Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  Once we reached Ithumba we could see that Peter had done a fantastic job opening up the northern area, and we enjoyed a tour of his charming living area and offices as well as going through some of the new tracks he had opened up, formerly hidden places now made accessible. It was dusk by the time we reached the new Kathamulla bunker, having stopped short of it to pitch camp underneath some shady trees on the riverbank, everybody speaking in hushed voices to cause as little disturbance as possible. Needless to say, under David’s guidance, the blind was meticulous. A flight of neat steps led down to a palm-logged room sunk below the level of the bank, large enough to house six camp beds with the floor slightly raised in order to give a clear view of the river while reclining in bed. More steps led down to a row of chairs from which, when seated, you had a ground-level view. Enchantingly, the blind was open to the stars. We took our seats in this theatre of David’s dreams, not without wondering what would happen if a lion jumped in, despite the ditch dug round the sides and back of the hide. David’s rifle was beside him and I relaxed.

  And so, as a little Scops owl began its monotone call, the large orange moon rose above the palm trees and the sand below us gleamed yellow-white. David reached for my hand, sending electric thrills through me, and I couldn’t help thinking that this would have been the most romantic of nights had it not been for the inhibiting presence of my parents and brother. However, I reminded myself that we were here for another reason and the quiet beauty of the scene was in itself sheer magic.

  Three dark shadows – bull elephants – moved along the sand and like stately phantoms approached the blind, stopping opposite us. They inspected the holes that had already been tunnelled in the sand of the riverbed and began extracting the loose sand, so that they could insert their trunks to draw up the water. Every time the largest one raised his head to put his trunk in his mouth, I found myself surreptitiously calculating his reach to make sure that we were beyond trunk range. More shadows appeared, and as they moved towards us we could see fifty or so elephants and their young. Soon the splashing of water, happy trumpeting, rumbling, and the odd squeak of a calf being tossed aside filled the night, and it was possible to observe the automatic privilege of rank: how the biggest tusker always had right of way, how as he approached the others would stand aside, leaving his path clear. At the holes, smaller elephants would give way to the high-ranking bulls, but they in turn would always share their holes with the tiniest calves. They were such polite animals, a rigid code of ethics reinforced in their society down the ages.

  It felt as though we were watching a play, the cast of characters keeping us enthralled. Next on centre stage were the rhinos, one sliding down the bank opposite us, clumsy in comparison to the dexterity of the elephants. He meandered from hole to hole, emitting a plaintive mewing, finding it difficult to select a suitable spot from which to drink. Before he could make up his mind, another rhino approached from downstream; faced with competition, he quickly commandeered the nearest hole and swung round aggressively to defend his rights. Puffing and snorting, the two proceeded to shunt backwards and forwards in a war of nerves, every now and then making short rushes at each other accompanied by an intimidating roar that meant business. Finally, the newcomer reversed away and settled for another hole nearby which he clearly intended to occupy for some time, as he lay down in it, making himself very comfortable. Seeing the threat subside, the first rhino then set about modifying his hole so that it could accommodate his cumbersome head and horn. Scraping his feet in the sand, he wore away a channel, at the same time tossing his head up and down and using his horn to enlarge the opening at the top, careful to keep an eye on his rival, warning him off with periodic puffs and snorts. We were very close to all the action, enthralled at this ritualistic test of status.

  The arrival of a small herd of cow elephants and their young increased the tempo instantly, as the two rhinos rose in a barrage of noise. This succeeded in persuading the elephants to turn and walk upstream. All was calm for a while, until another rhino arrived – this time a female – with her calf at foot. She wandered around pleading for one of the two occupied holes, so the tactics of bluff and counter-bluff began all over again, with the incumbents refusing to budge and the female trying to pressurize them into doing so. This meant that no one could take a drink for fear of being horned from the rear, and, confronting one another, they argued on until the female decided to accept defeat and began to modify another drinking hole.

  Upstream the elephants had long since drunk their fill and gone about their business elsewhere, while we wondered whether any of the rhinos would actually get a drink at all. Only when one decided to move off could the other risk lowering his head into the hole, but it was not quite over yet. He failed to notice the silent approach of a high-ranking bull elephant, who strode up to the up-ended large brown bottom, lowered his head until his tusks were underneath it and effortlessly heaved the rhino out, sending it head over heels in an undignified somersault. We had difficulty in muffling our laughter once we had ascertained that the rhino was not injured, since it was such a ridiculous sight, but we couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor old fellow, who, having collected himself and protesting vociferously, had to initiate the tedious process of trying to find himself a suitable hole all over again, intent, of course, on those already occupied by someone else.

  And so the night passed – other rhinos coming, each one bent on usurping another from its hole – until eventually in the early hours of the morning we left them to it and retired for the night. Only fitful catnaps were possible due to the noisy bouts that went on unabated, until the birds began to sing as dawn blushed the eastern horizon, signalling the end of my first night in the Kathamulla game blind. David had gifted me many new experiences, opened my eyes to so much already, but that spectacular night remains indelibly etched in my mind, the sights and sounds still sharp all these years later. Waiting for the Land Rover to take us back to camp for breakfast, we strolled around the riverbed in the cool hour of dawn, scrutinizing the evidence of the night’s activities to the pungent smell of fresh dung and the lingering scent of the animals themselves. As we packed the car, the diurnal cast of animals were beginning to arrive to a dawn curtain-raiser – birds, monkeys and baboons, zebras, buffalo, impalas and shy kudus.

  The prospect of returning to my office job left me subdued on the return journey, heavy-hearted at the prospect of being again parted from David. As usual, though, the drive was not without excitement. David had to keep an appointment at Park HQ and did not want to pause on the way back, even to watch a lioness and her cubs who were sitting in the middle of the road. As we approached, the lioness and one of the cubs trotted off, but the two remaining cubs continued to run along the road in front of the car. The country was too broken at this point for us to be able to deviate from the track, so David closed in on the cubs in order to overtake them. ‘Watch out!’ yelled my father, and I swung around to see the lioness heading for the car at lightning speed, ears flattened and tail straight. David slammed down the accelerator and for one horrific moment it looked as though he might run over the cubs, but by some miracle he managed to narrowly avoid them. As we sped past I saw a mass of sharp teeth and claws as they flung themselves on their backs beside the wheels of the passing car, the lioness meanwhile ranging alongside the open Land Rover almost level with my knee, snarling and growling, the epitome of feline fury. I hurled myself across the seat, almost knocking my mother out, fully expecting the lioness to land in my lap at any moment. Luckily, however, she was not able to muster the additional speed to launch a spring, and as we drew ahead, leaving her and the cubs in a cloud of red dust, David said: ‘Never a good idea to get between a lioness and her cubs!’ The rest of us were too shaken to reply, and only when my heartbeat had slowed did I understand that David’s quick thinking had saved us from disaster.

  Later, as David drove me to the station, I averted my face to hide the tears. We found a private moment to hold each other and
I sensed that David was just as desolate. As the train drew in, I wondered how I would be able to face the loneliness of the months ahead.

  On my return I was plunged straight back into the ferocious debates that were raging through the settler community. We had all been stunned by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change’ speech to the South African parliament in February 1960, in which he outlined his Conservative Government’s intentions to grant independence to many of the British colonies in Africa. Now, some months later, this wind appeared to be blowing with a gale force. It was only recently that the British Government had been actively encouraging white settlement through its Soldier Settlement Schemes, and more recently still had been at pains to reassure the settlers that the multi-racial balance would definitely be preserved in any new constitution, and that the white community would always have a voice and an economic future in an independent Kenya. But it was apparent to us now that Britain was going for what my father called an outright sellout – simply ‘one man, one vote’ – which would in essence mean black majority rule. The settler community was a small minority in the colony and it was obviously unrealistic to expect to have any representation in an independent Kenyan government. Yet for us Kenya was our home, and many of us knew no other.

  The recently held Lancaster House Conference, at which Iain Macleod, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, had begun negotiating a new constitutional framework for an independent Kenya, divided our community deeply. Some more liberal settlers, optimistic of being stakeholders in a new Kenya, supported the multi-racial New Kenya Party, founded by Michael Blundell, the classically trained singer-turned-farmer. But the elders of our community and many pioneering families, including mine, were furious at being discarded as mere flotsam and jetsam by the British and allied themselves to the Federal Independent Party. They were impressed by its leader, the straight-talking, fiery war hero Group Captain ‘Puck’ Briggs, who vowed to fight for a fair deal for the minority settlers. Many of those had come to Kenya as children of pioneering families who had lived through difficult times as their parents struggled to farm the land, and when grown had served Britain with distinction in its World Wars. Britain began to turn its back on those people – even the daily BBC programme previously announced as ‘Home News from Britain’ became ‘News about Britain’, a subtle change that did not go unnoticed. So angered were many that when Michael Blundell returned from the Lancaster House discussions, seemingly for handing over the country to African rule, he was showered with thirty small silver coins as befitting the Biblical traitor, a label that was further endorsed when he was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

  The African politicians at the time were mainly from the Kikuyu and Luo tribes and were jubilant at the prospect of a Kenya fully independent of Britain. The Kikuyu faction made no secret of the fact that they had their eyes on the White Highlands, land they viewed as rightfully belonging to them, despite the fact that it had long been occupied by the Masai prior to the white man’s arrival. An ambitious and passionate young Luo trade union leader, Tom Mboya, delivered inflammatory speeches that did little to settle our fears. Europeans, he said, would have to go down on their knees to their new African masters, who would take over their land and everything else they owned when independence finally came. But the main focus of African attention was on securing the release of Jomo Kenyatta, the Mau Mau leader who had been imprisoned since 1953 in Lodwar, a remote part of Kenya. Early in 1960, 25,000 Kenyans had held a public meeting in Nairobi demanding his release, followed by a petition of over a million signatures presented to the Governor. Later, he was elected in absentia as President of the Kenyan African National Union and was finally released from prison, to a hero’s welcome, the following year.

  Knowing that the White Highlands were the ‘hot potato’, the British Government came up with a proposal for an organized official and mandatory buy-out of all the settlers who occupied land in the most contested parts. Only a few families had the confidence to stay put, and even fewer opted to take up citizenship of a newly independent Kenya, despite assurances that we could retrieve our British nationality should things go wrong. I remember at this time meeting a beautiful young Belgian refugee who had fled from Zaire, the recently independent Belgian Congo, and as she told me of her traumatic escape I had a deep sense that such turmoil could be coming our way. Meanwhile, my father had made up his mind to opt for the buy-out, to offload our beloved Cedar Park farm ‘lock, stock and barrel’, so that he and my mother could retire to more congenial surroundings at the coast. In theory, selling the farm to the British administration sounded straightforward, but the coming months proved unimaginably frustrating. When it came to evaluating how much the land was worth, compensation seemed to be heavily hinged to the ‘Old Boy Network’; and unfortunately for my father, it happened that a friend of the Governor’s had recently bought the farm right next door to Cedar Park and rumour had it that he did not fancy an African neighbour. Due to his lofty connections, he managed to arrange that all the farms surrounding his particular patch be excluded from the British buy-out so that he could have a white buffer to his own property.

  We did all that we could as a family to get this decision reversed but our pleas fell on deaf ears. It was heartbreaking to watch my father return from meeting after meeting in Nairobi almost broken under the strain. Eventually there seemed no other option than to try and sell the farm independently, something that was not easy due to the prevailing political climate. Buyers with the sort of money that Cedar Park was worth were simply not to be had, so he ended up more or less giving it away to an African buyer. For his life’s work my father received a paltry £6,000, the new owner acquiring 6,000 acres of fertile land with its river and pristine cedar forest; our beautiful old home; the 100 or so treasured pedigree cattle imported at such cost from Australia; miles of fencing, the dipping tank, spray race, paddocks, stables, pig-sties, storerooms and milking bales, generators, the hydraulic ram, butter churns and all the farm’s assets. My father did keep his most prized possession, a state-of-the-art tractor, gifting this with much gratitude to Wanjehia, his faithful Kikuyu foreman.

  My father’s half-brothers Harry and Fred Chart fared a little better, though still not getting the proper value of their holdings. Like my parents, Harry decided to retire to the coast, but Fred purchased another property close to Lake Elmenteita in the Rift Valley. Granny Chart was not getting any younger, and with two of her three sons leaving the district it seemed a sensible idea for her to be moved nearer to Fred. The three brothers clubbed together and built her a sweet cottage on Fred’s new farm, but she protested mightily until the very last moment as her mountain of possessions was crammed into my father’s lorry. I remember the unbelievable amount of stuff she had hoarded over the years and the way in which she stood over it all, like an enraged old tigress guarding its litter, not even allowing us to throw out a pile of newspapers dated 1912. It was only after frustrating negotiations that my father managed to acquire the free-hold title for the house at Malindi, giving my parents the sense of security they both sought.

  In addition to the turbulent political and social unrest of 1960, we found ourselves in the grip of a severe drought, the driest period on Kenyan records for over forty years. Tsavo East, a semi-desert at the best of times, began to take on the aspect of a desert. Each day the sun rose in a fiery red ball and blazed down with increasing intensity, sapping our strength, leaving us drenched in sweat. The consequences for the wildlife were catastrophic, and on one of my visits camping upstream from Lugard’s Falls I witnessed large numbers of rhinos suffering and dying along the banks of the Athi River. Even with help from the mobile pumps and sprinklers that David used to get water from the river to irrigate stretches along the banks, the emaciated rhinos were beyond saving. A tiny rhino orphan we named Lokwan was brought back to camp, and although my mother and I tried to save him, tragically he didn’t make it. To our knowledge no one had eve
r reared a newborn rhino before, so we really didn’t know how to begin, and it soon became obvious that the powdered cow’s milk on which we fed him was not ideal. We were shocked by his sudden and unexpected death a few days later; we were yet to learn that upset and stress trigger latent tick-borne diseases to which rhinos in good health are normally immune, and that a course of injected antibiotics administered immediately after capture is a prerequisite to success.

  I have to admit that it was pretty frustrating to have to spend my precious time with David in the company of my parents, and while they made sure we had some time alone, there were few opportunities for us to do as we really wished. I was too cowardly to probe David about any possible future together, even though he knew my decree absolute had by now come through, and he made no mention of it in conversation. So it came as a complete shock when on the way back to Voi station, David stopped the car and said: ‘When shall we get married, Daph?’ All I could do was gasp. After all this waiting and wondering, it had all come down to this moment. I was taken aback that he should be so sure of my response, and found myself saying, ‘What makes you so sure I want to marry you?’ David turned from me and gazed out of the window. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I am such a selfish devil and you’d be better off forgetting me altogether.’ Panic gripped me – no I wouldn’t – but then he looked at me and added softly, ‘I would die for you, Daph. Please find it in your heart to give my suggestion a little thought.’ Then with great tenderness he reached for me and the long, lingering kiss spoke my answer. This was all I had ever wanted.

  I couldn’t wait to get back to tell my sisters and break the good news to Jill that she and I would be moving back to Tsavo. I handed in my notice at work and began to make preparations for a quiet wedding. David had gone straight back from the station to ask my father’s permission for us to marry, and so for once I smiled throughout the long journey back, pinching myself from time to time to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. When I arrived back at Sheila’s I was, however, met with sad news. Old Mrs Woodley, Bill’s mother, of whom I was very fond, had been admitted to hospital in the last stages of cancer. I found her propped up against her pillows, deathly pale, but she still had spirit and the usual cigarette in her hand. She said: ‘I have always been very fond of you, Daphne, and I don’t blame you for leaving Bill. He’s just like his bloody father.’ On the way out I bumped into Bill and his new girlfriend, Ruth Hales, whom I had not yet met. She looked at me through her dark liquid eyes and there was something about her that I warmed to instantly. Bill told me that he and Ruth were planning to marry in three months’ time and I beamed my congratulations, relief flooding through me – it wouldn’t be difficult now to break my own news to him.