Born Wild Page 29

  It remains hard to surf the wave between travelling to spread the word and actually getting things done. I was lucky to have such a good team at Mkomazi that I could do things like visit the Czech Republic, as I did that year, 2003, secure in the knowledge that everything would carry on without me. There was a zoo there with East African black rhinos and I spent years persuading its board that they should come home to Mkomazi. There was already a lot for our staff to look after. Badger was still in very poor condition and Pete Morkel could not understand what was wrong with him. There was a possibility that he couldn’t masticate his food properly so Pete flew in a horse dentist from Zimbabwe who filed his enormous rhino teeth down. Badger had to be lightly sedated, sat upon by six men to hold him steady then worked on by the resolute horse dentist. It was a horrid job for all concerned – particularly Badger – and sadly made little difference. Badger was fading. Semu had to organize people to be with him twenty-four hours a day and we were spending a fortune on feeding him supplements just to keep him alive.

  One of the aspects of helping animals that I try to get across when I give speeches and meet people is that it’s not always fun. It’s wonderful being in the bush but queuing for permits and listening to academics at conferences is torture. Even trying to help Badger was hard work and ultimately not very rewarding. The same can also be said of caring for Spike, the serval cat, a beautiful long-legged cub that our friends Charlie and Serena Mason gave us after he was orphaned on their farm. We always stay with them when we’re in Arusha and they come to Mkomazi when they can. Spike was no purring kitten that liked having his tummy rubbed. Indeed, he had been called Spike only because he was so difficult. He hissed at anyone who came within twenty feet but we couldn’t let him free until he was old enough and large enough to look after himself.

  Dickson Kaaya, who was helping to raise our children, was put in charge of Spike’s welfare and devoted many hours to him, including feeding him two large birds a day – in vain. Spike hated Dickson even more than he disliked the rest of us. He was a spectacularly effective killer but he needed a bit of help at the start. Once he had got the hang of catching and eating his own food, he played with his prey then dismembered it with a peculiarly sinister relish. His room, which was also our bathroom, came to look like a voodoo torture chamber with blood and feathers daubed all over the walls, viscera and fur on the floor. One morning I stepped gingerly over the threshold to brush my teeth, expecting to be pounced on by the hissing ball of rage. I was relieved to see a Spike-shaped hole in the mosquito mesh. He had gone without a backward glance. We saw him a few times over the next couple of years but never if he saw us first. He hated us way too much.

  Spike’s nemesis, Dickson, was absolutely brilliant at looking after the kids. It was always embarrassing that when we took them for walks they would return covered with cuts and bruises. With Dickson no harm ever befell them. But he had it pretty easy compared to the guys out in the reserve where elephant, rhino and lion roamed. We had a very nasty shock in August when Mollel, one of the rhino-sanctuary team who had been with us from the beginning, was attacked by a buffalo. The poachers had been hard at work in Mkomazi and the buffalo’s testicles had been ripped off in a snare. Understandably this had driven it mad with rage. Mollel was badly gored but we managed to fly him to Moshi in time and he made a remarkable recovery. He fared much better than the poor emasculated buffalo, who was put out of his misery by one of our security team.

  Dramas like the one with Mollel are inevitable when you are living far out in the bush, surrounded by nature at its most red, but they became a lot more easily manageable over the years as our communications systems clawed its way into the modern world. From the days when we used to have to drive to Arusha to use the telex machine things had moved on apace. We now had a radio linked up to a phone in a friend’s office sixty miles away. It meant that we could make phone calls without driving to Same, and when Mollel was hurt, we were able to alert the hospital that we needed to be met at the airport by an ambulance. The improvement in communications made us feel much better about having the kids with us, although I’m not sure Lucy agreed on the day we discovered a spitting cobra in the schoolhouse.

  My flying had been significantly helped by technology too. We hadn’t realized quite how invaluable the global positioning system all pilots were now using had become until America and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003. Rumours circulated around the flying community that the GPS system would be turned off or made inaccurate so as not to ‘give succour to the enemy’. It’s astonishing to think how much my life has been changed by the GPS: I would literally be lost without mine, although I always have a map as a back-up.

  Just before Saddam Hussein was captured in December, Badger had another incident. His back legs gave way as he was drinking and he collapsed into his water trough. For two whole days the staff down in the rhino sanctuary had to try to keep him upright with ropes. Pete Morkel – who was now based with his family in nearby Ngorongoro Crater – flew in to have a look at him but didn’t hold out much hope for his recovery. Sadly he was right. Two months later Badger collapsed again at that grimmest of all hours, four o’clock in the morning. He had fallen over, been pulled up again with ropes, then immediately fallen over again. In the cold darkness he gave up after his long struggle with illness and died with his head in Semu’s arms at eight thirty a.m. The only consolation was that he had died on home soil, but it was a miserable end for a lovely and trusting animal that had struggled so bravely with years of illness. I remembered the happy day when he had first arrived and the kids had been able to feed him by hand. Indeed, some of the sanctuary staff continued to do so until his death.

  Pete came in and did an autopsy where Badger had died in the middle of the sanctuary. The top rhino vet in the world, he was worried that the autopsy needed to be done as quickly as possible, so instead of messing around waiting for the right equipment, he did the whole thing with a Leatherman pocket-knife. There are so many prima donnas in the wildlife world who wouldn’t dream of doing things the rough and ready way, but if Pete hadn’t done the autopsy then, we would have been unable to do it at all. We at Mkomazi and Kora have been incredibly lucky to have people like Pete and Aart coming out to help us over the years. And when, later in the year, Aart resigned from looking after the wild-dog programme, Pete immediately took his place. Now Pete has moved to a home in Namibia and has a roaming rhino practice but before he left us he worked with the capable Tanzanian vets who have taken his place.

  In the course of Badger’s alfresco autopsy, Pete discovered trauma to his spinal cord that was likely to have been caused by an injury sustained while he was in South Africa. He felt that this was probably behind all Badger’s mysterious illnesses over the years. Pete had been unable to save him – but if he couldn’t save him then nobody could. I wish we had been told early on that Badger’s mother had been killed by an elephant and that Badger had possibly been injured at the same time. We might not have saved him but it would have helped in our diagnosis.

  As always happens in the natural world when it is sufficiently protected, new life soon replaces the old. Nina had disappeared almost a year earlier and we had all given up hope of ever seeing her again. After six years of freedom, her radio collar had long ago been dumped or fallen off and we hadn’t been able to track her down despite my flying all over Mkomazi searching for her while checking on illegal activity for Lusasi. There were all sorts of threats to elephants in Mkomazi and in neighbouring Tsavo. We thought that she might have succumbed to the drought or to the increase in poaching on both sides of the border. Nina had become a great part of our lives since that monumental move in 1997 and we all missed her. Then, just as Badger was facing his final illness, and after nearly a year away, she strolled into camp and came up to the workshop to say hello. She was looking fat and healthy although there was still plenty of room for the children to feed her a few bananas. Just a couple of days later we discovered why. On the night before Engl
and won the rugby world cup, Nina put her trunk through Elisaria’s window at four in the morning and encouraged him to come outside. There, between her legs, was a newly born calf. She had come home so that she could have her son in safety. One memorable drop goal later, we decided to call him Jonny Wilkinson in honour of England’s cup-winning fly-half.

  It felt good to be alive that day. It had been the combination of rugby and wildlife that had first brought me to East Africa when I hitched a ride on the Comet from Malawi to see Middlesex Rugby Club play in Nairobi. For years many of my old school rugby friends had been on the board of the Trust. Now we had performed the impossible. Even Daphne Sheldrick – one of the world’s elephant experts – had thought it unlikely that Nina would assimilate enough to mate and have a calf, but Nina had proved everybody wrong. She had taken her time and had a great holiday in the bush with her friends but now at the age of thirty-three she had come home to the safety of Mkomazi to have her first calf. We felt greatly privileged that she had chosen us, and everyone was proud that an expectant mother should have seen Mkomazi as the right place to have her calf in safety. She was not the only one producing young either – the wild dogs were producing litters at a heady pace and we now had a viable population that we would soon be able to start reintroducing to the wild.

  Amid all the drama of the dogs and the rhinos, it’s hard to imagine that we have anything approaching a routine at Mkomazi. We do, however, have the occasional normal day and it usually starts before daybreak with the World Service and a cup of tea. Then in comes Elisaria, followed by a long line of others. ‘Hodi,’ he says, the Kiswahili for ‘I’m outside, may I approach?’

  ‘Karibu.’ Draw near, or welcome.

  ‘The elephants destroyed three wild dog bomas last night. Most of the Lendenai dogs are out and we’re out of new poles.’

  ‘The old dungu [Bedford lorry] lost a front wheel last night on the way back from taking water to Kifukua and is stuck near the southern end of the rhino fence-line.’

  ‘The alarm has packed up on the Kilo Mike to Kilo Tango section.’

  ‘The water pump on the big storage tank has packed up. Didn’t we have a spare somewhere? Fred’s on leave and I’m not sure where it is.’

  ‘Helena’s sick. I think it’s malaria and she should go to hospital.’

  ‘The regional labour officer wants to come in. When would be a good time?’

  ‘We’re out of potatoes and rice. When’s the next vehicle going out?’

  ‘TANAPA HQ just called. They can’t make the meeting on the third in Dar es Salaam. When can we reschedule?’

  ‘Kilo Echo says they need water for all the outposts and the rhinos.’

  ‘We need to re-roof the generator house. The sun has destroyed the asphalt sheeting. What shall we try next?’

  ‘George at Zange [the park HQ] has just been on the radio. Can he come over and discuss help with moving stone for the new road signs and washaways? Helima wants to come too and talk about new water projects.’

  ‘I just heard that District Commissioner Mwanga is coming in with a group. Can you give them a talk and show them the rhinos this afternoon?’

  ‘Eliudi just called on the radio. He’s blown a hydraulic pipe on the grader on the new line and his compressor’s not working.’

  ‘Can the tracking team have new alarm report and sighting sheets? They also need new uniforms.’

  ‘Sorry, Mzee, my child is very sick at home. Can I have a few days off?’

  ‘Mama Lucy, Mnygatwa has asked if he could have a history of all the Trust’s work in Mkomazi over the past twenty-one years.’

  ‘There’s a fire over the back of Kisima Hill. Shall I go and check it out? I think the repeater battery has died – I’ll change it on the way back. Can I take your quad bike?’

  ‘Can we do a group of elders on the next school trip rather than the schoolkids? I think it’s about time.’

  ‘I need a list of equipment for the next Kora trip. Shall we take the welding machine?’

  And the tea’s not even cold yet . . .

  The complications of working in a game reserve started to become a problem again in the course of 2004 but somehow we managed to keep going. Lusasi’s rangers continued to run rings around him, and although we had great support from the government and within the ministries, problems continued to manifest themselves on the ground. Poor Lusasi did his very best but he had no way of disciplining the rangers. They absolutely hated me, particularly my flying. It gave their boss Lusasi an aerial picture of what was going on, which made it much harder for them to be up to no good. With twenty minutes of flying, I could monitor more of their activities than Lusasi could in a month. I reported back to him the minute I saw any cattle incursions or poachers’ camps, helping him to force his rangers to take on the poachers. My bird’s-eye view meant he could ultimately use them to arrest the trespassers on the basis of my intelligence.

  In the areas surrounding Mkomazi there were five cattle barons and three commercial meat-poaching gangs, who relied on paying off the rangers for their profit. So when I reported what was going on to Lusasi, the rangers were infuriated. They couldn’t take bribes from people they were being forced to push out of the reserve. By way of a retaliatory smokescreen they used to write endless letters to the wildlife authorities and ministries accusing us of selling ivory, mining, spying and dealing in rhino horn – all of which, of course, had to be investigated. I was praying that the rangers would be removed and replaced with some goodies, but we don’t live in a perfect world so we worked even harder to impress the director and staff of the national parks. It was crucial that Mkomazi was gazetted as a park.

  In the interim, we had to keep working with what we had and there was tragedy stalking close to home. I was on a fundraising trip to the US when Lucy called me as I changed planes in Phoenix. Jipe was dead. I could hardly breathe and my eyes were so full of tears that I could scarcely see. The cabin crew were nervous about letting me on to the plane because I looked so weird. I had to tell them there had been a death in the family and I suppose it was true: she really had been family. Jipe had reopened an old part of my life and made me feel as if I were twenty-seven again. Walking in the bush at Mkomazi with Jipe and her cubs had been such a very special and unexpected bonus. She had such a gentle character but had been a tough, efficient killer when she needed to be. She had looked after her family and made sure they always had enough to eat. I still miss her terribly when I’m out on the plains where she used to come and greet me.

  I found out when I got home that she had been poisoned by some stockherders who had left bait around their cattle camp – just as someone had killed Squeaks in Kora. Both animals would have died very slowly and in blinding agony. After a radio signal showed Jipe had gone across into Kenya, Fred and Zacharia had gone out looking for her, following a faint bleep from her radio collar. It led them to an active Tanzanian cattle camp just inside the Tsavo border where they found her body – skinned, decapitated, paws cut off and all her teeth smashed out for tourist trinkets and witchcraft.Jipe’s radio collar had been shattered and buried with her but to no avail. It continued to work even from the grave, a credit to AVM Instruments but not much consolation to Fred and Zacharia who had feared the worst but hoped for the best. They called in reinforcements, ambushed the grazers when they returned that evening and dragged them to Zange to be formally arrested by Lusasi and his rangers. I don’t think Zacharia has ever recovered from the grief. Seven years of looking after Jipe had forged an extraordinary bond between them. He was completely devastated by her death and indeed asked to resign some months later, saying Mkomazi was not the same without her. We didn’t try to persuade him otherwise as we understood his grief and, in any case, his elderly dad needed looking after. He’s still on standby for the next lion . . .

  Jipe and her relationship with Zacharia were so well known around Tanzania that her death made the national news. We received condolence letters from all over Tanzania an
d there was a genuine outrage that such a thing should have happened. When Zacharia went to report the incident and take the prisoners in with some rangers he had collected on the way he was confronted by a sobbing policeman, a hard Special Branch cop, who had already heard the news. The minister wrote to us to express her sadness. And, significantly, so did scores of ordinary people. Of course it was awful that Jipe had been killed but we consoled ourselves with the fact that she had achieved a great deal in her life. All those people who had heard about her, the visitors who had been to Mkomazi, the school children to whom Elisaria had spoken as part of our outreach programme, all now put a value on preserving wildlife rather than killing it. In her short life she had achieved what so few of us can manage: she had changed the way people think. It was very similar to the effect that Born Free engendered when it had been published fifty years earlier. Before the story of Elsa, lions were seen as big game to be hunted and killed by rich white hunters. After Born Free lions became wildlife to be protected and conserved. We hoped that Jipe’s story would have a similar effect in rural Tanzania. And there was some good news: her cubs had survived. They had not eaten the poisoned bait and towards the end of the month they came back to see Zacharia. It was the first time he had smiled for weeks. The cubs went on to thrive in Mkomazi and, indeed, become parents themselves.