Making up my mind about this had given me a new feeling of clarity and serenity. A peace descended which I had never experienced before, and with it a determination to succeed in my new life and a strength I did not know I possessed.
38
A New Foundation
The real voyage of discovery does not consist in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust, À la Recherche du temps perdu
The first people with whom I shared my idea were Oria and Iain. They had flown up from Naivasha and spent the night.
In the morning we went for an early walk to Paolo’s Dam. The first rain had washed the air of the memory of old dusts. Slipping in the mud which bore the tracks of last night’s animals, we circled the twin dams below Kuti hill and looked down at the peaceful, majestic expanse of the ranch.
A wilderness to protect. Overcome by a special mood, we came back in silence, reached the garden through the back road where it appears unexpectedly through the bush in a surprise of flowers and green lawns, and walked straight to the graves. Paolo’s tree was strong and healthy. Emanuele’s was producing new buds, and everything smelt fresh and new. There, with Sveva in my arms and my dogs around me, I told my friends that I had decided to dedicate my life to the ideal of the coexistence in harmony of mankind and the environment and that I wanted to create in Ol Ari Nyiro, in memory of Paolo and Ema, an example of how this goal could be achieved. I asked for their help. We embraced.
The Gallmann Memorial Foundation was born that morning.
I left for Europe in the summer. Emanuele had died only a few months before. It felt as if he had been gone forever.
His room in Laikipia was now closed. I had moved, changed nothing. His books, his clothes, the snakeskins stretched on the walls, the snake instruments in a neat row, the jacket as he had left it, slung on the back of his chair. Everything in his room seemed waiting for his return at any moment, and I had been unable to touch anything. It felt as if he had never left at all.
Every day, three times a day, a red hibiscus was put at the head of the table where his place had been.
Every night a fire was lit at the graves, and its light could be seen from far away on the ranch. It kept away the animals – mainly elephant, who are so fond of yellow fever trees – and I felt there was a symbolic meaning in the flame which burned night after night. Looking after a fire is in a way like looking after a plant; it needs care, constancy and dedication, a sort of love. There is something ancient and unchangeable in a fire, as in the waves of the sea, or the current flowing in a river, or the restlessness in the wind. Their mutable shape and constant movement forever changes, and therefore is forever the same. Every fire is the same fire. Every wave is the same. Today’s wind is millions of years old.
Before leaving Kenya, I spoke of my plans with a number of close friends who, I hoped, could help.
The first was Richard Leakey. He drove up to my house from the Museum, and we sat in my study with the Venetian wallpaper I had bought at an auction years before. There, surrounded by Venice as if for comfort, I told him about my vision. He listened quietly.
‘I have the idea. I have the place. I need the people. I need your help.’
‘You have it,’ said Richard. He never wasted words. ‘What you want to achieve is valuable. Just take your time. Do not rush into things. Be sure of what you want. I will support you’. He meant it. Richard suggested I should get in touch with Maurice Strong, a friend of his. This, he said, was exactly the sort of thing he would be interested in helping with. I had never met Maurice Strong, although I knew of his extraordinary achievements in the United Nations and in the environmental world. I spoke next to Tubby Block, the friend from the early days. He was also very supportive. At the end of our conversation he said, ‘You ought to meet Maurice Strong. I will write to him.’ I was struck that both Tubby and Richard, so different in interests, character and background, should suggest the same person. My curiosity to meet this man was stimulated instantly.
I said goodbye to my dogs as if I were leaving for a crusade. Last time, Emanuele and I had been together in Europe. We had met in Rome. He was coming from a sailing holiday in Greece with Mario, and I from Venice with Wanjiru and Sveva. We were all to fly to Sardinia, where we would stay with friends. He had come through the crowd of passengers from the Athens plane, and I saw him first. He carried a blue bag on his shoulder and wore a new sailor cap on his head, and he walked easily, long legs in jeans, handsome and distant behind the thick glass of the Arrivals area. He could not see me and he could not hear. For long moments he had seemed unreachable, I had feared the crowd would swallow him, and I unreasonably panicked, barely overcoming the urge to bang on the glass to attract his attention. Then he had turned his head and discovered us, a smile had transformed his face, Sveva had waved delightedly, and the fear had dissolved.
Europe was grey, hot, crowded with the aimless, weary tourists of August.
I wanted to visit people in various countries, to feel how my idea would be received by those who did not know me and would therefore not be emotionally biased in their judgement. In London, I stayed with Aino and Tubby Block, while Sveva and Wanjiru remained with my mother in Italy.
There were days when I felt I could not cope with the world. I remember one morning when I was not capable of leaving my room, and cherries and champagne were brought and left outside my door by Anthony, Aino’s son, who had been a friend of Ema. He was young and he was kind. I had known him since he was a child, and in him – as in any young man – I had started to see the reflection of Emanuele. The cherries remained uneaten and the champagne lost its sparkle, and I stayed quiet in bed until night came, listening with closed eyes to the echo of my memories, knowing that my friends would forgive me.
There were nights when I was haunted by nightmares and woke up bewildered in the tousled darkness of my bed of pains, clinging miserably to the wild illusion that the impossible miracle had happened, and Emanuele was alive, and well, and still with me. Then in the shaded light of the bedside table I met his eyes, enigmatic and unblinking from the photograph in the silver frame. The alien humming noise of London filtered in through the curtained windows, and the reality of his eternal silence crushed me yet again.
I longed to be in Laikipia, listen to the birds, walk with the dogs, get lost in the valleys, sit at the graves, let the wind of the Highlands dry my tears with its wise, gentle hands. But there were things to be done, and this was the time to do them.
I left for Zürich, to meet a lawyer who had been recommended to me as the ideal person to help in setting up my memorial. The plane was crowded with unknown people. Head against the window, I looked down at the snowy peaks of the Alps. I felt suddenly drained and lonely, going to meet a stranger to tell him about a dream, a story of people he had not met, of a place he had not seen, and of my desperate desire to make out of my personal anguish, of which he knew nothing, something positive, lasting, worthwhile.
Meeting the lawyer, Hans Hüssy, was a pleasant surprise. His office was in an old house set in a garden of trees by the lake. The large rooms, with ancient stucco and carved stone fireplaces, were in attractive contrast with the modern and ethnic sculptures and paintings. He quoted for me the words of Chief Seattle to the Americans who wanted to buy the land from the Indians. They were words which I believed and experienced as true: ‘How can you buy or sell the sky and the warmth of the land?… if we do not own the freshness of the breeze and the reflections of the water, how can you buy them?
We discussed my plans, and he undertook to take the necessary steps to formalize them legally. It was a major practical step forward.
I was encouraged by the response of everyone, especially my friends. Iain agreed to serve as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee whose task it was to establish the research priorities, and to advise and help to implement them. Richard and Tubby had each contacted Maurice Strong separately, and to my amazement a letter came back
to Tubby which said,’… tell Mrs Gallmann I will be delighted to help her in her courageous and unusual tribute and I look forward to meeting her.’
I met Maurice first in Nairobi, some time after my return. Richard had given me a copy of an international magazine with an article about him. It described a sort of wizard, an inspired and farsighted environmentalist with a knack for business, an uncanny perceptivity, and the idealistic drive and persistence of all true leaders and innovators. On the cover of the magazine, an ordinary-looking man with a small moustache, in a grey suit, emerged from a taxi, carrying a briefcase.
Tubby had asked me to lunch at the Norfolk, to introduce me to him. I arrived early and waited in the lounge, looking at the continuous string of cars stopping at the entrance to deliver businessmen and tourists. From a taxi like any other emerged an ordinary-looking man dressed in grey, with a small moustache, carrying a briefcase; so identical to the photograph that I almost burst out laughing. He looked around, and his eyes focused on me, instantly singling me out of the crowd. They were eyes which missed nothing: vividly intelligent, acute and mischievous, yet with an unusual depth of concentration.
‘Mr Strong, I presume?’ I could not resist it.
‘Mrs Gallmann.’ The eyes twinkled. ‘I am glad Tubby is late, so we can get to know each other.’
Maurice had a way of putting people immediately at ease, and his questions were never futile. I was amused to hear him say that, like me, he had been extremely intrigued by the fact that friends as different as Tubby and Richard could recommend me for the same reason at the same time. Maurice had a wealth of interests, an unexpected spirituality and a knowledge of Eastern thought; we ended up talking about everything from nature conservation to life and death. It felt as if I had known him for ever. Like Richard, Maurice in time agreed to join the Foundation as a trustee.
It was Richard who one day flew an important visitor up to Laikipia. The aeroplane stopped on my strip and I went to meet the guests with Sveva and the dogs. Like a magician with his bag of tricks, this time Richard had flown up Prince Bemhard of The Netherlands. He wore green khakis, a beret studded with pins portraying all sorts of animals, a glint in his eyes and a smile on his mouth. Few people, I think, have more stamina than this gallant gentleman who has dedicated his life and most of his time to the wildlife cause. Tirelessly he travels the world, to bring to heads of state and conservationists worldwide his message for the protection and survival of the wildlife on this planet.
He jumped out of the aeroplane like a young man. There was a great kindness about him, and he was touched by the story of the loss of my son so soon after my husband. He was fascinated by the beauty and freedom of Laikipia, and the possibilities that the place offered for the protection of the animals and flora. We discussed much of what I hoped to achieve in Ol Ari Nyiro, and he took an immediate interest in my cause.
Prince Bernhard loved walking in the bush and stalking rhino and elephant. He had a passion for cigars, pink champagne and Mexican music, and once he told me with a grin that he had chosen for his funeral the tunes ‘Paloma’ and ‘Barca de oro’, which the Royal Band in Holland had to practise regularly in preparation for this – hopefully distant – occasion. He spent much of his spare time doing the most complicated crosswords in Dutch as a form of ‘mental gymnastics’, which obviously worked, as he carried his years with grace and his mind was sharp and lively.
After this first visit several more followed, and in the course of the years Prince Bernhard supported and helped the Foundation generously in many ways. Finally, to my eternal gratitude, he agreed to become its first Patron.
When the Foundation was finally registered in Zürich and I received all the official documents, I felt a great sense of achievement. It was time to start on our first project. It had to be significant, and it had to succeed.
Ol Ari Nyiro was already well known for its abundance of wildlife and for our concentration of black rhino. We also had a unique record of zero poaching, thanks to our Security. I discovered to my surprise that there had been very few studies of these endangered and shy pachyderms. Iain suggested that the first project for the Foundation ought to be the monitoring, conservation and ecology of our elusive black rhino, which still survived undisturbed in the gorges as they had since their beginnings on Earth.
With the help of Jim Else, an American scientist working with the Museum, and Colin’s contribution, Iain wrote up the project proposal. We had to discover how many rhinos there were in Ol Ari Nyiro and how they interrelated; what their chosen browses were in their natural habitat, and what we had to learn about their ecology and habits in order to be able to protect them. This knowledge would help the various rhino sanctuaries that the government was planning to set up around the country. Once the proposal was ready, we decided to contact the Zoological Society of London to see if there was a young scientist who could take over the project and be responsible for training Kenyans in the same skills, since education was an integral part of the Foundation’s programme.
From the suggested names, we chose Rob Brett, an Oxford graduate in Zoology who had Kenyan experience as well as an impressive CV. He had spent two years in Tsavo studying the elusive naked mole rats for his Ph.D. An intelligent and competent young man, with a ready wit and pleasant manners, Rob Brett fitted immediately into Ol Ari Nyiro’s community and life. I established a simple camp for him, the core of which became, over the years, the GMF Research Camp, and to which we gradually added facilities and extensions. It was planned that Rob would spend four years in Ol Ari Nyiro. Helped by our Security people, and with Iain’s and Colin’s advice, Rob set out to count our mysterious rhinos. The bush is extremely thick in Ol Ari Nyiro, and rhino are generally solitary, with the exception of mothers and calves, or females and courting males. Iain theorized that rhino footprints, like our fingerprints, differ for individual animals: Rob perfected and refined the technique, and identified forty-seven black rhino in Ol Ari Nyiro. This made our population of natural rhino the largest known in East Africa outside National Parks. But they needed our protection.
After the sale of Ol Morani and Colobus for settlement, and the increased price of and demand for ivory, what had been a rare occurrence now became more and more frequent: animals wounded or with snares made of wire embedded in their flesh started finding refuge in Ol Ari Nyiro.
Our askaris and cattlemen kept reporting buffalo, eland, in one case a giraffe, and mostly elephant, limping and aggressive, with suppurating wounds, spears hanging from their sides, or snares in their legs.
One day one of our Turkana herders was gored to death by an infuriated elephant which, the day before, had killed two heifers and next day killed Kijana, a fierce bay stallion Emanuele had loved to ride. The herder’s name was Loyamuk, the same half-blind old man after whom Emanuele had named his one-eyed favourite sand snake. The idea of a mad elephant crashing through the bush with enough speed and fury to catch up with a galloping horse was horrendous. Colin went out to find him, was charged by the screaming bull and had to run for his life. The elephant left a trail of rotten pus behind him: reluctantly, Colin shot him. The tusks were still covered in dry blood. His upper trunk was hideously swollen, broken and gangrenous. Embedded in it was a bullet.
A young elephant crippled by a snare was sighted soon after. Snares, like traps, are the most vile and cowardly way of catching game. Made of heavy wire, twisted often three, four times or more, they are set along the beaten paths animals use to go to water or salt licks. The smaller ones, like dik-dik or impala, or even bushbuck, remain imprisoned, unable to disentangle themselves, defenceless and trembling in terror until their captors come to kill them. Leopard have been known to bite off a leg or foot to get away. Larger and stronger animals, like buffalo and elephant, usually manage to rip off the metal wire, but the noose, tightened in the desperate struggle, remains deep in the flesh and cripples them, cutting off the blood supply. The limping animal becomes weaker and weaker as the wound becomes infe
cted and the leg swells. Soon the herd will abandon him to his fate. Unable to run, debilitated by lack of food, he will then become an easy victim for any predator, from man to lion. The vultures will discover him and will patiently gather on nearby trees, waiting their turn. This unnecessary suffering is intolerably tragic and gruesome.
For this young elephant we managed to get hold of Dieter Rottcher, a veterinary surgeon with a passion for the wilderness and tremendous experience in immobilizing wildlife in the bush. The elephant was darted, injected with antibiotic, and the snare was removed. Colin assisted him, and after a series of similar successful operations he learned and mastered this complicated technique, which requires the accurate aim, courage and bushcraft of the hunter and the medical training of a competent vet. We finally managed to acquire our own darting equipment, and I gave Colin carte blanche to take time out from his ranch duties, whenever necessary, to pursue the task of rescuing wounded and maimed elephants which were reported more and more frequently, even in our neighbourhood. It seemed a different era from that time up in the north frontier when he and Paolo, like most men in Africa, were hunting the same animals we were all now trying to save.
At about that time the Head of our Security, Luka Kiriongi, had been honoured with the David Sheldrick Award which went each year to a Kenyan who had performed extraordinary services for the conservation of wildlife. We went to State House, where President Moi presented Luka with the Award and a substantial cheque. Straight and proud, dressed in his best uniform, saluting smartly while cameras clicked, Luka looked even taller. Thanks to our Security efforts, no elephant or rhino had been poached in Ol Ari Nyiro for years.
In Ol Ari Nyiro, thanks to the careful protection of the environment, the indigenous plants were still there, and the climate and terrain difference between the top of the hills and the bottom of the Mukutan Gorge allowed for an amazing variety of flora.
I Dreamed of Africa Page 25