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

by Françoise Malby-Anthony

  * * *

  Poaching doesn’t stop with us. It’s bigger than us. As long as there’s a market for horn and ivory, people will slaughter rhinos and elephants. Killing elephants for their ivory isn’t as big a threat here as elsewhere in Africa, but it’s coming.

  I don’t believe in the clichéd platitude that everything happens for a reason but I believe with all my heart that, when tragedy hits, we have to find a way to give it reason. To do our best to let good come out of it.

  And for me that meant keeping the orphanage doors wide open and running it with new people who would be part of our Thula Thula team.

  My way of coping with grief is to fix things and find solutions. Top of the list was protecting our animals. The money Megan raised was a godsend and every last cent went into installing state-of-the-art security aimed at preventing poachers from getting anywhere near the building again.

  The orphanage perimeter fence was repaired and connected to a high-tech alarm unit. Motion detector beams now pick up the slightest movement. There are infrared night-vision cameras throughout the reserve that track activity and feed information into a cloud-based portal. If a poacher disables a camera, an alarm goes off both on-site and in an external control room. Television screens with surveillance feeds were moved from the orphanage to the off-site control room.

  The harsh reality is that making Thula Thula harder for poachers to break into solves very little. The poachers will simply go to another reserve. How can we fight organized syndicates with more money than we’ll ever have?

  We stopped using radios to report on the whereabouts of our animals. The danger of interception was too high. Now we use only secure mobile phones. Thabo and Ntombi wear tracking collars and are never without an armed guard. Staff wear mobile panic buttons and know what to do, who to phone, how to react. We can never know what to expect but one thing is sure: we will never be caught off guard again.

  It felt so good to prepare the orphanage for a new beginning. It didn’t mean I wasn’t hurting inside; it meant I wasn’t going to let pain and trauma crush me.

  It’s how I survived Lawrence’s death and the attack on Thabo.

  Fighting for what I believe in is what gets me out of bed each morning.

  26

  Keeping the dream alive

  The tragedy had happened so close to my home, to innocent people and animals who should be safe in our world, that it was a constant battle to stop fear and despair from overwhelming me. But I never want to lose the joy of seeing what’s good in life and in people, and despite the horrific things I know humans can do, I’m still an eternal optimist who believes there are more good people than bad in the world. There will always be those who let you down or obstacles that seem insurmountable, but if you keep your goal in front of you then you’ll know what to do.

  Giving up isn’t in my genes, even if it means starting from scratch.

  Besides, I wasn’t alone in this, and I was so moved by the big-heartedness of people who were as determined as I was to keep our doors open. One of them was Megan, who I phoned on the off-chance that I could persuade her to return to South Africa.

  ‘How do you feel about coming back to help us keep the orphanage going?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I will! And I’ll stay as long as it takes for you to find a permanent team,’ she promised, then immediately called her best friend.

  ‘Vicky, bad things have happened there but it’s a facility that has the opportunity to be amazing. Let’s see what we can do to get it on its feet again.’

  The two of them arrived a week later, rolled up their sleeves and got stuck into giving the facility a complete top-to-bottom overhaul – cleaning, fixing, painting. With youthful grit and huge smiles, they breathed life and energy into the place, and one of the first things they did was put up a big Welcome! sign. Their enthusiasm made everyone even more motivated to find a fresh vision for the orphanage.

  Within days, Bruce joined the team. He was a stocky boxer found injured and alone in the busy streets of Empangeni and from the moment he was shown his new home, we all fell in love with him. He took his jobs of playmate to Gypsy and Gin, and bodyguard to Megan and Vicky very seriously, but that never got in the way of his afternoon snooze on the sofa.

  I continued to have meetings with the amakhosi to slowly build their trust again and to set joint goals for the future. What the previous management team had never taken seriously was the fact that the orphanage was on tribal land – part of the original expansion that Lawrence and the five amakhosi had established together – and it was only thanks to these visionary community leaders that our conservation dream for an animal care centre had been possible in the first place. Their continued blessing and commitment is very important to me and they were as pleased as I was that we would be running it with an in-house Thula Thula team. Discussions have gone so well that we have even started talking about expanding the reserve with more of their land.

  Our other crucial partner was Four Paws. Heli Dungler had seen for himself how destructive the human politics had become, but he too stayed committed to keeping the orphanage open, and to my great relief he didn’t hesitate to renew his foundation’s financial collaboration.

  ‘We’ve been thinking about creating a sanctuary for ex-circus elephants,’ he said to me recently. ‘Maybe this is the moment to explore taking the orphanage to a different level.’

  ‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ I replied quietly. ‘It fits perfectly with what we do at Thula Thula.’

  ‘It’s probably only feasible in a year or two’s time, so in the meantime we’ll help you keep the facility open for other wildlife needing help.’

  By mid July 2017, a new joint venture agreement was signed with Four Paws and the local amakhosi. We were officially partners again and thrilled to be up and running. Since we were turning a page and broadening our focus, we changed the name to Thula Thula Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre.

  Little Lucy, a baby duiker, was our first rescue. She was saved by vigilant policemen from poachers who were trying to sell her either as a pet, or worse, for her meat. Duikers are small antelope that get their name from the Afrikaans word duik – dive – because of the way they duck under cover of a bush when threatened. She was a beautiful creature, with caramel-grey colouring, a narrow pointed snout, long pixie-like ears and dark soulful eyes. She was dehydrated and so malnourished that she weighed only 2.7 kilograms.

  By now, word was out that we were interviewing for a permanent team and I was receiving CVs on a daily basis. It was thrilling that, despite what had happened, there were so many young men and women who wanted to work with us.

  Kayleigh and Yolandie took over the reins from Megan in October and we haven’t looked back. Kayleigh is tall and graceful with gentle confidence, and with degrees in zoology and wildlife management under her belt. Yolandie is a feisty young woman with a big laugh who brought with her a decade of wild animal care.

  ‘I always thought I would be a vet, but as I got older, I realized that I would rather protect animals than cure them,’ she said at her interview.

  One morning soon after they joined, I took Kathy, a local journalist I knew well, up to the rehab centre so she could write an article about its rebirth. I called Gypsy to join us. She skipped out of my general manager’s office, followed closely by Gin, both looking smug.

  ‘Has Lynda been feeding you biscuits again?’ I grimaced.

  Lynda walked outside, palms in the air. Sorry, she mouthed, not looking the least bit sorry. I don’t usually take Gin with me because he’s not my most well-mannered dog, but he gave me his best you-can’t-take-Gypsy-and-not-me pout and I gave in. Gypsy hopped into the back footwell and Gin tried to follow but couldn’t get up, balancing his paws on the edge of the car and pleading for help with desperate eyes.

  ‘You weigh a ton,’ I groaned. ‘When we get to the orphanage, I’m going to weigh you on the new scale!’

  I slid behind the wheel and, before driving off,
called Siya via speaker phone.

  ‘Morning, Siya. Where are the elephants today?’

  ‘Don’t worry. They’re nowhere near you. They’re at Mine Dam and it looks like they’re settled in for the day.’

  ‘That’s good news, thanks. Chat to you later.’

  ‘That sounds as if you don’t want to bump into them,’ Kathy said in surprise.

  I smiled but didn’t reply.

  ‘You’re not scared of them, are you?’ she teased.

  I mulled over the question, caught off guard, not sure how to answer.

  ‘I love them but I also have a lot of respect for them.’

  ‘That sounds like a roundabout way of saying you are scared of them,’ she remarked lightly. ‘That must be tough. Are you also scared of the babies?’

  ‘Never! I love the little ones. I love the big ones too, but when I’m in a car, I just feel exposed and vulnerable. It goes back to a bad experience with Frankie a long time ago.’

  ‘How bad? Did she hurt you?’

  ‘She didn’t, but she was terrifying and I always worry that she remembers what happened and is still angry with me. Maybe it’s a lack of trust in myself, because I know she’s a completely different elephant now to the one we ran into on the quad bike…’ I gave a confused shrug. ‘To be honest, I don’t really know why I’m like this.’

  ‘Have any of the elephants ever hurt anyone at Thula Thula?’

  A memory of Mnumzane charging and flipping Lawrence’s Land Rover in a pain-induced rage flashed before me. Lawrence and two visitors had been trapped in the vehicle while Mnumzane repeatedly battered their 4×4. I had taken Lawrence’s panicked radio call.

  Mnumzane’s attacking us. He rolled the Landy and we’re stuck inside. Get help.

  I can still feel the airless cramping of my chest. Lawrence had a healthy and realistic respect for our elephants so when I heard the terror in his voice, I knew he was in catastrophic danger.

  ‘We had a bull that tried to kill Lawrence and two guests,’ I murmured. ‘He was so out of control that the rangers couldn’t get close to the Land Rover to get the men out.’

  ‘Oh my God, that sounds horrific. How on earth did they get away?’

  ‘Nana and Frankie saved them. They arrived out of nowhere and managed to jostle the bull away from the vehicle long enough for the rangers to pull them out. It was especially shocking because Mnumzane was Lawrence’s blue-eyed boy and I kept thinking that if he could do that to Lawrence then what could he do to me?’ I shook my head and frowned at her. ‘I’d forgotten about all of this.’

  ‘It must have been very traumatic,’ she said quietly.

  ‘It’s strange, because I always assumed I became skittish around them after the drama with Frankie, but actually, now that I think about it, it wasn’t then, because for years afterwards, Lawrence and I continued to go on bush drives together. The thing with Frankie gave us both a huge wake-up call, but we needed it. We didn’t know anything about elephants and were so damn naive. We should never have gone driving around on that noisy bike, but I understood that afterwards and it made me realize how powerful and wild they were. It didn’t make me scared of them though.’

  I was amazed by my realization. It just goes to show how unhealthy it is to bury fear. Until the orphanage tragedy, I had never stopped to question my bewildering anxiety about being too close to the animals I loved so deeply. Instead, I pushed it away and blamed it on Frankie. Make no mistake, she used to have a short temper, which no doubt made it easy for me to jump to the conclusion that she was angry with me.

  I don’t know if the trauma of the attack had brought my vulnerabilities to the surface, but for the first time since Lawrence died, I felt ready to confront it all.

  ‘May I ask you something?’ Kathy said. ‘What is it you’re scared they’ll do to you?’

  As she finished her question, gooseflesh prickled my skin. I was scared of their unpredictability. Scared they might hurt me like Mnumzane had almost killed Lawrence. It wasn’t Frankie that had set me off, it was Mnumzane. He had gone berserk, and that terrifying switch from affectionate elephant to killing machine had triggered my fear.

  It was such a powerful and unexpected insight, it took my breath away.

  ‘Did you and Lawrence ever find out why he turned aggressive?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘He had an infected tusk that we didn’t know about. It caused excruciating pain and he eventually became so dangerous that Lawrence had to put him down. It broke his heart.’

  ‘This may be a stupid question, but if Mnumzane isn’t around any more then why are you still afraid?’

  I smiled at her, felt the crushing burden lift.

  ‘There’s no reason at all. The herd is happy and they trust me. I was on a game drive with Clément a while back and they were so peaceful. In fact, Frankie didn’t even look at me.’

  I fell silent, lost in thought, trying to make sense of memories that were surfacing faster than I could keep track of. Kathy was right, my fear didn’t make sense. Lawrence and I had spent hours out in the bush in his clapped-out old Land Rover after the run-in with Frankie, and I hadn’t been the slightest bit jumpy. Not even when we had sundowners out in the middle of nowhere. I had loved being in the wild with nothing more than bush and wildlife around us.

  After Mnumzane’s attack, Lawrence gave orders that no one was allowed to go anywhere on the reserve without being escorted in a proper off-road vehicle by a ranger, and that the rangers had to know at all times where Mnumzane was. It added such tension to our everyday lives.

  From then on, I never again went on a game drive without Lawrence, so I suppose it’s no surprise really that I pretty much stopped going into the bush after he died.

  All this came together in the space of that one drive. I was astonished that I had never joined the dots before and I will always be grateful that Kathy’s insightful questions helped me get to the bottom of something I had been running away from for years.

  I stopped outside the orphanage gates and waited for the guard to let us in, then drove through with Gypsy and Gin going mad with excitement in the back. I let them out and they ran around in boisterous circles before racing off to say hello to Kayleigh, Yolandie, and Bruce the boxer.

  ‘Let’s test the scale on them,’ I said to Kayleigh.

  The scale was a recent donation – a crucial piece of equipment for checking the weight of new arrivals and monitoring their development over time. Bruce and Gypsy both bounced onto it at the same time but neither stood still long enough to get a reading. Kayleigh managed to persuade Bruce off, then she read out Gypsy’s weight.

  ‘Four and a half kilos.’

  ‘Your turn, Gin,’ I said.

  He looked at me uncertainly but I nudged him on.

  ‘Fifteen kilos! That’s three times Gypsy’s weight. Gin! You’ve turned into a fatty bum-bum,’ I laughed.

  He stepped off the scale, tail between his legs, and slunk into the corner of the room, looking at me with such reproach. I hugged him to me.

  ‘Don’t worry. We’re going to get you back to the slinky Jack Russell you used to be,’ I promised, patting his chunky rump.

  Fifteen kilos isn’t healthy for a smallish dog like him, so he went on a diet that day. What a miserable time we had. Cutting down his food was as hard for me as it was for him. A couple of weeks later, I went back to the rehab centre and took Gin with me in the hope that he had lost enough weight to stop the torture of his diet.

  He refused to get on the scale.

  Nothing, not even a treat, would persuade him to get on. He knew something had gone wrong the last time and wouldn’t even go into the room. He didn’t know he was fat but he knew that scale had caused him problems. I relented and didn’t weigh him. It didn’t seem fair to make him get on the scale when I didn’t want to either!

  Animals are sensitive like that. He knew we were teasing him and he was hurt. People are the same. We all have a vulnerable side that reacts when hurt or
frightened, but we have the choice to do something about it.

  I decided there and then to confront my fear. No more excuses, no more procrastination. My life’s work had been to keep the herd safe and to keep them together, so it was high time for me to jump back on the bicycle.

  A nerve-wracking issue for me was that I knew animals sensed fear and I had always been petrified that it would trigger some kind of furious reaction in them – but what if it didn’t? What if they felt my fear and understood? What if it didn’t make them angry with me but more gentle?

  I loved them and they knew I did, despite how tense I was when they came too close. My mind was made up. I would take my fear to them and put my trust in their love.

  Phone in hand, I went onto the veranda for some time on my own. It was September and the bush had erupted in breathtaking spring flowers. Slender blades of grass were pushing through the ground and the trees were a kaleidoscope of buds in every shade of green. Somewhere out there, munching on the new leaves, were my beloved elephants.

  I tapped out the number of one of my most trusted rangers.

  ‘Hi, Françoise,’ he answered.

  ‘Morning, Andrew. Please could you arrange a game drive for me?’

  27

  Frankie vs Frankie

  11 a.m., Monday morning, 25 September 2017. The first game drive in years that I was actually looking forward to. But I was still a bundle of nerves! For all my new insights, I didn’t sleep easy and tossed and turned the whole night. Just because you understand what makes you scared, doesn’t make it go away. There’s no fairy dust to help you get over fear; it takes good old-fashioned courage.

  The sky was milky blue with a crisp bite in the air. Winter was refusing to loosen its grip over Zululand. The plan was to leave from the lodge, so I arrived early to squeeze in a quick meeting with Mabona about a wedding taking place that weekend.