and learn from them’ speech, but for them to be teaching our methods was a signal honour. Since I had first arrived in Tanzania, I had always encouraged our guys to make mistakes and own up to them so that we could all learn from them. It was incredibly flattering that, twelve years later, I could leave Elisaria to host the Mweka students – I hear he gives them pretty much the same speech as I do, if with a lot less cursing.

  Elisaria has always been integral to our work in Mkomazi but, more and more, he was becoming crucial to the Trust’s work outside the reserve. He had built up the outreach programme to a point at which he was helping to upgrade dozens of schools. We decided about this time that we also needed to be doing things another way. If we could bring the school children into Mkomazi, like the students at Mweka, they would have a much better and less abstract understanding of what we were doing and how that could help the country. It is always a surprise to outsiders how few Africans visit game reserves and national parks; it is a tiny percentage of the population. We were slowly coming to realize that one short visit to Mkomazi would be ten times as effective as one long lecture in a classroom many miles away.

  Another part of our strategy was trying to make Mkomazi pay. Of course, it paid for itself in preservation of wilderness and species terms but there was no reason why it shouldn’t also have a cash income. After all the years of trying, we still didn’t have very much tourism. A few intrepid visitors came every month but Mkomazi just didn’t have the facilities to attract larger groups. It was hard to get to and not very rewarding for the kind of travellers who just wanted to tick off the Big Five and move on. We had a great discussion about the problem with Pete Silvester and the local MP,John Singo. Pete had recently set up the muchneeded Kenyan Professional Guides Association and thought it would be a good thing to have in Tanzania. We talked about setting up a guiding school and study centre at Mkomazi and even got to the stage of deciding where to put it. Seven years later we haven’t pulled it off but we’re still trying. We always try anything that might bring in revenue for the government and raise our profile both within and without the country. It always pays off in increased recognition and respectability but sometimes achieves even more.

  In early 2002 the collaborative artists Olly and Suzi came in to paint the wild dogs. It was the fifth time they had come and was a perfect example of how it’s always valuable to put ourselves out to raise the profile of our projects. Olly and Suzi don’t mind getting their hands dirty and have done some wonderful work with the dogs, producing fabulous paintings that capture the very life force of their subjects. They have become close friends as well as seriously raising the dogs’ profile with their beautiful two- handed paintings. They have painted together for years and have not painted a solo canvas since art college. Extremely famous and successful, they have exhibited work done at Mkomazi in London and New York, and have invited me to talk with them at the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Institute and the Natural History Museum. It has been a lot of fun, but also a great way of disseminating the importance of our work to a completely new sector of society, one with which we had no previous contact at all.

  While they were staying I was asked to go to Arusha by a friend to give a talk to a group of car dealers from Holland. I thought that might be pushing friendship too far so, as I drove the five hours to Arusha, I was feeling a bit put upon and ‘Why me?’ Nevertheless, I gave them a talk and was about to drive home when their leader, Ted van Dam, gave me a cheque for 15,000 euros. I couldn’t believe it. And since that time the Netherlands Suzuki Rhino Club has covered almost all the running costs of the rhino sanctuary as well as giving us some wonderful cars and quad bikes. We now have little Suzukis that are not only fun to drive but they go anywhere for half the running costs of the big Land Cruisers and Land Rovers that we use to move more people or heavy equipment. The dealers and staff of the company have been immensely supportive and are keen to make sure the project works. It saves me a lot of running around the world looking for funds. This was a telling example of how it behoves us to get out and spread the word that the world’s wildernesses require protection. We can’t just sit there and enjoy them on our own.
The rewards are not always as spectacular, and we don’t expect them to be, but every time we have a chance to tell someone about the perils faced by the world’s wildlife we should do so.

  It’s not just in the rich world where these messages are important. If anything, it is more important closer to home. When people in Tanzania – who have to live with dangerous animals on their doorstep – don’t appreciate their worth, our projects face a constant battle. Initially a sceptic, John Singo MP helped us a huge amount with getting our message across to as many Tanzanians as possible. By encouraging us to publicize our donations to communities living near Mkomazi he has helped to safeguard its future. We used to assist local schools by giving them cement or helping them to build dormitories and classrooms. It was just something we did for our neighbours rather than something we shouted about. John persuaded us that we should do both. He started giving rousing speeches whenever we did something for a local school or church. When we helped build a new secondary school in Same, we all went along to the opening and the minister for natural resources and tourism, Zakia Meghji, gave a great speech about George, about the Trust’s work in Kora and Mkomazi and how we were bringing jobs and money to the area. Elisaria and Lusasi were happy to see that our work was being appreciated, that there were only a few bad guys trying to make life hard for us and that most people thought we were doing a good job.

  Another way of getting the word out within Tanzania was when rangers from other parks came to see how we did things at Mkomazi’s rhino sanctuary. Even though we hadn’t known much about rhinos when we started, we had managed to create a sanctuary that is used as a model in Tanzania and beyond. The professional interaction with other rangers and wildlife guardians was just as useful as the visits from Mweka College that had been going on for so many years. In 2003 rangers visited from the vast Selous Game Reserve and, even more excitingly, a few months later the national parks authority sent in twelve of their rhino rangers from the Serengeti – the very people we wanted to come into Mkomazi. This was recognition and appreciation on a wholly different level.