Colin came back from leave, and I then set out to tackle what could not be postponed. With his help I began to understand about cattle and the problems of a ranch. I learnt to talk business, and to cope with those alien things which are balance sheets and legal or financial language. Mostly, I learnt to take decisions which could affect many people and have far-reaching results without relying on Paolo’s judgement and experienced help. But a plan of action to protect the wildlife was needed: however much it cost, I was determined to succeed.
26
Death of a Rhino
The immense longing not just to protect, but to rehabilitate the Earth.
Laurens van der Post, A Walk with a White Bushman
One day, Luka found the corpse of another rhino down the Mukutan. It was Bianco. He was the huge male who used to come regularly to drink at the springs below the little hut on the Mukutan, and Paolo had called him Bianco because of his very pale powdery coat. His death meant more to me than all the others’ because I knew that rhino: it was now time to do something consistent and effective, and I consulted with Colin.
Including Bianco, nine rhinos were killed on the ranch between the end of 1979 and 1980. If no action was immediately taken, all would go. To make the anti-poaching Security effective, we needed to double their numbers and to equip them properly. We needed guns, radios, uniforms and adequate means of transport. Colin could provide the training and leadership. I could renounce my profits, and invest them in maintaining and paying the salaries of all the extra personnel. With the drought and the resulting effect on the breeding of cattle which affected our sales, it was a gigantic burden. I felt, however, that I was a trustee to the land. Paolo and I had found the place teeming with wildlife. I could not give up. My task was to protect it, and to do that the first step was to improve our Security. I gave Colin carte blanche to employ as many people as he felt were needed. The Security was now doubled to thirty-two men. I could not, however, afford to equip them.
To my rescue came Richard Leakey. I had not yet met him, but I had known his brother Philip since the early days. Richard was then Vice-Chairman of the East African Wildlife Society, and Director of Museums. He was young for that task and had a reputation for being ruthless, ambitious, and not suffering fools gladly. Philip, who knew Colin well and was aware of our problems, suggested that Richard might be able to help. He organized a meeting and I went to Richard’s office at the Museum.
The first feature I notice in a person is always the eyes. Richard’s brown eyes radiated intelligence, wit and curiosity. There was a restlessness about him as if he could not bear to waste time, but he could concentrate on an issue deeply and competently, and deal with it with flair. If he chooses, he can be charming. He greeted me with: ‘I have heard a lot of things about you.’ He grinned. ‘All good.’
‘I have also. Not all good.’ I grinned back. ‘But I like to make up my own mind about people.’
We discussed the ranch, its wildlife, the Security and my commitment to curb the poaching and to protect the animals which happened to be on the land. He understood the problem immediately, sympathized, and promised to help. I could see he would never support me if he did not believe that what I was trying to achieve was worth it.
Ol Ari Nyiro was home to the largest known population of indigenous black rhino remaining on private land in Kenya: this was a known fact, and invaluable from the point of view of conservation and research. They needed to be protected, as their loss would be irreparable.
Before I left, Richard said, ‘I am very interested in your circles. Perhaps one day you will let me investigate them.’
I did not have the faintest idea what he was talking about. I looked puzzled, and at myself, as if I feared I might have grown some strange spots. Richard explained that flying over the ranch on his way to Koobi-Fora he had noticed unusual formations, in a circle shape, of darker and thicker vegetation, which defined the perimeter of very large areas on the ranch, and he was curious to discover what they were. The idea was most exciting to me who, as a little girl, had followed my father on his archaeological expeditions in Veneto, searching for fossils and ancient artefacts.
It took Richard only a few weeks to organize radios and old .303 guns for the Security: our anti-poaching campaign was born. From that first encounter, a relationship destined to last, based on mutual respect and trust, was established between us, and over the years we became true friends.
Richard pursued his goals with clear-minded determination and great intelligence. He was a workaholic. He worked like one who cannot bear to waste precious time. Waking up long before sunrise and going to bed early, refusing social commitments at night, he produced a tremendous amount of work. He had no patience with people who were slow or inconsistent or stupid, but he was very fair, and was worshipped by his staff. His achievements were staggering, and it was difficult, when he made one of his speeches on anthropology or on anything else, not to fall under his spell. I imagine that Richard had learnt the value of time when he thought he had none left, when his kidneys became infected and he had to undergo a kidney transplant. It was his brother Philip who had then given him one of his kidneys, and another chance of life. Richard was a gourmet and loved good food and wine, and sailing north of Lamu where he had a house. He was an excellent and safe pilot, but he regarded flying as a means of getting somewhere quickly, not as a pleasure in itself: he valued his life too much to take risks, and during the rainy season he avoided the sky. Like all Leakeys he loved dogs, and some of Gordon’s progeny became his lucky pets. Richard had an exceptional family, and I became fond of his wife Meave and of their daughters, Samira and Louise, bright lively girls who often came to Laikipia to stay, and who loved riding camels, racing them up and down my airstrip with mad screams.
The challenges were enormous, and more difficult than I had ever imagined. My solitude was beginning to become a burden to me, and my friends and my small child could not really fill it. These were the toughest years of my life, but as I had decided to stay and make a success of it, I cried my tears unseen in the night, and during the day I got on with the job.
Paolo’s daughters were away. The elder, Valeria, in India with Mario at the time of the accident, only discovered what had happened months later through a chance phone call to her maternal grandmother in Italy. When I heard about this, I was happy that Mario was there to take care of her, which he did and has done since, as they are still happily together. The younger, Livia, was sixteen, and Paolo’s death affected her badly. Artistic and bright, original, unpredictable and highly-strung, Livia had never been an easy child. Her mother’s death when she was only five years old had created an emotional gap no amount of love and care could ever truly fill. She had been Paolo’s favourite daughter, and his disappearance added to her misery.
I had Emanuele with me. He was fourteen, and coped as I expected: deep in his school work, he drowned his sorrow at Paolo’s absence in his books, and in the passion which could somehow substitute for the excitement of those forever lost adventures after a buffalo or a lion. It was an odd and unusual passion, which he had had since he was small, but which I felt I should not restrain.
Snakes.
27
A Dangerous Passion
The serpent, subtlest beast of all the field.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
There lived in Ol Ari Nyiro an old Turkana herdsman with a long curly grey beard – very uncommon for Turkana – which made him look like St Joseph in the Crib, and this is what Paolo and I called him. He had a noble countenance, a proud and handsome profile, like the saints painted on church ceilings. They brought him to me at Kuti one day, one leg hideously swollen by the bite of a snake which had escaped unseen, and which could have been a burrowing viper or a small puff-adder. It was my first experience of snakes in Laikipia.
Simon, who took any Turkana cause much to heart, came to announce this event, and gravely brought me to inspect the man. He lay on the back lawn, mute, wi
th closed eyes, wrapped in a threadbare blanket, looking more than ever like a dying saint in a fresco. Ngobithu stood by, waiting to see what action I would take.
I was used to treating all sorts of illness at the ranch, from children’s coughs to septic wounds, from dehydration to female problems. I even set a couple of broken bones, and dealt with twisted ligaments, and I had found that there was a touching, unending faith in our people in my ability to perform miracles on their minor illnesses: I had never yet had to deal with a snake bite, and although I had learnt the theory I was not quite sure of what the practical results would be. This time, luckily, the God of Turkana was keeping an eye on his son, and on me.
I injected the serum, administered cortisone, painkillers and a tranquillizer, and I gave him some weak sweet tea to sip. The man lay on my lawn all day, attended by an old woman, and I went to check on him at regular intervals. His heart-beat was regular, and he slept most of the time. By the evening the swelling seemed much reduced and he looked better. In time he recovered completely, but felt, with a certain logic, that, as I had given him another chance to life, he was now my responsibility, and refused to work. He hung around the Centre wrapped in his blanket, the ostrich feather of his skullcap beckoning in the breeze. Then one day he was gone, as often with Turkana, and I never saw him again.
Paolo had disliked snakes, and was repelled by them. Once, in the early days in Laikipia, Paolo was driven home by Arap Rhono, and I was surprised to see him getting out of the car holding his head with both hands. His left eye was swollen to almost twice its normal size, bloodshot and swimming with ugly yellow tears. He had been fishing black bass at the Engelesha Dam when he heard, very close to him in the tall grass of the shore, the agonized cry of a yellow-neck francolin. Curious, he stooped to look: a quick movement through the papyrus stems, a silver spray aimed at his naked eye, and a burning pain blinded him. He never saw the spitting cobra. The francolin limped away dishevelled, cackling aloud his outrage. I washed the eye with cold boiled milk, rinsing away the cloying poison and shutting my mind to the unease I felt, and in a few days Paolo was fine again, although he complained he had lost some of his eagle sight in that eye. This episode made him dislike snakes even more, and he never much sympathized with Emanuele’s interest, or encouraged it.
Emanuele and Paolo had adored each other. Theirs had been a full friendship. They had shared the same passion for the outdoor life, hunting, fishing, nature, safaris. They had been so close in many adventures. I remember a time shortly before Paolo’s final accident. They had both gone out with Luka after an old wounded buffalo bull. Paolo came back limping, holding on to Ema’s shoulders. They were both dirty, caked with blood, with the same mischievous grin on their faces. ‘Emanuele saved my life today,’ Paolo had said, looking affectionately into Emanuele’s eyes. They had found the buffalo after hours of tracking in very thick bush, and it had charged them. Paolo had waited to shoot until the last moment, only to realize that he had no more ammunition left in the gun. There was nothing to be done, as the buffalo was already on him. He fell backwards, the snorting animal trampling his body with his heavy hooves, head down, vast horns ready to gore. Emanuele stood paralysed just behind Paolo, holding his own gun ready. ‘I was sure Paolo was being killed,’ he told me calmly in his boy’s voice, ‘and I decided to fire my last bullet and to run. I was afraid of shooting Paolo instead. It was so close I could touch it. It was so big. I shot, and ran. I turned to look: I had killed it … Paolo had jumped away in time, just avoiding being crushed. It was … quite exciting.’
Unavoidably, after Paolo’s death, Emanuele’s passion bloomed. In the many hours now empty of the company and excitement which Paolo’s presence had provided, he chose to numb the pain of this irreparable loss with his dangerous and unusual interest, which he could pursue alone and in Laikipia, and which fulfilled his innate disposition for analytical and scientific work.
As with the shells, Emanuele now gave the same meticulous care and precision, seriousness and determination, to this passion. During the Pembroke days his interest had become so well known that his prize when he excelled in the Common Entrance exams for Senior English, Latin, Biology and French was a book on snakes. Now he set himself to learn about snakes thoroughly and methodically, and bought, ordered and asked for every possible book on African reptiles.
As I had expected, many other snakes succeeded Kaa. Emanuele developed a sixth sense which allowed him to find snakes in the way others would find mushrooms, or edelweiss, or fossils. He knew where to look, and what to look for. He used to ride out in the early golden mornings on his grey horse Cinders, the world lay ahead of him, and it was full of snakes. When he came back the bags hanging at his saddle were heavy with his alarming catch, and in his eyes were depths of unexplored passions.
He took over one of the stables and filled it with assorted cages of all sizes. The snakes were measured, weighed, photographed. For days or weeks they were observed, fed, cleaned. He carefully entered all relevant details in his new ‘Snake Diaries’ which he updated daily. Curiously, while his personal diary was written in Italian, the ‘Snake Diaries’ were in English. After he had collected all the information he thought he needed from an individual snake, he usually let it go, but often only after months or, in some cases, years. He later recalled this period:
I started snake-catching in earnest after my father’s death, in March 1980. Those were my learning days, and I began with harmless and semi-harmless snakes, but soon, inevitably, I moved on to more poisonous species.
When the stable became inadequate for the number of snakes he had accumulated, I called up our fundi, Arap Langat, and he built a proper snake pit at the bottom of the garden. It was round, rather like a water tank, lined with stones, with a pond full of water, rocks small and large, sand and gravel. Emanuele planted grass, succulents, shrubs, papyrus. Frogs, lizards, agamas, all sorts of insects, two tortoises and snakes inhabited this small ecosystem.
Certain snakes feed on mice, and he started to breed these. If a snake died, he performed a post-mortem, entering all the details in his diary, then skinned it and cured and dried the skin. Some unusual specimens he preserved with formalin in jars, and used to raid the kitchen for empty jam pots. When in Nairobi, he started visiting the Snake Park, and the Herpetology Department of the Museum, where he became a very popular figure. He donated many specimens which still today line the Museum shelves, white and blue labels where, in his young precise handwriting, details are noted such as:
WHITE-LIPPED SNAKE
(Crotaphopeltis Mutamboeia)
25.4.80 – 4.6.80
Length: 22 cm 5 mm – 30 cm
Laikipia
E.P.-G.
Emanuele entered into correspondence with herpetologists in various parts of Africa, and most of his time was spent in pursuing his passion. It became well known in the country, even outside the circle of our friends, and in Laikipia well beyond the ranch boundary. He became known to outsiders as Kijana wa Nyoka (‘the young man of the snakes’). Our people, however, kept calling him affectionately Muenda, Meru for ‘the one who cares for others’.
His passion for riding gave place to the almost inevitable love of the teenager for motorbikes. In Laikipia he took off each morning on his shiny new Yamaha – a present for his last birthday – and came back with bags and bags full of assorted snakes. He developed a snake network and rewarded people who brought him snakes: radio messages started coming from all over the ranch, on the internal radio network, of snake findings in the most unexpected places: the game ditch between us and Ol Morani, termite hills, warthogs’ holes, hollow trees, cracks in rocks, and cattle bomas.
Sooner or later some of the snakes caught were poisonous ones, as I had always feared, and which I had originally forbidden. At this stage I decided to consult Mario and to share with him – as Paolo had gone – the responsibility of letting Emanuele pursue this dangerous development of his unusual hobby.
One day in October 1
980, when Sveva was about two months old, the telephone rang in Nairobi and a familiar voice said, ‘It’s Valeria. I am in Nairobi to meet my sister. Mario is with me, and he would like to see Ema.’ In this way, Mario entered our lives again. Behind his long beard he was as young and attractive as ever. Valeria looked older and happy. They each wore the maroon and red colours of their Guru, and his photograph hanging from a wooden bead necklace. They cried with us and they brought presents. After some resistance because of his loyalty to Paolo, who had not approved of this match, Emanuele surrendered to the pleasure of seeing again the old friend who was after all his father. They played chess, shared books, flew kites, rode horses, joined in short safaris, and in time Emanuele went sailing regularly with Mario and Valeria in the Greek Islands. Their rapport had changed subtly as Emanuele had grown up, and I could see how Mario rejoiced in their reunion.
When I consulted him about the reptiles, both Mario and I agreed that Emanuele was mature and competent enough to be trusted, as he knew what he wanted and what he was doing, and his serious interest in reptiles was clearly not a passing fancy.
I feel one should never discourage a true abiding interest in a child. So rarely are sparkles of interest pursued with such intense dedication as to bloom into a passion that we as parents ought to be grateful and let it flourish, helping as we can. After all, there were lots of other creeping dangers for a teenage boy. This was Africa, and snakes were not a totally alien passion for children brought up here, like Jonathan Leakey, or Ionides. Emanuele had made his choice, and we agreed that he was responsible enough to be allowed to get on with it.
About then, the first accident happened.
A day like many days in Laikipia: September and birds singing from the treetops, the light of the sunny morning slanting shadows on the lawn, the bright pinks and reds of the bougainvillea, the euphorbia candelabra’s arms outstretched to the sky. Sveva a few months old, still nursing as she would be for two more years … he came towards me holding one of his hands, self-control barely disguising what must have been an excruciating pain.
I Dreamed of Africa Page 15