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

by Françoise Malby-Anthony

  The men shifted in their seats and began to talk amongst themselves. I didn’t know what they were saying, but they weren’t happy. Some of the men had been with us for a long time and I tried to put their minds at rest that they weren’t being fired.

  ‘As long as you meet their standards, Security-4U will employ you.’

  ‘We were doing fine without them,’ someone shouted from the back.

  ‘We can do better,’ I said quietly. ‘We’re losing too many animals to poaching and it’s got to stop but I can’t do it on my own, especially not now that your boss has left.’

  ‘You be our boss,’ a man in the second row snapped.

  ‘I can’t. I know about marketing, hospitality and finance, but I know nothing about security and I need help. Look at me, I can’t even speak Zulu to you.’ I nodded at Vusi. ‘And I can’t ask Vusi to be there every time we want to talk to each other. That’s not the right way to work together. There are twenty-three of you, and many of you I’m only meeting for the first time today. It’s better for you to have a boss who knows you, who you can talk to in your own language and who can give you the assistance and training you need.’

  ‘Are our jobs guaranteed?’ asked Njabulo, one of the few guards I knew.

  ‘Mr Erasmus and Mr Mathabela have assured me that they will take on everyone who meets their criteria.’

  There was a lot of head-shaking and muttering. Our guards must have realized from looking at Larry and Musa’s men that their days of not being accountable to anyone were over. I didn’t give up and kept trying to persuade them that it was for the best.

  ‘We’re a game reserve that’s committed to conservation, and making our security more professional will help keep our animals safe. Please think about everything I’ve said and let’s meet again in a few days to talk about any questions you might have,’ I said.

  The second meeting was just as fraught with anger and tension. No matter what I said, they didn’t see the need for change. The move to Security-4U was scheduled for the end of August so I called one last meeting with the guards to see if I could convince them that the changes would be good for everyone, them included.

  We met in front of the workshop, with Vusi helping again as translator. I had spent half the night preparing what I wanted to say and had a letter for them which outlined what was going to happen, confirming in writing that they could all apply for employment at Security-4U. Naively, I wasn’t as anxious this time, still believing that they would see the value of what I was doing. Larry and his men stood behind me, as they had done at each meeting. I went over what I had said in the previous meetings.

  ‘Please remember, the idea is that you will now work for Security-4U,’ I emphasized. ‘When we’re done today, Mr Erasmus will make arrangements to start the interview process as quickly as possible.’

  I stared at the stony faces in front of me, feeling helpless and frustrated that they weren’t taking me seriously. They simply weren’t interested in listening to a blonde Frenchwoman who in their opinion was just trying to get rid of them.

  My dogs are always with me wherever I go, and they were running around as they usually do. Gypsy trotted along the front row of men and stopped to sniff a pair of boots. The man kicked her. She yelped in pain and scuttled behind me, tail between her legs. Dumbstruck, I stared at the man. He glared back at me, rage in his eyes. Larry and Musa’s men slid their hands to their guns and closed in around me. The mood tightened. Hostility crackled. Without Larry and his men behind me, I don’t know what would have happened. Not everyone was against me but we were a hair’s breadth away from things turning ugly. I swallowed hard.

  ‘You are employed to keep animals safe and this is how you treat a defenceless dog?’ My voice was firm but I was a wreck inside. ‘You have shown your true colours and there is no place at Thula Thula for you. I’m now handing the rest of you over to your new boss.’

  It wasn’t only because Gypsy had been kicked that I was so devastated. It was the violence I had seen in the man’s eyes. Nobody had ever looked at me with such hatred. I knew not all of the men were like him, because there had been a few very shocked expressions, but it was a turning point for me. The best thing I could do for Thula Thula was to leave anything to do with security to the professionals.

  The takeover kicked into place immediately.

  Many of the men applied for jobs with Security-4U and each one had to follow a stringent interview process that started with fingerprinting, polygraph tests, and checking their qualifications, rifle-handling skills and police records.

  That’s how I learned to my horror that seven of my guards had criminal records and weren’t even allowed to handle weapons.

  The bombshells didn’t stop, because on digging deeper into our weapon permits, I discovered that they were either wrong or out of date, so not only was it illegal for some of the guards to use weapons, but many of the weapons themselves weren’t legal. It was a nightmare. Especially for me, because I hated anything to do with guns.

  In the early days of Thula Thula, Lawrence had been concerned about security and decided I needed to own a gun.

  ‘Lolo, I don’t want one,’ I protested.

  ‘Crime’s on the rise and we live in the middle of nowhere. You need one,’ he insisted.

  I reluctantly went with a friend for shooting lessons in order to obtain a gun licence. I think the man teaching us was more frightened than we were, particularly the day we had to handle a massive bazooka-type weapon that spits out hundreds of bullets a minute.

  ‘We don’t want to shoot guns like this,’ I objected, barely able to lift the darn thing.

  ‘If you want your licence, you have to.’

  I don’t know how we managed but we were awarded our gun licences and I became officially armed and dangerous – and not happy about it at all.

  The gun Lawrence had given me was a little thing that was supposed to fit in my handbag. It was a nuisance. I would grab it instead of my mobile phone and it felt like it weighed a ton. I forgot everything I learned at the shooting range and couldn’t even remember how to load or unload it, but Lawrence loved it and he often popped it in his pocket when he was going out into the game reserve. I don’t know what he thought he could shoot with such a small gun but he took it with him anyway. When he didn’t have it on him, he badgered me to carry it around with me.

  ‘This is ridiculous. No one wants to harm me,’ I said.

  ‘You never know,’ he warned.

  ‘Nonsense,’ I sniffed. ‘Keep it. I don’t want it.’

  One morning, we headed off to Durban airport to catch a flight to attend an event in Johannesburg, where we were guests of honour and Lawrence was going to be presented with an award for rescuing the animals in Baghdad Zoo. I’m now a bush girl through and through but I still love the occasional city fling and I was dressed up like a Christmas tree for my outing to South Africa’s glittering capital.

  Lawrence’s hand luggage went through the X-ray tunnel and because I had put it onto the conveyor belt, the security man asked me to open it.

  Inside was my gun. I turned to Lawrence in horror. His eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘Oh, shit. I forgot to lock it up in the safe before we left.’

  ‘I need backup! Now!’ shouted the security man into his radio.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ I laughed, reaching for the gun.

  ‘Step away from the bag!’ he yelled.

  Lawrence yanked me away. ‘Do as he says.’

  ‘What were you thinking?’ I muttered to him.

  Two armed airport policemen ran up to us and escorted us away.

  ‘We can’t miss our flight,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Your flight’s the least of your worries today, lady.’

  I bit back a retort and smiled calmly.

  ‘Whose bag is this?’ he barked.

  ‘Mine,’ replied Lawrence. ‘But it’s an honest mistake. I didn’t mean to bring the gun with me.’

&n
bsp; The policeman slid a form across the table to him. ‘Fill it in.’

  I looked at my watch.

  ‘Would it be at all possible to get us onto another flight?’ I asked.

  The men ignored me.

  ‘Gun licence?’ they asked Lawrence.

  ‘I don’t have it. It’s not mine. It’s hers,’ he replied.

  The policemen turned to me as if noticing me for the first time.

  ‘It’s his gun. I never use it,’ I smiled.

  They turned back to Lawrence. ‘Whose name is it in?’

  He paused. I could see he was tempted to lie, but by now I understood we were in trouble and I didn’t want to make it worse when we had a flight to catch and a party to go to. We had to get the red tape over as quickly as possible.

  ‘It’s mine but he uses it. I really don’t like guns,’ I said.

  ‘Where is the licence?’

  ‘At home. We didn’t mean to bring the gun.’

  One of them stood up. ‘We’re booking you right now.’

  ‘Can we call a lawyer for advice?’ Lawrence asked politely.

  ‘Sure,’ they shrugged.

  Lawrence called a lawyer, a criminal lawyer. I had gone from guest of honour to detainee in a flash. The lawyer advised me not to say anything when I was interrogated.

  That didn’t go down well at all.

  ‘No comment,’ I repeated.

  They looked at me, nodded at each other, then one of them flicked his hand at Lawrence.

  ‘You can catch your flight.’ He jabbed a finger at me. ‘We’ll keep her.’

  ‘I think I’ll stay,’ he said quickly.

  They put me into a police van and locked me in a holding cell, taking away my scarf in case of who knows what. In that filthy little cell, I would have needed a lot of imagination to find a way to kill myself. No hooks on the ceiling, not even bars on the window.

  ‘Please could I have a glass of water?’ I asked.

  They laughed at me. It was Friday and they didn’t give a damn. I started to feel really frightened. The closer we got to the end of the day, the higher the risk of being locked up for the night. Three long hours later, my lawyer arrived, a huge bald guy who looked more like a mafioso than my legal saviour.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ he advised. ‘Let me do the talking.’

  That hasn’t exactly worked well for me so far, I felt like saying.

  He came back after ten minutes with the news that I would be spending the weekend in jail. I panicked, cried, begged the police to let me go. Jail was not how I envisaged spending my weekend.

  The lawyer left and Lawrence did his best to persuade the station commander to free me. I pleaded with him too, apologizing again and again. And I was sorry. So was Lawrence. Very sorry.

  The police must have taken pity on me, or maybe they understood what had happened and took pity on Lawrence, because once the paperwork was done, they let me go. Just like that. After all their bullying and scare tactics, they freed me without another word.

  We even managed to get onto the last flight to Johannesburg that night.

  A few weeks later I appeared in court, accused of aviation terrorism and failing to safeguard a firearm with ammunition. By then, we had a new lawyer and I got off with a warning from the judge, and a promise from Lawrence never to bring up the subject of guns again.

  After what had happened at the airport all those years ago, then being faced with such hostility from my guards and discovering that most of our firearms were illegal, I never wanted anything to do with guns or security.

  For the first time since Lawrence died, I began to feel that all the fires had been put out and I could focus on our herd, Thabo and Ntombi, the orphanage and growing Lawrence’s legacy.

  23

  The hippo who hated water

  When Lawrence and I first dreamed of building a wildlife rehabilitation sanctuary at Thula Thula, it was because poaching was a growing problem and we wanted to help, but nothing prepared me for the harrowing arrival of orphan after orphan.

  Charlie was a sick little hippo calf found on his own close to Mzingazi Lake near Richards Bay, about fifty kilometres from Thula Thula.

  ‘I was taking a shortcut along the footpath next to the lake to go to the clinic at Mandlazini when I heard something running at me in the reeds,’ said Ngema, a local man. ‘I thought I was being robbed and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a baby hippo.’

  Everyone knows that you don’t come between a hippo mother and her baby, so Ngema frantically looked around for an escape route and was about to bolt up the closest tree when the little hippo ran up to him and rubbed his nose against his legs.

  ‘Maybe he thought I was his mum, because he followed me like a little duck. How could I leave him? I didn’t have a clue what to do but I had the emergency phone number for the area’s wildlife guy on my mobile and I knew he would.’

  ‘I was there within half an hour, and thank goodness he got hold of me because the calf wouldn’t have survived the night,’ reported Frans, the wildlife officer.

  The men searched everywhere for the mother, constantly on the alert that she might come charging out of the bush at them, but there wasn’t a hippo nor hippo tracks in sight. They broadened their search to the other side of the lake. They contacted neighbouring properties. Nobody had seen her. The sun was sinking on the Zululand horizon and the men debated what to do about the calf.

  ‘The lake is a hotspot for meat poaching,’ Frans said. ‘No way were we going to leave that little thing on his own. We parked our 4×4 close by to keep an eye on him but believe me, we were bloody terrified. If his mother had seen us near him, she would have rammed us and pushed the whole damn car into the lake. But heck, man, by then the baby had adopted us and we were pretty much responsible for him.’

  ‘And you were a bit in love with him,’ grinned Ngema.

  A team of rangers arrived to take over the vigil but Frans and Ngema were as reluctant to leave the hippo calf as he was to let them leave, staying glued to their legs and squealing in panic if he couldn’t see them. The rangers insisted they let them take over.

  ‘We’re armed, you guys aren’t. It’s safer if we stay with him.’

  A southwester howled throughout the night and the calf sheltered between the wheels of the 4×4. It was so bitterly cold that the rangers worried the calf wouldn’t make it. At first light, they radioed through their decision.

  ‘No sign of the mother. We’re bringing him in. Over and out.’

  His mother was never found, despite an extensive hunt for her.

  ‘Hippo mums hide their newborns in the beginning to protect them from being killed by territorial males, but they always stay nearby and are excellent mothers,’ frowned Frans. ‘In all my years in conservation, I’ve never come across an abandoned hippo calf before.’

  A few hours later, Charlie arrived at the orphanage. He hated being separated from his rescuers and tried to make himself invisible to us by turning his back and pointing his bum in our direction. I can’t see you, so you can’t see me.

  A locum vet from Richards Bay checked him over and my heart sank when I heard the diagnosis. Patent urachus. I didn’t know what it was, only that it sounded like a death sentence. He was so round and tubby, it was hard to believe how sick he was.

  ‘There’s urine dribbling from his navel and he might need surgery, but if he’s lucky, it might just be a developmental issue that he’ll grow out of.’

  I took it as good news. When animals are that small and vulnerable, you hold on to every scrap of hope.

  ‘His biggest risk is navel infection. The area is directly connected to his bloodstream so any infection will spread quickly and he’ll be too weak to fight it off,’ explained the vet. ‘Let’s hope antibiotics do their bit and nature does the rest.’

  Charlie was fed a special formula that came as close as possible to what he would get from his mother – a mixture of full-cream milk, egg yolks, minerals and vitamins
.

  The first time he was given his bottle, he licked the teat but couldn’t figure out how to get to the rest of the milk and squeaked in frustration. He half nibbled, half slurped the teat but didn’t realize he should suck. His carer slipped on a sterile glove, covered her fingers with milk and inserted them in his mouth. He sucked hungrily. She gave an excited thumbs up.

  ‘His sucking reflex is weak, but it’s a start,’ she grinned.

  ‘Keep trying,’ urged the vet.

  She drenched her fingers with milk again, positioned the teat between them and inserted this little bundle into Charlie’s mouth. It took over an hour of painstaking struggle, but he finished his first bottle. Three hours later, he wouldn’t latch onto the second bottle. Axel was on shift and patiently sat with him, dribbling warm milk into his mouth until he worked out that he had to curl his tongue around the teat and close his lips and suck. He grunted in pleasure and drank the bottle dry.

  Charlie was easily frightened and very skittish but eventually it sank in that there were cuddles and milk on tap and he began to trust his new home.

  Two weeks of food, love and meds later, and Charlie was on the mend. His navel closed up without surgery and soon he was eating almost as much as Ithuba and quickly became the orphanage’s resident clown.

  He was round and smooth and looked like a portly Michelin baby. It was astonishing how fast he could pump his stumpy legs, darting about with his jaws stretched wide, looking for something or someone to chomp. He could open his mouth twice as wide as his head and he used it to explore his terrain, his room, his toys and his humans. His gummy bites didn’t hurt, but once his teeth pushed through, his mouth would be his weapon. It’s not for nothing that hippos are Africa’s most dangerous creature and responsible for more human deaths than any other large animal. Looking at our gawky little hippo, it was hard to imagine he would ever be that lethal.

  The carers were just catching their breath when an alert reached us about a newborn white rhino that was too small to feed. Her mother hadn’t been able to provide enough nutrition in utero and the little thing was so tiny at birth that she couldn’t reach her mother’s teats. She would starve if we didn’t intervene.