‘How on earth did you get him to leave?’ I quizzed my still-frazzled guests.
‘I banged the tent with my hairdryer and he gave a couple of very annoyed squeals then lumbered off and disappeared.’
‘Not that we slept a wink after that,’ Mike grumbled.
‘I wouldn’t let him go back to sleep in case Thabo came back, but what a night! Our kids back in Raleigh will never believe us.’
Thank heavens Thabo hadn’t tried harder to join them. Two petrified humans, a curious rhino and a collapsed tent would have been catastrophic. We had done our best with Thabo and Ntombi but I knew that we could never raise more orphaned animals without a dedicated facility.
Thabo’s adventure with Mike and Jeanne happened years ago, and today he and Ntombi are like any other wild animal – they don’t like strangers. He has even become skittish around people he grew up with, as our lodge hostess discovered recently with almost deadly consequences.
No one is allowed to walk in the bush outside the fenced-in areas. That may seem obvious but it happens all the time in game reserves. People get complacent, especially when animals don’t have a history of being aggressive. Despite the rules, our employees occasionally walk where they shouldn’t, particularly if they’re in a rush and don’t want to wait for a 4×4 to give them a lift.
But just because animals haven’t attacked, doesn’t mean they won’t.
One afternoon, Sindi, a vivacious Zulu woman who has been with us since she was a teenager, was outside the safety zone, walking to the main gate to meet a friend. She saw Thabo and Ntombi in the distance but wasn’t the least bit concerned. She had known them since they were babies and adored them. As she approached the gate, the guard began to yell at her.
‘Sindi, run! Thabo’s coming for you!’
Clifford was a member of Thabo’s armed protection unit and knew him better than anyone. She grinned and waved at him, thinking he was joking.
‘Baleka, Sindi. Baleka!’ Run, Sindi. Run!
She turned and saw Thabo hurtling towards her.
Rhinos can pick up speed surprisingly quickly – going from zero to fifty-five kilometres per hour in three seconds flat. That’s not much time to get out of the way, unless you’re next to a tree and you’re a fast climber. Paralysed, Sindi watched Thabo come closer and closer.
‘Move! MOVE!’ Clifford yelled.
Thabo crashed into her. She flew into the air and landed on her back, flabbergasted that he had hit her. He did a U-turn and thundered towards her again, headbutting and flinging her like a rag doll. Clifford ran towards them, hoping like crazy that Thabo would recognize him.
‘Ngyacela mfana wami ungamlimazi, uSindi!’ Please, my boy, don’t hurt Sindi.
Thabo snorted angrily and pounded in his direction. Clifford dived to the ground and rolled out of the way. Thabo spun around and rammed him with his head.
‘Thabo, stop!’ Clifford bellowed.
Andrew, one of our rangers, was washing his Land Cruiser in the workshop, about a hundred metres from the gate. He heard the commotion but thought someone outside the fence was yelling at dogs. It wasn’t until he heard two voices that he took notice. He ran outside, saw Thabo hammering Clifford and leapt into his 4×4 and raced towards them.
Sindi was hidden by the tall grass and he only spotted her at the last minute – he yanked the steering wheel to the left and narrowly missed running her over. Thabo was getting ready for another charge. Andrew aimed the vehicle at him and used the bull bar to push him away. It was a dangerous manoeuvre, because if Thabo had wanted to, he could have immobilized the 4×4 in a heartbeat.
Confused by this unusual aggression from a vehicle, Thabo veered off, only to turn around and target Sindi again. She curled into the foetal position, whimpering in pain. Andrew slammed into reverse and, engine screaming, drove between Thabo and her. Thabo stopped, bewildered. A second ranger heard the noise and came tearing across the veldt.
‘Cover me so I can get to her!’ Shandu yelled at Andrew.
Andrew revved the engine loudly, drove forwards, then slammed into reverse.
‘He’s charging. Get Sindi in the car!’ he screamed.
Shandu scooped her up, laid her on the back seat then vaulted in next to her.
Their troubles were far from over.
Andrew eyed the gate and wondered if he could reach it before Thabo hit them. Rhinos don’t mock-charge like elephants do and two tons of rhino would have flipped the vehicle.
But Thabo swerved and missed them.
Then, as if it was just another casual day in Africa, he trotted up to Ntombi, exchanged snout snuffles with her and off they trundled, side by side, like an old married couple.
Clifford survived with massive bruises and everyone’s admiration for his bravery but Sindi spent ten days in hospital with a shattered pelvis.
‘Why would he attack me like that? What did I do to make him want to kill me? He knows me. I thought he was playing,’ she anguished. ‘If Andrew and Shandu hadn’t arrived, I would be dead.’
Like everyone, she saw Thabo as the affectionate calf he’d once been, and it broke her heart that he had turned violent.
We don’t know what happened to Thabo that day. Was it Sindi’s bright-pink sun umbrella that set him off? Or was he protecting Ntombi because she was pregnant? For weeks, I studied her enormous belly and tried to gauge if she was bigger than before. It was impossible to tell, and as the months went by, it was clear that she wasn’t.
Whatever the reason, it wasn’t Thabo’s fault, and in a way it was a kind of graduation for everyone. Thabo earned his I’m-a-wild-rhino badge and we all realized that our big baby had grown up and wasn’t a harmless little rhino calf any more.
Being tame is not only dangerous for the animals, it’s dangerous for us too.
After Clifford had yelled his warning at Sindi, she had more than enough time to get out of Thabo’s way but she didn’t in a million years believe he would harm her. She had known him all his life and she loved him, and that love almost killed her.
If Thabo had been reared with limited human contact, his instinct to fear man would still be there, and we wouldn’t have become used to him being so lovable around us. Of course, orphaned rhinos need twenty-four-hour care, especially in the beginning, so it’s impossible to prevent them forming relationships with their guardians, but we can minimize it. The world is a treacherous place for rhinos and we need them to be distrustful of people. It’s a fine balance between giving calves enough nurturing to thrive but not allowing them to become too tame.
* * *
The first time I wrote about my dream of opening a rhino sanctuary was in a newsletter in August 2013. Elisabeth, the German journalist who my friend Jos had introduced me to, sent it to every animal welfare organization she knew, and that’s how it landed in Heli Dungler’s inbox. Heli is founder and CEO of an Austrian animal welfare organization called Four Paws and the newsletter piqued his interest, so he decided to see for himself what we were doing at Thula Thula and tagged a visit to us onto a scheduled business trip to South Africa.
We showed him and his daughter what we had achieved with the herd and with Thabo and Ntombi, and I talked at length about our hopes of one day being able to help animal orphans. He asked lots of questions and told us about the projects his foundation sponsored across the globe. As far as he is concerned, no animal is too big, too small or too far away to help, whether it’s saving bears on Asian bile farms or tackling the puppy trade in Europe.
They say passion is contagious and Heli’s passion has that effect on everyone. He comes alive when he talks about his work and he has an amazing capacity to stay upbeat despite the horrendous suffering he has witnessed.
Out of the blue a month after his visit, I received an email from him asking me what finance we would need for a rhino sanctuary. I couldn’t believe my eyes. We had talked about my hopes of creating one but he hadn’t said a word about the possibility of doing a joint project together
, and now there it was, in black and white, a request for me to send him a proposal to build it!
Neither Alyson nor I had any experience in writing proposals and I was very worried that ours wouldn’t be up to scratch. We sat down together to figure out how to begin.
‘Lawrence always handled this kind of thing,’ I said blankly.
‘I’m useless at it. I can’t even organize my own admin, let alone do something like this,’ Alyson grimaced.
‘Why don’t we start the proposal with an introduction to you? You’re a vet nurse with all the right experience and we can use your work with Thabo and Ntombi as a case study. We’ll talk about what we did right and where we think we could have done things differently.’ I paused. ‘We should also contact people with rhino orphan experience for advice. I’ll ask around.’
I scribbled rhino experts, wildlife vets, other orphanages on my notepad.
‘We’ll need detailed quotes so we can give Four Paws exact figures for what the building work, fencing and security installations will cost,’ Alyson added.
Writing the proposal was intimidating, but one of the things that I learned on the turbulent ride of coping on my own was the power of saying I don’t know. I’ve realized that it’s easier to admit that I don’t know something than to pretend that I do. Anyway, it’s the truth. Our animals had always been Lawrence’s responsibility and I knew next to nothing about what was involved in looking after them.
‘What else do you think we need?’ I asked.
‘An ambulance. We can’t have a rescue centre without an emergency vehicle.’
‘It’d better be a sturdy one. Look how quickly Thabo and Ntombi grew – they doubled in size every few months until Thabo could bulldoze down a door without even trying.’
‘Everything has to be sturdy,’ she agreed. ‘The babies will be terrified when they first get here and probably very unpredictable, even aggressive, so their rooms, feeding areas and all the outside enclosures must be strong enough to withstand a pretty good thumping.’ She gave me a concerned look. ‘This is going to cost a fortune. Do you have any idea how much Four Paws wants to donate?’
‘Nope. But they asked for the proposal and they have far more experience than we do so they must know what’s involved moneywise.’
‘It would be incredible if they said yes,’ Alyson sighed, then shifted forward in her chair. ‘Right. Back to work. Dreaming will get us nowhere.’
‘Dreaming will get us everywhere,’ I said softly, walking over to the window. It was dusk and the trees were black lace silhouettes against a coral sky. ‘For so long, I dreamed of having a haven on our doorstep where orphaned animals could heal from their trauma.’ I turned to her. ‘You know the house up on the hill near the southern fence line? That’s where it should be.’
‘I thought it belonged to the local chiefs?’
‘It does, but they gave it to us for animal conservation and I’m sure they’ll be on board to turn it into a rehabilitation centre. We could even create something much broader and use it as a base from which to teach local kids about animal welfare. Who knows? Maybe there’s a budding ranger among them.’ I shook my head in frustration. ‘We’re not short of ideas, just short of money. I guess we shouldn’t get our hopes up too high. Four Paws probably has thousands of people needing their help.’
Alyson wagged her finger at me.
‘Oh no you don’t. You said we should dream, didn’t you? I think we stand a good chance. They were really interested in what we were doing with Thabo and Ntombi when they were here.’
Alyson and I raced around getting advice, calling in architects and builders, sourcing quotes, and she wrote and rewrote the proposal more times than I can remember.
‘Enough. Let’s send it,’ she said one morning. ‘It’s as ready as it’s ever going to be.’
I glanced at her over my laptop. ‘Sure?’
She gave me a thumbs up. I hit Send and sank back in my chair.
‘I’m exhausted,’ Alyson yawned.
She left to get some well-earned sleep and I stayed to tackle my neglected inbox. I finished just before midnight, locked up and walked across the lawn to my home. A tawny owl hooted nearby and a haunting reply echoed back through the stillness. A sliver of moon curved like an open palm on the horizon. I smiled to myself. Maybe it was a sign that Four Paws would say yes.
I searched the sky for the Milky Way. There it was. My star-spangled highway of dreams. Wherever I am, I look for it, and it’s true what they say – stars are brighter in Africa. Even my own life shines brighter here. Moving to Africa triggered an awakening in me that changed my world, but nothing puts things into perspective as sharply as losing a partner without warning. No long illness, no hospital stay to prepare you: just a brutal overnight loss. I’ve never minded being on my own, but when you suddenly go from being two to being one, it shakes your existence – and will either crush you or make you stronger. For a long time after I lost him, I thought I was drowning, lurching from one crisis to the next, never feeling anything was under control, but slowly, as time passed after Lawrence’s death, I was becoming more and more confident about what to do with my life.
14
How do I keep you safe?
It’s been years since our beloved rhino Heidi was killed but I still have nightmares about what they did to her. Her death in 2009 was my first experience of the horror of poaching. Once you’ve seen what poachers do to a rhino’s face, you can’t unsee it. She had the sweetest nature, a serene gentleness that was so unexpected in such a huge and powerful animal. They turned her beautiful face into a gruesome mess of blood and flesh, and she was alive when they did it.
If she had died from a bullet, I might have learned to live with it. If the poachers had made sure she was dead before they hacked her face then I could have consoled myself that her death was in fact a godsend. But they didn’t. They butchered her while she was a breathing, living, feeling rhino.
Our dear friend Dr Ian Player expressed it perfectly.
‘Rhinos,’ he said, ‘have a particularly plaintive cry which once heard, is never forgotten. The screams of agony from rhinos that have had their horns chopped off while still alive should reach into the hearts of all of us.’
How right he was. There are times when I feel so overwhelmed by what is happening to animals in this world that I feel dead inside and the only way I can cope is by shutting down for a while. I disappear into my home with just my dogs for company. Their love is so pure and they help me find my grounding and remind me why I can never give up looking after our animals.
Immediately after Thabo was shot, I had taken Vusi’s advice to appoint Richard and his team to guard our rhinos every single minute of the day and night. It was costly and I couldn’t have afforded it without donations from friends and guests who understood the need for this ongoing beefed-up security. I slept better knowing they were protected.
I’ve realized that the only way to survive the poaching onslaught is to accept that I will never be able to change the world but that I can have an impact on my 4,500 hectares of it.
So when I heard about an experimental technique to protect rhinos that was being used by a couple of private game reserves near Johannesburg, I jumped at the chance to try it out at Thula Thula.
South Africans are amazingly inventive people, especially when they have their backs to the wall. Lock them in a cage and they’re guaranteed to find an ingenious way out. Poaching was decimating rhinos and there was nothing to counter it – until a South African found a way to make horns unsellable and unusable. I thought the idea was brilliant and I immediately tracked down an organization with experience in the procedure. The woman I spoke to was very enthusiastic about how poisoning horns was the answer to saving Africa’s rhinos.
‘I’m not a scientist so please explain how it works,’ I asked.
‘We inject a cocktail of toxins and indelible dye straight into the horn using special high pressure equipment that forces the in
fusion to spread through the horn. You can’t see the dye but X-ray machines at airports can pick it up.’
‘But surely that will poison my rhinos?’
‘Not at all. The horn has no direct blood vessel contact with the body so there’s no risk whatsoever for the animal. It’s an absolute breakthrough in protecting them. The more poisoned horns we have in South Africa, the safer our rhinos will be.’
‘But how can it be legal to poison something that we know people might eat? I don’t want anyone’s death on my conscience, no matter how much I hate that they buy rhino horn.’
‘It won’t kill them, but believe me, it’ll make them very sick. No one is going to want our horns! Imagine how fantastic that would be.’
It sounded too good to be true, and very expensive.
‘It’s about the same price as dehorning, and included in the price is the dye, micro-chipping the horns and we take a DNA sample for the national rhino database.’
‘You’re a good saleswoman,’ I laughed.
‘I believe it’s the only thing that will save rhinos. Everything else that’s out there hasn’t helped. This will.’
Her company’s solution certainly had a lot going for it, although it still carried the risk of having to anaesthetize the rhino.
‘Have you ever had a procedure go wrong?’ I asked.
She seemed to hesitate for a moment.
‘It didn’t really go wrong, because there are always risks with immobilizing large mammals. Put it this way, we’ve had a less than two per cent mortality rate since we’ve been doing this.’
Was it my imagination or had her language suddenly become more corporate? It was always the same. When questions got too close to the bone, language became detached, as if that somehow made reality easier to stomach. I knew two per cent was low but I couldn’t bear anything to happen to Thabo and Ntombi.
‘It’s low compared to the risk of poaching,’ the woman said.
She knew how to press buttons. The chances of Thabo and Ntombi being shot by poachers were a damn sight higher than the risk of dying from an anaesthetic.
An Elephant in My Kitchen: What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage, and Survival Page 12