Bush Vet

by Clay Wilson

  There was absolutely no way that any of those tourist vehicles would have been able to exit the park legally, and I am a hundred per cent sure that they, too, used the unofficial exit near the safari lodge, or some other back track to get out of the park. However, I was spotted, and I was once more berated for my bad behaviour.

  I wrote a report of the incident, but as I am not someone who blames my troubles on others I deliberately avoided using the name of the high-profile vip who had been so keen to stay out a little longer to watch the lion devour the buffalo. I did not want to embarrass him and, besides, I could have forced the issue and made the call to leave earlier.

  In my report to Seema I sincerely apologised. Once more, there was no fine or charge laid, and no official sanction. This was something that, while illegal, was common practice at the time. Part of me thought that I should have been cut a little slack because of the countless hours and tens of thousands of pula I had expended in treating the National Parks’ wildlife. But rules are rules.

  Whatever the allegations, and whatever minor mistakes I had made, if these were the reasons behind my fall from grace then I expected to be told so. At least then I would be able to mount some kind of defence.

  There was nothing I could do to try to appeal my case in the sleepy tourist town of Kasane, so I decided to fly to Gaborone to see if I could meet with the head of the ministry who had dismissed me from my official duties, and to find out why my immigration papers were being cancelled.

  I was being threatened with deportation so I had nothing to lose. I booked a flight and went to Gaborone the next day. As is my nature, I decided to go straight to the top. I had never heard anything back from the president’s office or the delegation he had sent to Kasane to discuss human–wildlife conflict and poaching, and I decided that I would find out why.

  If what I had been saying about the problems in Kasane and Chobe National Park had played a part in my banning, then I wanted to hear those words from the mouth of someone senior. There was no one more senior than Ian Khama, president of the Republic of Botswana.

  As well as replying to the delegation in writing, on many occasions I wrote to the president and his underlings. While a meeting was scheduled between us, for November 2010, it was then cancelled because he had to travel to Tanzania on state business. I never received a formal reply to the suggestions I made to curb poaching and human–animal conflict in Kasane and Chobe National Park. His private secretary suggested I follow up my suggestions, such as using helicopters and UAVS to fight poaching, with National Parks, and while I did write to the head of the department again, nothing happened. It was like running in circles.

  I decided to try to deliver my letter by hand to the president and, while I was there, find out from him why I was being kicked out of the country and banned from doing my job. Now I was in Gaborone and made my way to the office of the president. It was a fairly new office building and in the foyer was a policeman and two or three security people monitoring things from behind a bulletproof glassed booth. Unusually for me, I had dressed for the occasion, and sported proper trousers, a jacket and a tie instead of my khaki shirt and shorts.

  I passed through the security check and scanner and went to a reception counter where I told the woman at the desk I was here to see the president’s private secretary. She told me to take the lift to the third floor and look for office number 301. I was on a roll. I don’t know whether it was nerves or apprehension or excitement that I might actually meet the president, but when the lift doors opened I realised I had forgotten the office number that I had just been told.

  Walking along a corridor I peeked into a couple of offices and saw women tapping away at keyboards. I looked at the numbers on the doors, but couldn’t for the life of me remember which one I was looking for. What I did know, from our earlier correspondence, was that the president’s private secretary was a man.

  At the end of the corridor was a closed door with a number; I don’t remember what it was now, but at the time I thought it sounded like the one I had been told to ask for. I walked towards the door and as I reached the end of the corridor I saw that before the door was a small foyer area. I walked through the anteroom, knocked once and opened the door a little.

  When I looked inside I saw a long boardroom-type table with eight or nine people sitting around it and there, at the head, with his neatly trimmed moustache and curly hair, was Ian Khama, the president of the Republic of Botswana!

  He glanced up at me, but before I could apologise for interrupting him – I clearly had the right guy, but the wrong office – I heard a commotion behind me and felt hands grabbing me. The next instant I was on the ground, eating carpet, and someone’s knee was on my back as the door was slammed shut in front of me. My hands were wrenched up behind me.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled into the fibres of the floor covering, “I was looking for the office of the secretary to the president.”

  I had been crash-tackled by the president’s bodyguards, four guys who had been sitting in comfortable chairs in the foyer when I had ambled up to what was obviously the president’s office. The goons had been off to each side, sitting against the wall closest to the lift so they could watch the president’s door. I guessed they had been slacking off, and one of them really should have been watching the corridor, but they made up for their error by putting me down on the ground before I even knew what had hit me.

  They must have decided I was harmless, because they helped me up and as I brushed myself off they gave me directions to the secretary’s office. Shaken, and a little annoyed that I had almost got to meet Khama face to face, even though he would never have taken the meeting, I went to the office and found a woman who was, I guess, the assistant to the personal private secretary. I gave her my letter and she said she would make sure she put it on the private secretary’s desk.

  I didn’t have high hopes that the letter would reach the president, so next I went to the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism and managed to meet with the permanent secretary, the man who was second to Mr Segokgo, who had signed the letter revoking my honorary game wardenship. I handed him a package containing copies of all my regular official reports to National Parks, which detailed all the work I had done in and around Chobe over the past five years.

  He took all the stuff and said he would read it, but I sensed he was just being polite. He was unable, or unwilling, to tell me why I was being snubbed by the government and sent packing.

  Deflated, but not deterred, I caught up with a friend of mine, Les, who lived in Gaborone and who had offered to put me up while I was in the capital. Les had arranged for me to meet with a group of guys he knew to discuss my plight. They were older guys, five of them, who had all held senior positions in the government or bureaucracy. These were educated men, but in contrast to most other people I’d met in Botswana they were critical of the current government.

  The five men all recommended I engage one particular lawyer, Kgomotso Mmopi, who apparently had taken on the government in the past and was not afraid to do so again. I thanked them all for their insight and advice, and called to make an appointment with the lawyer.

  A secretary escorted me into Kgomotso’s office, which was nothing fancy. I noticed he didn’t have a computer on his desk and he said his secretary did all his typing. He was a little younger than me, about 48 perhaps, and immaculately dressed in a suit that did not disguise his short, heavy-set build. He reminded me of a well-groomed bulldog – just the sort of guy I needed.

  Kgomotso smoked a cigarette as he listened to my tale. I gave him my volume of reports to National Parks and as he skimmed through it I told him my various theories about who might want me gone, and why. He paused to study some of the pictures in the report, of me treating elephants, lions, buffalos and all the other game most people see only from the comfort of a safari vehicle.

  He pushed back his chair and looked at me over the rim of his thick glasses. “And you did all this work for
free?”

  “Yes,” I said. I’d thought of it more as me following my calling, and while I was never paid or reimbursed for my expenses it didn’t stop me wanting to get back into the frontline of the war to protect Botswana’s wildlife.

  Kgomotso shook his head. “You were never paid by the government or thanked for any of this?”

  “No. Will you take my case?”

  I could see he was getting excited, even though, or perhaps because, he had to go up against the government. “Absolutely!”

  He was pumped up. He spent all the afternoon and into that night getting his secretary to type up affidavits explaining what I had done for Chobe National Park as a volunteer, and pointing out that no reason had been given for my work permit and visa being revoked. He exuded confidence to me, and seemed very competent.

  Two days went by as I cooled my heels at Les’s place waiting for word from my lawyer. When I next met with Kgomotso he said there were two or three judges we could go before in the court, but he had one in particular in mind who he wanted to wait for. He had prepared an appeal for me, fighting the order for me to leave the country, and on the day it was to be first presented to the court he advised me to stay at Les’s and not come to the courthouse. I trusted his judgement.

  Kgomotso was a happy man when he called me on his cellphone from the court. “Clay, the judge said, ‘This is a load of nonsense – how can they kick a person out of this country who is trying to help us?’”

  It was good news indeed. The judge ordered that I be given a 30-day renewable extension of my work permit and residence permit, pending resolution of the court case, during which, presumably, for the first time the government would be forced to state exactly why they were kicking me out. The judge would hear the arguments for and against me staying and I would at least be able to defend myself against whatever allegations had landed me in this mess.

  I went back to Kasane and, while I was happy to still be in Botswana, I was in limbo for the next three months. The judge’s order did not extend to me being reinstated as Chobe National Park’s voluntary vet, nor did it address the issue of my honorary wardenship being revoked. These were matters that would hopefully be resolved when I had my day in court, but for now there was nothing I could do other than the odd veterinary procedure on domestic animals.

  That didn’t stop the calls for help coming in, though. Almost every day someone in Parks would contact me asking for help; they weren’t all aware of what was going on and when an animal was in trouble or causing a potential threat, Doctor Clay was usually the go-to man. I had wanted it that way and I had even got PAC used to the notion that I should be contacted first before any animal was put down.

  As a result of me not being available for wildlife call-outs, Kasane became a shooting gallery once more. Two elephants were shot at Aupiti’s farm, the place where I’d had the stand-off with the farmer. I could hear the gunfire day and night and it tore me up inside knowing that at least some of those animals could have been treated and relocated if I were just allowed to do my job.

  There were two women who had just been assigned to the Problem Animal Control unit. They were green rangers, with very little experience. One of them had shot an elephant and I caught up with her and asked her why.

  “Because it flapped its ears at me,” she said. I couldn’t believe it. All elephants do that, and not just when they’re annoyed. They flap their ears at you because it’s their way of bluffing you to stay away from them, but any move towards them always results in them retreating very rapidly. They are basically just big babies and will avoid confrontation at all costs. This ranger, whose job it was to protect the community against problem animals and conserve wildlife, admitted to me that this was the first time she had actually seen an elephant!

  I was contacted by a guy at the SPCA who told me there was an elephant calf wandering alone around the Chobe Safari Lodge. Its tail had been chewed off by a lion or hyena and in the process of the attack it must have become separated from its herd. It was lost and panicking.

  I called Mogau and explained the problem to him, and he gave me permission to help out. It was a grey area as the elephant was not actually in the national park, and although it was still a wild animal, if I didn’t do something then the PAC guys would probably just shoot it.

  It was night when I arrived and found the elephant in front of the curio shop at the Chobe Safari Lodge. It was very distressed, and started running aimlessly between the lodge and the neighbouring Choppies Supermarket shopping complex. I reckoned it was about five or six months old. I got out my bag, loaded a dart and shot it in the rump. The elephant went down and I treated it on site, sweating in the warm night air as I worked, with the assistance of some good-hearted volunteers who rigged up some lights.

  The best thing would have been to load the elephant into the back of a bakkie and take it into the national park. A bunch of us tried and tried to lift it, huffing and puffing and sweating some more, but it was just too darn heavy. If I’d had more equipment, perhaps a truck with a winch, we could have moved it. I worked on its tail stump, cleaning it up, giving it antibiotics and pain medication, and when I was done there was nothing else I could do but reverse the drug.

  When it came to, we were able to shepherd it away from the lodge and into the bush. Encouragingly, when I took a drive into the park the next day I saw it, with its stubby little tail stump, drinking down by the edge of the river. I hoped that it would survive: elephant herds will sometimes adopt an orphan or straggler if the herd is not under stress from lack of water or food.

  Meanwhile, every 30 days I had to go to the immigration office on the river at Kasane and get my visa renewed, as per the judge’s order. I had no date set yet for a court appearance, as the government had 45 days in which to respond to the judge’s interim order and decide if it was going to mount a case against me and in favour of the revocation of my status.

  Kgomotso, the bulldog lawyer, was at the office of Mr Segokgo, the head of Wildlife and Tourism, talking to the man himself and his people. Kgomotso was trying to find out where the push against me was coming from, and why it was happening. Kgomotso told me he had news, so I flew him up to Kasane from Gaborone so we could talk strategy.

  When I picked him up from our sleepy little airport, he told me: “Segokgo said to me, ‘Doctor Wilson has some very interesting ideas on anti-poaching.’ Segokgo tried to avoid me at first, but when I met with him, finally, Segokgo said to me, ‘I have made a mistake.’ I think he was probably acting under orders.”

  “But from who?” I asked. If Kgomotso was right and Segokgo had admitted he had made a mistake, that still didn’t explain why I had been sacked and ordered out of the country. Kgomotso had, however, picked up some scuttlebutt that I had perhaps offended the vip who I had taken into the park when I was caught using the unauthorised exit.

  The rumour mill around town, and even as far afield as South Africa, was turning full speed with bizarre stories of what I had done wrong. There were even allegations I had slept with a married woman. My personal life was my own business and I could not believe that anything I did or did not do on that front would result in me being kicked out of Botswana.

  Instead, I was coming to the conclusion that what I had said, rather than what I had done, was responsible for my undoing. My suggestions for improving anti-poaching operations and reducing human–wildlife conflict were very basic things and nothing that wasn’t common sense. I had seen the helicopter in action, something I had been advocating for years, but perhaps the government of Botswana didn’t want to be told what needed doing by a South African-born American.

  I had gone public on my Facebook page with the problem of crime perpetrated against tourists, and I know that had angered the government and local tourism operators. The myth of Botswana as the happy, crime-free wildlife haven was sacrosanct and woe betide anyone who tried to say otherwise.

  I had been vocal in my condemnation of elephant poaching and the fact
was that although the local (and international) media largely ignored it, ivory poaching was alive and well in Chobe, unlike the scores of elephants I had witnessed slaughtered. The harder I fought against poaching, and the more I tried to stir the government into action, the more I annoyed people in authority.

  If I had been given use of a helicopter and a UAV and a 24/7 armed response team, I was sure I could have drastically reduced poaching in Chobe National Park in a month. Maybe there were people who wanted to ensure I did not get what I wanted, and maybe those people were in a position to undermine me with the government.

  Chapter 13

  Everything is going to be all right

  As bitter as I was, I vowed to keep my mouth shut if I could just be given a second chance to get back to working with wildlife. Kgomotso called with good news and asked me to fly down to Gaborone.

  He had capitalised on Segokgo’s admission of making a mistake – the story now was that Segokgo had confused me with someone else – and pressured him into writing me a letter that would clear the way to my reinstatement as the park’s veterinarian.

  Kgomotso thought Segokgo’s agreement to put this in writing was a turning point. His theory was that if I was reinstated, officially, as the park’s bush vet, then the government would quietly back down on the immigration order before the case went to court. If it could all be blamed on someone’s bureaucratic mistake, then the government would save face and I could go back to work. I was happy with that – over the moon, in fact.

  I arrived in Gaborone hoping to sort things out quickly, but I had waited three months, with my hands tied behind my back, and many animals had died of their wounds or been put down unnecessarily during that time. Every day we wasted was potentially the life of another creature. I forced myself to be patient as I sat out four more days in the capital, at Les’s place.