An Elephant in My Kitchen: What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage, and Survival

by Françoise Malby-Anthony

  One of the first things I learned from Lawrence was that a group of rhinos is called a crash of rhinos. It made me quite nervous at the time because it sounded rather aggressive, but since then I’ve realized that it suits these powerhouses of solid muscle really well. Interestingly, white rhinos love the company of their crash, while black rhinos tend to be loners.

  Nandi was an extremely important rescue because black rhinos are at higher risk of extinction than white ones. In fact, they’re on the most serious endangered list of all, and according to the World Wildlife Organization there are as few as 5,500 left in the world – versus 20,000 white rhinos.

  Finding little Nandi had been nothing short of a miracle. The anti-poaching unit at a local reserve had come across the carcass of a female black rhino that had been shot in the left flank and the head. Her horn was gone and all around her body were tiny tracks and nuggets of calf faeces. The men sent out an SOS call for help straight away.

  Nine rangers and guards followed the calf’s spoor on foot. By four that afternoon, it still hadn’t been found. At only two months, its chances of survival were zero. Black rhino calves are smaller and more vulnerable than white rhino calves and the reserve was known for its big lion pride. The calf was so little, even a hyena could have attacked it.

  ‘The carcass is already two days old, so if the calf is still alive, it won’t last the night,’ the reserve’s head ranger said. ‘We need a chopper.’

  A helicopter was dispatched in record time, and just as the sun slipped below the horizon and the sky blazed orange, the calf was spotted under a tree.

  A very weak and dehydrated little rhino became the neonatal unit’s first patient. Nandi was tiny but what she lacked in size, she made up for in feistiness – charging everyone in sight. The carers took turns to be with her, exchanging tips with each other on how to avoid being battered.

  When these little creatures display aggressive behaviour, it’s generally because they’re frightened, and once they’re in an eating routine and have learnt to trust their carers, they settle down quickly and show their true natures. Alyson soon won her over and Nandi proved to be a real cuddle bug. The two of them would fall asleep together under layers of cosy blankets.

  What would we do without blankets! We need hundreds of them. They keep the orphans warm but they have so many other benefits too.

  Underweight calves struggle to control their own body temperature and a cold calf very quickly runs the risk of falling sick, so blankets are a simple and effective way of keeping them warm. It’s not only warmth that’s important; sleeping on soft bedding is comforting for the calves and helps prevent hay or dirt from contaminating any open wounds. It’s also much easier to inspect an animal’s faecal and urine output on a blanket than on straw – an important part of monitoring their health. Needless to say, the washing machines run non-stop at the orphanage to keep blankets clean and hygienic!

  Nandi loved her blanket – a bright crocheted one in rainbow colours that she dragged around with her, especially at dusk. The dark frightened her and the best way to make her feel safe was to tuck her blanket tightly around her. If it slid off, she squealed until her carer woke up and tucked her back in again. What a little princess!

  The flood of orphaned rhinos didn’t stop with Nandi, and within weeks two more emergency cases were brought in. Both would have died if they hadn’t come to us.

  The first orphan, Storm, was a sickly black rhino who had been found alone, probably rejected by his mother. He suffered from the worst worm infection the vet had ever seen and nobody knew how he came to have such a life-threatening overload of parasites. It was so bad that he was regurgitating them, and within days of arriving he got pneumonia from regurgitation that ended up in his lungs. He lost a lot of weight and yet had a swollen pot belly. The team eventually worked out that he wasn’t able to process food properly. He had no appetite and we almost lost him three times. It was such a frantic time, and knowing he was a black rhino added to the trauma and stress of fighting for his survival.

  The second little rescue, Gugu, was a healthy white rhino in beautiful condition. So good, in fact, that she wanted nothing to do with the carers. She wasn’t looking for comfort, hated the milk she was given, and preferred to drink from a bucket – as long as it meant no one came close to her.

  She wasn’t keen on humans but instantly recognized her own kind and when she first saw Impi and Thando, she broke out into high-pitched calls of delight. Soon the carers opened the barriers and the three of them squealed and sniffed each other in excitement. It was wonderful to see them form their own rhino crash so naturally. Emotionally, it makes such a difference for orphaned calves to have each other for comfort and play.

  Poor Ithuba was so frustrated that he couldn’t join them, but it wasn’t all bad news for him, because the minute Gugu laid eyes on him, we lost her. She fell in love with her strapping boy neighbour and they would spend hours walking next to each other on either side of the fence.

  By Christmas, the orphanage had only been going for a year and we had taken in six rhino calves, one baby elephant, and a part-dog, part-nursemaid German shepherd. Apart from young Storm, who was still struggling to eat and process food healthily, they were all thriving. Even Ellie, our baby elephant, was loving life with Duma as her playmate – and elephants are notoriously tough to save.

  At the stroke of midnight at the end of 2015, I couldn’t believe I had survived another year. We had achieved so much, but emotionally it had been really tough. The greatest blow for me was that the orphanage’s partnership with the outside management team wasn’t working. At first, I had tried to brush off the problems as being personality clashes between strong-willed people, but sitting on my veranda at the cusp of the new year with Gypsy, Gin and Jeff milling about, I had to face the heart-wrenching reality that I was being pushed away from my own orphanage.

  It had started slowly with strange complaints, such as the time I received an annoyed phone call from the admin manager to say that my anti-poaching guard had driven too close to the orphanage and that the noise of his quad bike had disturbed the calves – only to be told by my rangers later in the week that a diesel-powered strimmer was being used right next to the orphans’ rooms.

  Disagreements began to escalate about donations and security. I can flare up when I’m frustrated or tired – I’m French, after all – but I hate conflict and will usually do anything to keep the peace, so I shrugged it off and told myself that all that mattered was that the animals were thriving under the dedicated care of the team on the ground, with whom I still had an excellent relationship.

  In situations like this, I always look for the positive, and the orphanage really had achieved so much. Lawrence would have been thrilled by our success.

  ‘It’s not just six calves that we saved,’ I could hear him say. ‘It’s their children and their children’s children. We’re talking dozens, Frankie.’

  He loved statistics like that.

  Another ongoing worry for me at the time was that most of our poaching victims were from game reserves very close to Thula Thula, much too close for my liking, and I lived in constant dread that Thabo and Ntombi would be next, especially during the Christmas and year-end period. I don’t know why but it’s an especially dangerous time for poaching.

  By then, horn infusion as an effective defence against poaching had received so much conflicting media exposure that it was useless for our rhinos.

  There were many different schools of thought. Firstly, there was no scientific proof that the ‘poison’ really did make the end user sick, so there was bad press about the fact that the entire strategy bordered on being smoke and mirrors. Secondly, it was bounced about that if a poisoned horn didn’t make someone disastrously ill then there was a risk of creating an added allure of ‘what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger’. There was also talk that the poison didn’t seep into the rest of the horn but stayed where it was injected, effectively leaving the bulk of
the horn uncontaminated.

  Many felt that the fear factor was worth trading on, but there was increasing belief that basing rhino safety on a bluff would create a false sense of security, and even more importantly, it didn’t fight the real reasons behind the demand for rhino horn.

  It had been such a bold and unusual idea, but when poachers targeted rhinos with poisoned horns at Sabi Sabi, a private game reserve next to the Kruger National Park, I realized they didn’t care if horns were toxic or not, and that Thabo and Ntombi were in as much danger today as they had been before we had tried to make their horns unsellable.

  I started 2016 with a knot in my stomach about the orphanage and with the knowledge that I would have to find a new way to keep Thabo and Ntombi safe.

  But how? They already had round-the-clock armed security but that hadn’t always helped in other reserves. Should I have their horns cut off? I couldn’t bear the thought. To me, a rhino wasn’t a rhino without its horn, and yet I also knew that if it would save their lives, I wouldn’t hesitate.

  For the time being, I decided to trust our on-the-ground security and wait to see what neighbouring reserves did. If they dehorned their rhinos, I would too. I would never run the risk of our rhinos being the only ones in the region with horns.

  I hoped it would never come to that, but in my heart I knew it would.

  20

  Silent killers

  The emergency call crackled over the radio just after lunch.

  ‘Code red! Baby elephant in trouble!’

  Vusi ran to the office and grabbed the handset.

  ‘Vusi here! What’s up?’

  ‘Marula’s baby has a snare on his face.’

  ‘Copy that. What’s the location?’

  ‘Last sighting at Mkhulu Dam. We’re trying to get closer to see how bad it is but the herd won’t let us. They’re skittish and on the move.’

  ‘Stand by for assistance. Over.’

  Code red means down tools, get to main house now. Whatever the reason for the alert, it’s urgent. Within minutes, the first rangers arrived at the rendezvous point, ready for action. Vusi quickly briefed them.

  ‘Guys, it’s serious. Siya radioed in a calf with a snare. He couldn’t get close enough so we need eyes on the ground. Split into pairs, grab a 4×4 and let’s locate the baby before nightfall. Bring binocs. I’ll take the pickup truck and meet up with Siya and Shandu. Go, go, go!’

  The men raced off and began to criss-cross the reserve. Even though the elephants were last seen up north, the herd was spooked and could be anywhere. Calves need to feed every few hours to survive and this little one wasn’t even ten days old. It was a life-or-death crisis. But I had faith in my rangers. They know the bush inside out and can spot animal tracks in almost any conditions.

  Snares are the silent killers of the bush. All it takes is some wire and a slip-knot. The poacher strings up a noose where an animal is likely to pass – usually hanging at head level from a tree – and as soon as an unsuspecting neck or trunk passes through the loop, it pulls closed. The more the creature struggles, the more the snare tightens. Death is slow and cruel, and the animal rarely escapes. They may be able to yank the snare free from what it’s attached to, but that only makes it worse because the animal goes into hiding and we have less chance of finding it to help it. Thank heavens this calf had managed to stay with the herd.

  Snares are cheap, easy to set up and dreadfully effective. The first thing our anti-poaching unit does every morning is scour the reserve for them. We’ve gone through periods when they dismantled up to ten snares a day. Lawrence and I always used to say that you can’t interfere with nature, but sometimes you have to, especially when an animal is injured because of humans – as with snares.

  Our rhino Ntombi had a chunk of ear wrenched off by a snare. Both ET’s daughter and granddaughter have had close calls with snares. Her daughter had a snare wrapped around her foot that became so embedded that she could have lost it to infection, and her granddaughter Susanna had a snare around her ear. Luckily a sharp-eyed ranger noticed that the ear was bent back at an unnatural angle and we were able to remove the wire. Both cases required daring interventions involving a helicopter, darting, and adrenalin-pumping activity on the ground by the vet and rangers to separate the injured elephant from the herd. The first calf’s foot was saved but Susanna lost part of her ear.

  Not so long ago, an old male giraffe ended up with a snare on his leg. What a nightmare. Saving baby elephants from snares is tough enough as it is, but removing snares from giraffes is even tougher because sedating them is such a complex procedure. You can’t just immobilize a giraffe. Its long legs and neck and its heavy head carry the risk of life-threatening injuries should the giraffe fall badly.

  The procedure is done in three stages.

  First, the animal is mildly tranquillized so that it is docile and dopey enough to allow the rangers to approach safely.

  Next, ropes are lassoed over its neck and around its legs.

  Lastly, it is properly anaesthetized and its fall is carefully managed so that it lands without injury.

  Even when the giraffe is down, the process is very different from that with elephants, and far more people-intensive. Two groups of strong men are needed to keep both the vet and the animal safe. One group ensures the head and neck stay flat on the ground, while the other is in charge of the legs. A giraffe’s neck is immensely powerful – as I learned from Lawrence on my first visit – and once the animal is able to lift its head, it very quickly gains the momentum to stand and can be back on its feet within seconds: a potentially lethal situation in the middle of a snare-removal procedure.

  So much trauma is caused by heartless poachers and their snares.

  I understand that there are desperate people who genuinely need to eat, but if they are going to kill an animal, why can’t they choose a more humane way? Poachers killing for food typically break in through our perimeter barrier at night, string up a whole lot of snares and slip out again. A few days later, they’re back to pick up the animals they’ve trapped. Once they’ve taken as many as they can carry, they disappear again without bothering to disable the remaining snares. Any captured animal they leave behind dies a slow death. Where is their conscience? The cruelty destroys me.

  There are two types of poachers – those killing for the pot and those killing for profit.

  The latter type is hell-bent on money and doesn’t give a damn about animals or endangered species, and he won’t hesitate to shoot the men and women who risk their lives to protect them. His focus is financial gain and he knows he’ll be well paid for practically every part of the animal – skin, horns, tusks and meat. And he’ll get an even higher price if the body parts are bought for the more sinister, bad muthi, the dark side of traditional medicine.

  Muthi means both tree and medicine in Zulu, and involves plant-based remedies used for traditional African healing. English-speaking South Africans often write it without the h – muti – because this is how it is pronounced.

  As with many ancient cultures, there can be good and bad applications of traditional healing methods. Genuine herbal medicines are administered by experienced and wise healers, while less-than-honest witch doctors use a type of black magic to exploit superstition and ignorance.

  Muthi is more common in rural areas, but there are plenty of urbanites who would never admit to believing it works yet wouldn’t dare write it off completely, just in case it does.

  Historically, only inyangas used these herbal remedies, whilst sangomas tended to throw bones and consult with the ancestors, but times have changed, roles have blurred and nowadays both types of traditional healer regularly use both methods, and the word sangoma has become the most common way to describe them.

  You don’t wake up and decide to be a sangoma. It’s a calling, usually involving your ancestors and an older, experienced sangoma. In rural Zululand, the ancestors play an important role in mind, body and soul matters, and it is the sangom
a who is the intermediary between the living and the dead. Sangomas true to their calling are deeply spiritual and would never use bad muthi. They know that this would risk the wrath of the ancestors.

  I love how traditional ways blend into life in South Africa today. The sangomas are legally recognized like other practitioners of alternative medicine, and the result is a rich tapestry of ancient wisdom and modern living.

  Years ago, I once asked a sangoma to help me solve a problem at the lodge.

  Soon after we opened, petty theft became a problem. Nothing serious, just very frustrating and annoying. I asked the sangoma to bless the lodge and to do what she could to stop the theft. My educated Zulu staff laughed at me but I waved away their scepticism and believed it would work. We live in deep rural Zululand and it made sense to me to ask for help in this way.

  The sangoma arrived at night, a regal yet humble Zulu woman in her late seventies. She was barefoot, dressed in traditional red and black finery, and she wore a magnificent beaded headpiece, framing dark eyes that looked deep into my soul and bathed me in kindness. I felt as if I had known her forever.

  She moved around the lodge, going from room to room, softly chanting mysterious words of prayer, a gentle meditation to the universal forces of good. When she completed her rounds, I asked her to bless my own home too.

  ‘Of course,’ she smiled, as if she had known I would ask.

  Before she left, the same sceptics who had teased me asked her to bless their rooms too! Her presence lingered for a long time afterwards, leaving an air of such peace wherever she had passed.

  Best of all, our petty theft problems came to an end the same day.

  Unfortunately, for every honest and well-meaning sangoma, there’s a charlatan out there who doesn’t care what his potions are used for, and there are people prepared to dole out enormous amounts of money for his services. The power of this malevolent muthi can be so persuasive that those who believe they’ve received a death curse will actually die.