Love, Life, and Elephants

by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

  Juma was outgoing and brave and enjoyed teasing the lion in the cage opposite, which watched every movement with blazing yellow eyes. Juma would rush up to the cage with his ears out and head up, enjoying the inevitable reaction. The lion would crouch as though preparing to spring, and when it launched itself at the wire with a loud growl, Juma would hurriedly reverse and tear off in the opposite direction, trailed by Bibi, who was not quite as bold, more easily daunted by their noisy neighbour. In time the attendants began to respond to their charges, who were, of course, enchantingly endearing, and this meant that I could trust them with some of the daytime feeds. However, I did not dare risk the nights, and so for an entire year I made the journey at three-hourly intervals throughout the night to supervise the feeding. Sometimes, rather than drive back home, I would just set my alarm clock and doze in my parked car until it was time for the next feed. It was an exhausting, twilight sort of existence.

  I knew that if these two baby elephants were to live, I would have to try to get them to Eleanor in Tsavo. Juma and Bibi were proving an enormous attraction at the orphanage, people flocking in on a daily basis to watch them at play, but once they had celebrated their first birthday, I felt the time was ripe for me to press for them to be sent to Tsavo into Eleanor’s custody. Still in a state of semi-captivity, these two little calves would be a welcome diversion for her as she equipped them with the skills needed for a life in the wild. As I feared, this entailed a great deal of persuasion before the authorities capitulated, but in the end they gave their permission. It transpired that before leaving both elephants needed surgical attention – Juma because he had become a bit too bold teasing the lion and had had his trunk bitten, and Bibi because her front foot kept swelling and an X-ray revealed that a splinter of bone was the problem.

  Juma managed to unravel all the stitches from the tip of his trunk by using his foot to dislodge them, and little Bibi could not be brought out of anaesthesia, despite the desperate attempts of five of the best vets in Nairobi who were in attendance during the operation. No one had ever anaesthetized a baby elephant before, and had yet to understand just how fragile they are, requiring just a fraction of the dose normally given according to weight – another lesson that could not have been learned any other way. I had been an anxious spectator during what should have been a simple operation on Bibi’s foot, but left totally unravelled all over again. Nor did it end there. Eleanor lavished all the love in her great elephant heart on Juma as soon as he arrived in Tsavo, but I hadn’t foreseen the enthusiasm of the incumbent warden who, believing Juma to be constipated, decided to give him an enema using a hosepipe and ruptured his gut. Two weeks passed before I was even informed of his death. I loved those little elephants and was barely able to contain my sadness at Juma’s demise. He had been perfectly healthy and his constipation was nothing that a little brown sugar would not have sorted out.

  These were dark days indeed, for the poaching of wild elephants was still going on unabated throughout the country. In Tsavo, entire herds were still being mown down by the automatic gunfire of Somali intruders, falling victim to Wakamba poisoned arrows, or even killed for their tusks by corrupt elements within the Wildlife Department that had embarked on a get-rich-quick crusade. There appeared to be no end to the carnage, and I often felt that perhaps it was a blessing David never lived to see what was taking place in the Park he had established with such sweat and toil and passion. But then, I would think, were he still here, he would have moved heaven and earth to get something done about it.

  A heartening development came with the reappointment of Perez Olindo, who had been the National Parks Director during David’s latter years and who was returned to take charge of the corrupt Wildlife Conservation and Management Department. It was not long before another request came my way – to help with a rescued baby elephant retrieved from a deep erosion gully and now at the Maralal Safari Lodge. I agreed, but asked Perez whether I could have the elephant at my home, since I simply could not face another year of three-hourly nocturnal drives to the main gate orphanage. In due course the orphan arrived, coinciding with the arrival of David Read, who happened to turn up as promised in order to ‘cheer me up’. He suggested that the little bull elephant be named Olmeg – the Masai word for ‘an outsider’ – since he had originated from tribal lands occupied by the Samburu people, who, although close cousins of the Masai, sharing a very similar language, were considered by the true Masai as ‘outsiders’.

  Baby Olmeg was not in good shape, having been fed by the well-meaning manager at Maralal Lodge on cow’s milk and grated carrot, neither of which had done his tummy any good. He also had a seriously infected umbilicus, which Jill – now returned from France – and I did our best to clean out with hydrogen peroxide. We fed him what remained of Juma and Bibi’s powdered Similac, and set about trying to source more. We urgently needed a place to accommodate our new orphan. All we had was the little stone chicken house that Jill and I had thrown together out of rough rock for the Baron, the Flame Trees of Thika bare-necked rooster, who now had several wives. There was nothing for it but to relegate the Baron and his wives to a box in the kitchen so that Olmeg could occupy the chicken house. This was a disaster – he bellowed constantly, clearly feeling claustrophobic, until we could stand it no longer and had to let him out. We tried exercising him around the car park for half an hour or so at a time in order to tire him out, but this didn’t work either, for whenever we put him back the bellowing began all over again, added to which he clearly enjoyed the nocturnal outings. In the end, Jill suggested he share her bedroom, despite the fact that he was still producing extremely smelly watery stools. We replaced the carpet on her bedroom floor with a bed of hay and here the little elephant eventually settled down to sleep, after several attempts to climb on to Jill’s bed.

  The three-hourly feeding schedule eventually took its toll on Jill and me, leaving us so exhausted that we could barely function during the daytime. I asked the Wildlife Director to second us a ranger to help with the daytime feeding so that Jill and I could catch up on some sleep. Unfortunately this didn’t work out too well, for the ranger had no empathy for elephants and, sensing this, Olmeg simply refused feeds from him.

  Looking after Olmeg was a turning point that made us realize with startling clarity that if we were to continue to help rear elephant orphans at my Nairobi National Park home, we would need to be better equipped in terms of elephant accommodation, milk supplies and keepers whom we could train. Jill and I racked our brains about how to raise the wherewithal to achieve all this, but just as Granny Webb had predicted, a door miraculously opened in the person of Dr Bill Jordan, who happened to be visiting Kenya and came to see Olmeg. He volunteered to fund the building of two elephant stables as well as accommodation for the keepers we wanted to employ. He also suggested that his organization, Care for the Wild International, could continue to help us financially through organizing a fostering programme, whereby in exchange for a modest sum in support of the orphans people would be given a video of the elephants and updates on their progress as well as various gift items. For our part, he asked that Care for the Wild be given access to film the orphans. We accepted Bill’s generous offer with alacrity and enormous gratitude.

  Fortune favoured us in another extraordinary way. It so happened that Don Barrett was now in charge of Wyeth Laboratories, the manufacturers of the SMA baby milk formula, similar to the Similac I had used for Shmetty, Juma and Bibi. During the Mau Mau emergency he had served as a District Officer at Maralal, where Olmeg had been rescued, and offered to donate milk that was not suitable for human consumption free of charge. In addition to this, various sympathetic local sculptors and artists parted with some of the proceeds from their various exhibitions, and pretty soon we found ourselves on a much sounder footing, especially after having recruited and trained several elephant keepers.

  It wasn’t long before another little bull elephant calf that David Read named Ol Jori (‘the friend’) joined
Olmeg. And shortly after this we learned of yet another orphan down in Tsavo that had been handed over to Eleanor but was far too young to survive without milk. I wondered how it would be possible to remove the calf from Eleanor’s care, but fortunately the Park personnel managed to do so by getting a rope and hauling him out from beneath the bars of Eleanor’s stockade, having first diverted her attention with a handout of fruit. We named this orphan Taru after the place of his origin, Tsavo at one time having been known as the Taru Desert. Eleanor had been extremely upset to lose him, and I made a silent promise that as soon as Ol Jori was stable, being older than either Olmeg or Taru, I would send him down to her as a replacement and arrange to complete his milk-dependent period in Tsavo.

  It was with the arrival of Taru that we recruited Mischak Nzimbi, a former night-watchman who would evolve into the one keeper all our orphaned elephants loved best. He was endowed with a magical and mysterious empathy that all our elephants detected instantly. Mischak could persuade an elephant that had given up the ghost and simply wanted to die, to make the effort to live. Quite simply, he had the right heart and a quiet and confident demeanour to which they responded with a love that was profound and enduring, right from that day to this.

  With what looked like becoming a continuous succession of orphaned elephants and rhinos coming into our care, the African Wildlife Foundation decided that, once the funds donated in memory of David had been allocated, the David Sheldrick Memorial Appeal, which hitherto they had handled as one of their projects, should become an independent entity. So in 1987 it metamorphosed into the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a legal entity in its own right, overseen by a dedicated Board of six Trustees among whom were Jill, Bill and Peter. The previous advisory committee, comprising David’s friends, remained as a ‘think tank’ to guide the Trustees, and it was unanimously decided that I should be the Chairperson of the new Trust. We worked for a long time to forge the right words for our mission statement, and these words seemed to us to embody David’s essence and vision, enshrining his legacy, which would continue to live on through the work of the Trust set up in his name:

  The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust embraces all measures that complement the conservation, preservation and protection of wildlife. These include anti-poaching, safeguarding the natural environment, enhancing community awareness, addressing animal welfare issues and providing veterinary assistance to animals in need, as well as rescuing and hand-rearing elephant and rhino orphans along with other species that can ultimately enjoy a quality of life in wild terms.

  15. Growth

  ‘Anyone intelligent can make things more complex. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.’

  – Albert Einstein

  Many more orphans came in over the next few years – elephants, rhinos and numerous antelopes, all of whom kept us extremely busy. For us, the rearing of the antelope orphans was straightforward; we had handled so many of different species during the Tsavo days, using a formula based on powdered cow’s milk. Whereas elephants were very difficult to rear but easy to rehabilitate, the rhinos were the opposite – easy to rear but extremely difficult to reintegrate back into the wild system, as had been demonstrated by our early Tsavo orphans, Rufus and Reudi. Being an ancient, complex and fiercely territorial species, the rhino orphans usually gave us a good dose of anxiety and heartache, so it was not without trepidation that, at the request of the Wildlife Director of the time, I took on Sam, a three-month-old calf who had been mauled by lions in the Masai Mara Reserve. Even though he was only knee-high and injured, we knew that we would be met with aggression, a rhino’s means of defence being attack. So, with nerves of steel, cricket pads strapped to our legs, a stout cushion to absorb his onslaughts, plus a bottle of formula milk, Jill and I took it in turns to set about taming this very injured baby. Being such sensuous animals, rhinos are easy to calm, unable to resist the delicious feel of a good tummy rub, and that, combined with the milk for which Sam was desperate, soon had the desired effect.

  Nevertheless, his wounds were severe and needed constant attention, and because he cried piteously every time that Jill or I left him, we decided he needed a stable companion until he was up to joining the orphaned elephants. This came in the form of Boozie, a fat-tailed sheep purchased from a passing herdsman. Sam liked the feel of Boozie’s woolly coat, and Boozie found her new role as rhino-sitter to her liking, since it involved a life of luxury seldom meted out to her peers. The two quickly settled in together, and unlike the popular belief that sheep cannot think for themselves, this particular one had plenty of personality. She was no pushover, matching Sam’s initial head-butts with retaliatory ones of her own.

  In time the two joined the elephant orphans, who were escorted out into the Park forest every morning by their keepers, Boozie’s fat tail wobbling temptingly ahead of Sam, who enjoyed burying his nose in it. To begin with the elephants regarded the new pair with deep suspicion, their ears outspread as they rushed around trumpeting and downing small shrubs, while Sam huffed and puffed in return and Boozie merely went about her business, ignoring them completely. This was a wise strategy, because curiosity soon got the better of the elephants and they plucked up the courage to investigate more closely. Soon Sam and Boozie were part of the herd, pausing at the wild rhino middens they encountered on the way so that Sam could leave his own contribution, with Boozie waiting patiently for him to do so before both ran off to catch up with the elephants again. This was, of course, the necessary prerequisite to becoming accepted by the established wild rhino community of the Park.

  Before long Boozie and Sam were joined by six-month-old Amboseli, who in fact turned out to be the last living Amboseli rhino, her mother and all others having either been poached for their horns, or become victims of ritual spearing by Masai warriors bent on proving courage and manhood. Amboseli was a National Reserve where wildlife was protected, but shared the land with the local pastoral people, who had always lived alongside the natural world. Lions, the traditional target, had been steadily decimated in Amboseli either for ritual purposes or in retribution for killing livestock.

  Having bravely protected the body of her dead mother against hordes of predators and vultures, Amboseli came in much feistier than Sam and was more difficult to tame, but with perseverance she ended up inseparable from him and Boozie, and, like them, part of the orphaned nursery herd. Rhinos develop twice as fast as an elephant and live half as long, so once Sam and Amboseli sensed that they had become members of the wild community they became increasingly independent of the keepers and much more adventurous. So much so that one day they trundled out through the nearby Nairobi Park Service entrance and on to the main road, where Sam held up the startled motorists as he deposited a huge pile of dung right in the middle of the road, after which Amboseli felt compelled to do the same. They then moved off to some kiosks near the post office which sold bananas and green maize and began helping themselves to the kiosk contents. Needless to say, all pedestrians took to their heels, since most urbanites had never even seen a rhino before.

  The first we knew about it was when a breathless ranger came panting up to the back door urging us to do something about it. All hands were hurriedly dispatched to round up the two miscreants, tempting them back home with more fruity handouts and locking them back in their night stockades, both having long outgrown their original nursery stables. Like the elephants, rhinos have long memories, and both had now acquired a liking for fruit, or for that matter any tasty morsel, so it came as a shock when I returned home from town one day to find Amboseli firmly ensconced in my tiny kitchen, having just managed to squeeze her huge bulk through the frame of the back door. Never far behind, Sam was standing behind nudging her bottom with his horn, frustrated at not being able to join her as she munched her way through a large bunch of bananas that Sheila had brought me from her garden. There was no chance of Amboseli being able to turn round in the kitchen even had she wanted to, for she filled it en
tirely, and I knew that if I startled her, she would crash through the adjoining lounge as well as the plate glass door leading on to the verandah, demolishing a large part of my house in the process. Thinking fast, I knew that the first priority was to coerce Sam from the doorway, which was easy to do by sacrificing my edible shopping. I attached a bunch of bananas I had just bought to the end of a broomstick and then, passing the broomstick over Amboseli’s back, dangled the bananas just above her prehensile lip. Gradually she reversed inch by inch, and although there was an anxious moment when she got wedged in the back door frame, which groaned and creaked ominously, eventually she popped out backwards. Now I had to act rapidly, so, leaving her tucking into the broomstick bananas, I sprinted round the side of the house to access the kitchen from the front and slam the back door shut before she could get back in. Somewhat shaken, I was mightily relieved that my house was still intact, though it was not for long because a few days later the yard man, in my absence, decided to have a go at driving my Datsun 120Y, reversed up the hill, lost the brakes and ended up slap through the wood panelling at the end, not doing either the garage or my car any good at all. Needless to say he became history.

  These were challenging times. Jill and I were unaccustomed to dealing with staff issues and the public, and all the paperwork and accounting demanded of a charitable trust, not to mention negotiating endless Government protocol in a diplomatic manner. Meanwhile Angela, studying graphic art at the University of Cape Town, was earning much-needed pocket money through some part-time modelling work. I will always be eternally indebted to Marti and Illie Anderson, neighbours on Galana Ranch during our Tsavo days, who so generously helped me shoulder the cost of Angela’s education, not to mention her tickets back home for the holidays. South Africa was still under the Apartheid regime at the time and as such strictly out of bounds for Kenya residents, so getting her to and from school and university was never straightforward.